jbrinkm

We were on Royal in April and dined next to a family that used a high chair, so I know they have them aboard. I don't know if it needed to be requested or noted beforehand, or if they just set it up the first night. The wait staff was great with the family as @kitkat343 said. I'd also recommend looking at menus ahead of time so you can order immediately, arrive on time, and even take dessert to go if youngster starts to seem cranky or bored.

My teens love RCCL so we've never done another line with them. It is the perfect balance for the whole family, in our eyes. Happy to answer any specific questions.

Celebrity used to be a Greek-owned company and may still have some legacy Greek captains. Not sure if that is an advantage in any way, but Celebrity is also a nice cruise line! Especially for the mature cruisers in your group. My second choice would be Royal Caribbean for the teen/tweens if that is a priority, as well as a more relaxed atmosphere. My teens love Royal.

I think Freedom class ships are fantastic for first cruises with kids at the ages of yours! Our first two cruises with our kids were on Independence and Liberty and we were super happy to start with those - plenty for kids to do without it being overwhelming. Now that we have teens, we've bumped up to Oasis class and the shift to a newer class of ship was exciting for them at their ages now. So that is not really advice, just a kudos for your ship choice! It will also be nice to have extra family around to help with the kids so you could possibly have some time with just the two of you here and there. That was one of the biggest challenges for me - being on vacation but still feeling like I had to keep constant eyes on my kids (pool, railings, getting lost, etc.). Two favorites from our trips back then were the ice cream machine at the pool, and the cupcake class (extra $$). Animal towels were also a big hit in the stateroom. As far as dining, you could look at the menus ahead of time and be right on time or early for dinner to get your orders in immediately. The servers always seem fantastic with kids and eating quickly plus the interactions with the staff can help the meal go quickly. You can do as @FamilyCruiserUK suggested and mix it up with the Windjammer buffet some days. If you like to be waited on but dinners are tough, you can try the dining room for lunch and dinner at WJ. You know your kids best and how you think they'll do with a sit down meal at night. And if things start going south before dessert, the wait staff is usually happy to box it up and you can take it to the room for later. There's a family cruising forum on here. You can read through some of the posts here and I'm sure people can help answer more specific questions as they come up: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/28-family-cruises/

Hmm.... It is interesting that you mention this because I've been toying with the idea of starting the process of getting certified myself. My small hesitation has been that I have mild asthma... my doctor says that I should be ok but it still makes me nervous. What does a Discover Scuba entail, and would I do this on the island, or on the ship?

I like to search on Viator. Not first hand experience with this exact tour, but I've used to them to search and book for other places and had good experience. I like that I can see reviews and there is some protection offered through their policies. There are some Bacalar excursions listed - maybe you can find a pontoon boat through there.

You can get discounted tickets into Chankanaab if you book a Cabana adjacent to the park. Cabana looks like currently $95 for up to 6 people and when we booked a Cabana last year and added Chankanaab tickets, they were $10 each and you get free snorkeling equipment (plus a fruit plate). We paid $120 total (Cabanas were $80 last year and there are 4 of us) when just entrance into Chankanaab would have been $96 (DS was still 12). So for $24 extra dollars, we got snorkeling equipment, a Cabana and a fruit plate. Depending on how many are in your party, and if everyone wants to rent snorkeling gear, it might be worth looking into. Cabanas have gone up $15 since then. Maybe spend the early part of the day exploring the park and the shows, have lunch, and then "retire" to your cabana for the afternoon with some snorkeling mixed in? (the food wasn't great at the Cabanas) It was also not crowded the day we were there in April with 6 ships in port.

Adult $26.00 USD child $18.00 USD (aged 4-12) Children under 3 Enter Free

https://cozumelparks.com/en/chankanaab/

Yes, 2 balcony cabins. Each cabin gets a credit.

Thanks for suggestion but we're not going to spend extra money on specialty dining. We really like the main dining room and live in a city with great restaurants so prefer to use what already comes with our fare when we're on a cruise vacation. We are only doing this one because it was a free promotion. Maybe once kids are grown and we're able to do more cruising as a couple, we'll look forward to eating at the specialty restaurants more.

For at least the past year, it has been offered on the C&A sheets (see below) that are left in your stateroom when you arrive. We saw it and wanted to clarify, so we asked about it at guest services when we were on Allure in April and they said that it didn't need to be purchased all at once, but as soon as you hit $50 on the card, you qualified for the credit. It is put onto the card/account on the last morning. It is linked to the Seapass - I actually don't know about the minimum age as my kids were both "teens" (DS was 12 but he was considered a teen on Allure) - the listing is for "youth". My kids ended up not even using the arcade so we didn't test it to make sure but I heard from another poster that it worked for them. The arcades on our ship that week weren't open later in the evening which is when my kids would have most liked to go. And there were so many other activities they were interested in on the ship as teens. But when they were younger, they loved the arcade! Youth:

Wondering mostly about the vegetarian and fish options (veg/pescatarian family). Would you still recommend 150? Or Giovanni's?

