Jennybear2299

Hi Vicki! Great review!

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In the planning stages, this day gave me such trouble. I really wanted to see Cinque Terre, but also wanted to visit Florence and Tuscany. Our roll call mates Donna, her husband and her friend Michelle had booked an excursion through Joe Banana Limos that visited Pisa, Florence and Chianti. We ended up jumping on board with them and Amy, also from our roll call.

This ended up being our favorite day of the whole trip, hands down.

We met at Café Lattetudes at 7:30 for our 8 am tour, and headed off the ship together. Our guide Oliver met us as we walked out of the cruise terminal, and I knew right away that it was going to be a great day. Oliver was super welcoming to my kids, and a foodie to boot. We had a blast the whole trip sharing recipes and chatting about Tuscany.

Our first stop was Pisa, and it was pretty quiet. We took the requisite photos of all of us holding up the tower, then grabbed a table at a little café and had our first coffees in Italy (yum!).

We noticed here that the custom in Italy is to just pick a table and sit, rather than to wait to be seated. Everything was delicious, and we met up with the rest of our group after and headed to Florence.

The drive from Pisa to Florence was gorgeous. I didn’t know that sunflowers are a big crop in Tuscany, and there were fields of them in full bloom all over the place.

We arrived in Florence and Oliver dropped us off right in front of the Duomo and told us to meet him in the same spot in an hour and a half.

We wandered around for a bit, and my youngest daughter went on a carousel in one of the plazas. We ate gelato at a gelateria recommended by our guide, and walked over to the old bridge to take photos.

At the old bridge, we had our first and only encounter with a hustler. I knew what they guy was up to because I had a similar thing happen to me recently in NYC, and felt quite worldly, lol. My friend and I went into NYC a couple of months ago for my bachelorette celebration, and we were walking on the HI-Line in Chelsea. A man dressed in a Tibetan monk costume came up to us and put bracelets on both of our arms, and wanted us to “sign his book”. When we didn’t take the bracelets off and refuse, he badgered us to pay $25 for each bracelet. We laughed, said no way and tried to give him back the bracelets. He refused to take them, and continued bugging us for several more minutes. We ended up giving him a couple of dollars so we could move on with our afternoon. In Florence, my youngest and I were taking photos of the old bridge, when the same exact thing happened (only this guy wasn’t dressed like a monk). I immediately refused the bracelets firmly, and he said “you american?” When I kept refusing, he looked at me one last time and said “you from here?”, then walked away. He seemed surprised that I was hip to what he was up to. It made me giggle.

We headed back to meet the rest of our group, and they had gotten held up getting the check at their restaurant, so we had to wait a bit. Our guide Oliver was so fantastic! He started doing magic tricks for my daughters to keep them occupied. They loved it! He also shared with them that there were two dogs at the winery (my kids were really missing our two dogs at home) that we were going to next, and that one of them loved playing fetch.

We drove through beautiful Tuscany to get to Fattoria Montecchio, a winery in Chianti. We were greeted at the door by the hostess and her two hilarious dogs. My kids were in heaven. We were given a tour of the vineyard and then went to the tasting room. We ate the most divine salami, cheese, cannellini beans, bread and olive oil, and tasted some delicious wine. It was a lovely day full of good food and new friends.

It makes me sad to post this after what happened in Nice last week :(. It is such a beautiful place, and we felt totally safe there. So sad.

I woke up at 5 am and went out on our balcony to see the south of France whizzing by, and couldn’t go back to sleep because I was so excited. My lovely and amazing husband dragged himself out of bed to share in my excitement. He’s a good man.

We ordered room service, and our food arrived cold and inedible. From that point on, we ordered a pot of coffee every morning from room service, but picked up egg sandwiches and bagels at Park Café before heading out on our excursions.

At around 8:30, my daughter and I headed down to get tender tickets because I wanted to get off the ship quickly, and we were 5th in line. The line grew behind me until it was completely wrapping around the centrum. A little before 9, we were told that there were no tender tickets being handed out, and the crowd dispersed. We headed up to the pool deck to find my husband and youngest daughter, and this is the view that greeted us…absolutely beautiful!

