You have a “special’ birthday or other special family
event coming up. You want to make the event even more memorable. There
would be a wide range of ages and interests in the family members
attending. What should you do? Plan a family cruise vacation!
We
have done this ourselves. We had a “special” birthday in the family and
wanted to vacation with our grown-up children to celebrate. With
careful consideration for what we might like to do, where we might like
to go, and to provide enough variety in eating (the kids are finicky
eaters) and activities to keep everyone happy, a cruise seemed to best
fit the bill.
Family cruises offer one of the very best family
vacation packages available. Consider this: Per person, you pay one
price for your cruise stateroom, all of your meals, some fantastic
entertainment and a myriad of daily activities – not to mention the
fabulous ports-of-call!
As it turned out, we had a total of 12
people coming on our family vacation cruise ranging in age from 26 to
85. Pleasing this wide of a range of ages can prove daunting. However,
having been on a cruise or two already, we knew that cruises offered
the best array of options in dining, activities, entertainment and
destinations.
Choosing the right cruise line and cruise itinerary
can be somewhat of a challenge. However, if you approach this task
methodically, everything will fall into place and you’ll choose the
absolute best cruise for you and your family.
You will notice
that I started by saying to choose the right cruise line. This -
believe it or not – can make or break your family vacation. There are
cruise lines that cater to specific groups or types of cruise
passenger. It’s important to identify what type of group your family
fits into.
As mentioned before, our group required variety. Our
twenty-something kids need to have a festive, party atmosphere. Our
parents required something somewhat more sophisticated without being
stuffy or pretentious. Many of the “contemporary” cruise lines offer
much of this variety, and only on the larger cruise ships. We quickly
were able to narrow our search to three cruise lines.
In looking
at the cruise line and cruise ship, we carefully scanned over the
amenities and listed activities for the specific ships. All three had a
good variety. Each had specific high spots and potential low spots.
Even with our diverse group, we felt that all three cruise lines could
offer us a great family vacation cruise experience.
Next was the
itinerary – or destinations where the individual cruises stopped. These
ports-of-call make cruises an extra special vacation value. Of course,
we had a set date that we wanted to be away, so we looked at the
available itineraries for the three cruise lines, including which ships
sailed those itineraries. We chose the southern Caribbean for our
cruise.
All three cruise lines offered a southern Caribbean
cruise at the time we wanted to cruise. Each offered different
ports-of-call which allowed us to narrow our search. We next looked at
the cost of the cruise vacation and what potential discounts/special
offers we might receive by booking 6 staterooms.
Now we had all
of the information required to make our decision. We first narrowed our
search to three cruise lines. We chose a cruise locale and looked at
the available cruise ships in those cruise lines sailing on our
specified date. Lastly, we compared pricing.
As it turned out, we
chose the middle priced cruise (before discounts). This choice had a
variety of amenities to cater to our “kids”. Our parents would have a
level of sophisticated elegance. And we would have piece of mind in
knowing that we had done “due diligence” in choosing the best cruise
for our family vcation.
Oh yes, do you want to know which cruise we chose? We chose Princess Cruises’ ship Golden Princess. Our cruise itinerary:
• San Juan, Puerto Rico
• St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
• St. Kitts, St. Kitts & Nevis
• Grenada
• Isla Margarita
• Aruba
• San Juan