I noticed a similar trend on our cruise last year. I didn't say anything or downgrade my survey score because of it, but I didn't like it. On a six night cruise, we got the "please give us 10 on the survey" speech 3 different nights. Our head waiter was a low speaker who was hard to hear, we had to stop eating and lean closer each time she came to check on us, then she had to repeat herself because we couldn't hear, listen/nod/smile for 5 minutes, then we would try to go back to our family conversation. Repeat 10 minutes later after we got the next set of food, etc. Having teens with busy lives at home and doing their own thing on the ship, dinner was a time when we wanted to all get together and relax and talk and connect as a family and the continual interruptions made that hard to do. I don't think that all of the positives about the staff and dining room AND also feeling slightly annoyed at what seemed like unnecessary interruptions are mutually exclusive - both can be true. There were so many things I appreciated about our wait staff and enjoyed about our experience. We were joking with them and kind and polite and tipped extra. And I also wish we hadn't been interrupted as much as we were about how we were enjoying our experience. It is not the same as getting to know our staff. We would have been fine with more general conversation with them - we did with our assistant waiter and those conversations were great! Our assistant waiter worked in WJ during lunch and would always say hi to us, and one day took a video of my husband on the zip line to show to us at dinner. And the staff made special cold fruit soup for us specially. So those things were fantastic and we would have given more than 10s on the survey if we could have - without them even asking. It is very different to hear a quick - "Is everything ok with your meal? Please let me know if I can get you anything" and the long speeches about how important the ratings are multiple times. I wish there was a way to give feedback about this to Royal without it coming back to the wait staff. I do believe that they feel that they have to make these pitches to the diners and that is unfortunate that they live with that much uncertainty around their jobs and job performance.

I DO think fanny packs are having a small comeback at the moment. Although as mentioned above, a lot of them are worn like a sling bag with the pouch across the chest. I bought a nice one (some upscale brand name on sale) and I wear it AS A FANNY PACK. I don't care about how it looks - it is convenient. Especially when I am walking the dog. I'm very much in the camp of convenience > fashion. I use larger hiking lumbar packs when we go to Disney (essentially fanny pack with more padding and storage). I also used to wear the lanyard with the punch (again, I don't care) but now that I also want my phone with me, I use a very compact crossbody. My phone fits perfectly, I can see the screen, and it has a small space for putting my SeaPass card on the other side.

How do you book this? I don't see it on the Hotel website so is it through a different operator?

I think we're going to do the zip line in Roatan, so I'm sure they'd love it but we probably won't do it twice during the same cruise. They did the inflatables at Paradise Beach last year, and that is our backup plan again if we don't find a better alternative, but would still love some more suggestions for things we might not have realized were available. I'm intrigued by these Sea Trek mini subs recommended by @JimmyTheSaint! I was originally looking for ATVs but that seems like a bigger time commitment than we'd like and the kids aren't able to drive them by themselves anyway, so not sure how much fun it would be for them to be on the back with my husband and I driving. I know I certainly wouldn't go as fast as my 13 year old would like!

Yes, I'm finding this as well. Flight prices are triple what I've ever paid even for Spring Break before...

I had so many pending charges on my primary credit card (only 2 legitimate purchases that went through but probably 25 additional attempts that did not work) that I did end up having to use my backup card. I think my primary card would no longer accept attempts. I did get one fraud warning, which I approved as legitimate, but after that, the charges still wouldn't go through. I was finally able to do my Voom Internet purchase using my backup card but not saving it as my primary card in the planner 😕 No idea if I just got lucky in that exact moment and any card would have worked, or if putting that card in and not saving it as primary was the magic combination that allowed it to go through...

It has always worked in the past that two people could use a one-person, two-device plan. No one knows which two devices a person might use at the same time - could be a phone and laptop, or it could be your phone and your friend/partner's phone, or could be your laptop and your kid's tablet, etc. The only trick is if you have a one-person, two-device plan but you have three devices (i.e. you, your partner, your kid), to make sure that one is actively logged off before logging the alternate device in. The only real difference is that the one person, multi-device packages share log in information and the multi-person packages each have their own log in. We had a one person, 4 device package in April for my family of 4: my husband, me, and two teens. We shared the same log in information. I also brought my tablet along. When we were each just using our phones, we had no problems. And if I logged out of my phone and logged into the tablet, we had no problems. But one night, I thought I logged out of my phone to get on my tablet, but it didn't work and when I logged into my tablet, it bumped my younger kid off. When he logged back in, it bumped my older kid off. Then I got a text from the younger (they were together) about the problem and realized that my phone was still connected (otherwise I wouldn't have received the text!) and I was "taking up" two of the four Voom spots. Once I logged out of my phone for real, everyone was able to get back on with one device each.

On Allure in April & we have a free specialty dining credit from our TA. Pescatarian family with teens (slightly picky in different ways - younger will eat seafood but not crazy about spices or vegetables and older doesn't like fish but likes all kinds of pasta and will eat more adventurously than the younger). We've never dined at any of the specialty restaurants and really know nothing about them. Two questions - where should we go? (tagging @CatLadyFemme because I followed along on your Allure review last spring with the UDP!) We'd love sushi but I think I've read that the sushi place doesn't take the credit? Second, how do we use the credit? Do we book ahead and then just give them our SeaPass card? Do we book once we're on board? How quickly do reservations fill up? Where do we go to make a reservation? Thanks for any help. New territory here...

My teens are 16 and 13 years old and love adventure-adrenaline activities. What is the most adventurous, half-day excursion on Cozumel that allows teens as young as 13 to participate? Just the inflatables in the water? Or on the back of an ATV (16y.o.will NOT have a driver's license before this cruise)? Any other suggestions?

It seems like that could be a possibility. Anyone on a ship right now with Starlink that pre-purchased Surf Voom package before the cruise that can tell us? Or, Royal could tell you that it is no longer offered but allow you to buy a higher priced plan. They've done that with Shore Excursions. Is the price you paid for Surf lower than the current Black Friday Surf & Stream packages? If they let you, I might book both just in case...

I was just coming here to say this. Only example I've ever heard of Royal Math working in someone's favor. Yesterday my one person, 4 device package was priced at around $400 ($398?) but should have been $350 ($14.99 for first, then $11.99 for 2-4). Today is advertised as $13.99 for first and still $11.99 for 2-4. I just got the package for $307 which is 10.99pp. No idea how it is working but super happy I got this deal!!

What I've read about the texting feature is that you need to actively look for messages in the app - they don't give you a notification when someone sends a message like texting would.