We were a little bummed about the tender ticket situation, but soon after they announced that open tendering was available and we were quickly on the tender boat and in Villefranche. The tender boats were big, and there were several of them, so we had no problem with tendering at all. Here are a couple of photos as we approached Villefranche from the tender:

We wandered around a bit trying to find the bus stop, and took bus #100 into Nice. I believe it was 2 euro per person, and the driver collected our euro and gave us tickets. I can’t remember what stop we got off at, but I’m pretty sure it was the wrong one, because we were quite far from Old Nice. We ended up having to walk about a mile to get to the Promenade des Anglais, where we stopped at a cute little café and had breakfast.

The water was beautiful and clear, so we decided to walk down to the beach to put our toes in the water. There was no sand on the beach, but gazillions of smooth rocks.

After that we walked, and walked, and walked some more, until we finally made it to Old Nice, and the market. At the market, we bought the most amazing raspberries and macarons, and then visited a bakery to pick up some French bread and pastries. It was hot, and by this point we had already walked a couple of miles, so we stopped for gelato at Fenocchio (just wow!) then began our long walk back to the bus stop.

We arrived back to a mostly empty ship at around 3 pm, and headed up to the pool deck to cool off. Late afternoon/early evening quickly became our favorite time to visit the pool, because the crowds generally had thinned out by then, and the sun wasn’t as strong. It became our habit to take a swim late in the day, then to head to the Windjammer for dinner. After that the kids would go to their clubs, and we would hang out and chat on the pool deck with a lovely couple that we met on the first night of our cruise.

Tomorrow: our favorite excursion into Tuscany!

Oh Jen I think there were some major issues with dining times and tables on this cruise.

 

My thought process was the same as yours, 6pm too early for this itinerary and 8.30pm a bit late but ok. We selected 8.30 as we wanted a dinner time that would fit around show times.

 

Once onboard the dining times were changed to 6.30pm & 9pm.

 

We had another issue where they just didn't allocate us a table at all. No explanation just said they had no table for us. First night we we given at table at 9.45pm between a plate collection area and a filthy set of curtains. Food was so dry, cold and tasteless we could hardly eat it.

 

Guest Services spent hours trying to help us fix this issue and the Maitre D and the Manager of level 5 dining were to very rude and unhelpful people.

 

We eventually got a 9pm table which was clearly made up of people who had similar issues to ours. We were a mixed bunch and didn't speak the same language so it was very awkward. It was handled very badly.

 

Every other staff member on this cruise were fabulous - as were our eventual waiter and assistant waiter.

 

Sorry, don't want to hijack your thread - but we met quite a few people who had problems with their dining times and tables .

 

Loving your review - I'll do mine when you are finished.

 

 

~ Vicki ~

Wow, Vicki! I'm sorry that happened to you guys! The women in front of us when we were waiting in line that first night had the same thing happen to them. Wonder what happened that things got so mixed up.

Thanks, and can't wait to read yours as well! It's fun to read about everyone's different experiences on the same cruise ship :). I figure I still have 11 days left until my review is finished, so go ahead and start yours if you're ready to. I know I was happy to read as many reviews as I could during the months before the cruise.

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Congratulations!

 

I've been on 1 vacation since my honeymoon cruise last year, but that sailing has so many special memories that no vacation before/after compares to. I hope that yours is the same. Best part? No more wedding planning!!!!

 

The roll calls on here literally MADE my vacation. Having a familiar face (and now, new lifelong friends) to have dinner with, see shows, and tour countries with, changed my entire experience. I couldn't imagine cruising without it now.

 

Sailing on Brilliance this winter. Booked it on our honeymoon, actually! Looking forward to your posts.

Thank you! It was an amazing trip! I agree with you about the roll call. It was so fun meeting people, and we ran into them all over the place, and truly enjoyed the excursion that we took with a group from our roll call. I hope you enjoy the ship as much as we did!

Embarkation was super easy. A porter took our bags as we exited the cab, and we entered the cruise terminal. We waited on line for 10 minutes or so, and then went through security and boarded the ship. There were signs everywhere saying no alcohol could be brought on board, and my husband was getting nervous. I knew that the RCCL policy was two bottles of wine per stateroom, so not sure what the signs were about. We had no problems bringing the two bottles of wine on the ship. By this time it was close to 2 pm, so our rooms were ready and we headed straight to them to look around and unpack.

We had a balcony stateroom (9008) and our daughters had an inside stateroom (9009) right across the hall. I was impressed by how much storage space there was in both rooms. We had no problem finding spots to put all of our stuff, and we quickly unpacked and headed to the Windjammer to grab some food. It was a little busy, but not crazy packed. We really liked our balcony room (9008) because it was quiet and close to the upper floors (Windjammer, Adventure Ocean, pools) where we spent most of our time. Being a forward cabin, there was some movement when it was choppy, and I found out that I do get mildly seasick, but it wasn’t a huge issue because most days the sea was calm.

We signed my youngest up for Adventure Ocean, and that night both girls went to their kids clubs (my oldest was in the teen club). I had read this before, and it’s definitely true…make sure your kids go to the kids club on the first night if they’re at all interested, and maybe even if they are not. My daughters, especially my oldest, met a ton of friends that she spent the whole cruise with, and still is in touch with now.

After that, we went to our informal meet and greet in the Schooner Bar. We were the first ones there, and we hadn’t worn beads. In retrospect, I would have brought a sign or beads because it was difficult for us to identify who was part of the group. People trickled in, and it was so nice to finally put faces to the people that I had been chatting with for months.

After the meet and greet, my daughter went swimming, and we fed the girls dinner before they headed off to their kids clubs. We got ready to go to what we thought was our 8:30 pm dinner time in the Main Dining room.

When we arrived at 8:30 at the MDR, there was a huge line, and people were still trickling out after the first sitting. The tables were not set, and they did not look at all ready for an 8:30 service. We struck up a conversation with the two women in front of us, and there were rumors that the 8:30 dinner had been moved to 9 pm. The line grew behind us, and there was no communication at all from staff members about what was going on, and people were getting annoyed. At around 8:55, they started letting people into the dining room. I’m not sure what happened with this, or why they changed the dinner time without letting anyone know. For the duration of the cruise it was a 9 pm dinner time. For us, this was just too late. 8:30 was borderline too late as it was, but we felt like the 6 pm seating would be too early because we weren’t back from many of our excursions until 5 or 5:30. Most mornings, especially early on in the cruise we had to be up at 6 am, so eating at 9 just didn’t work. In retrospect, I think that My Time Dining would have been a better fit for us, and we will try that for our next cruise. We ended up eating in the MDR only twice, and mostly eating at Park Café or the Windjammer.

Other observations about the ship (keep in mind this was my first cruise, so I have no other ships to compare it to):

• All staff were super friendly and helpful. We didn’t run into anyone the whole trip that wasn’t pleasant. Our room steward was awesome.

• As expected, finding a chair on sea days was almost impossible unless we got up early to snag one (we didn’t). The pool area was extremely crowded, especially on sea days when they were having BBQ’s etc. We mostly avoided the pool during these times because none of us are big fans of large crowds, and planned our pool time later in the afternoon (after 4 pm).

• Getting on and off the ship was really easy. Everything was well marked, and staff were on hand to help if needed. Tendering was easy as well.

• The ship seemed to be in good repair, except for a couple of broken windows and a cracked elevator door (didn’t seem really safe to us).

• Beds in our cabins were fine. Didn’t have any problem sleeping on them, though they were firm. We didn’t have any problem with them slipping apart either.

• We didn’t go to any of the shows, so I can’t comment on those, and we didn’t really participate in any organized activities either

• The kids clubs (both the teen and younger kids) were awesome. My youngest daughter went every day for at least a few hours. My older daughter met a bunch of kids her age, and spent the cruise hanging out with them and having a blast. The teen club is unsupervised for most of the day…the supervised events usually start around 8 pm (except on sea days where they had things going on earlier). About halfway through the cruise, there was some drama in the club when no staff were present, and they shut it down during the day for the remainder of the cruise. By this point, I think most kids had made friends so they hung out in the Windjammer or on the pool deck, so it was no big deal.

• We found the Park Café a couple of days into our trip, and it became our favorite place to eat. In our opinion, their food was the freshest and tastiest on the ship.

Next up, beautiful Villefranche and Nice

Our Barcelona Day Tour guide Peter was waiting for us with a sign as we exited the terminal. We were almost ½ hour early for our pick up (1 hour after flight arrival), so we were so happy that he was there early, because we were all exhausted. We piled into the minivan, and set off to tour the city. Our first stop was Montjuic, where we saw the Olympic stadium and stopped at a hill overlooking Barcelona. It was very beautiful, and because it was so early in the morning, it was completely empty. We purchased a snack using euros (so exciting!), and sat at a little table with this amazing view.

We drove around for a bit (sorry, the details of this tour are a little fuzzy!), saw the Columbus monument and then headed over to Parc Guell. We had about 45 minutes there to walk around and take photos, and it was very beautiful.

After that, we went to Sagrada Familia and walked around the outside for about 45 minutes. It was getting hot, and we were flirting with meltdown city with my little one, so we walked across the street to where it was shady and got popsicles and rested for a bit. This was also a great spot to take photos of Sagrada Familia because it was a bit further away.

Our tour guide Peter did an awesome job of getting us close to every site, and he was professional and enthusiastic about his city.

He dropped us off at our hotel Brun Barcelona in Barri Gotic a little after noon.

At this point, we were all ready to crash. We rang the bell outside of the hotel and they buzzed us in. I booked this hotel for it’s price and location, but knew two things about it: it had shared bathrooms (3 bathrooms for the 8 rooms), and that there was no elevator. Neither of these things ended up being a big deal for us, and the location was excellent. Quiet, very charming and the owner Maria was very friendly and helpful. It also had a little balcony overlooking the alleyway with was a bonus. When I woke up at 4 am, and couldn’t go back to sleep, it was lovely to sit on the balcony and enjoy a quiet, sleeping Barcelona.

We had booked two rooms, but only one room was ready, so the four of us squished into one bed to try to get some sleep. After a quick cat nap, my youngest daughter and I woke up and I was super excited to take a walk through the gothic quarter. We ended up walking around for a couple of hours and getting ridiculously lost (my sense of direction is not good). Normally I would use my phone’s gps to navigate, but I didn’t want to waste the 100 MB of data that needed to last the two weeks that we were gone. While lost, we enjoyed gelato, and visited a cute little candy store where the owner was stretching and rolling fresh lollipops. The Barri Gotic is very beautiful, and it was not all that crowded where we were walking around. I loved this part of Barcelona, and definitely want to return.

We finally made our way back to the hotel, and found my oldest daughter and husband still sleeping, and our second room ready. After waking everyone up, we headed out for dinner (can’t remember the name of the restaurant), then went back to the hotel and fell asleep early.

The next morning, we slept in then checked out of our rooms, left our bags in the lobby and went out to breakfast. We asked Maria (the owner of the hotel) to call us a cab for noon. After breakfast, we walked over to La Boqueria and walked around for a bit. We loved the market, and wished we had more time to look around.

We went back to the hotel to catch our cab, but it wasn’t there yet. Maria invited us to sit in the lounge area to wait, and we waited, and waited and waited. At around 12:30, Maria came in and told us that the cab driver called and said that there were 5 cruise ships in port that day, and that traffic was crazy. He showed up around 1 pm, and we were off to board the cruise ship!

No problem!

 

We did not need tickets at all for Villefranche. I don't know if that will change based on what happened in Nice (as in if there will be more security and so a slower process) or not. Your best bet is to check the Cruise Compass (it will be put in your room each night for the following day) and then watch the morning show with Jerome and Jeremie on Channel 14. They'll clarify I'm sure.

 

The way it was explained for Kotor was that if you wanted to get off prior to 2:30 you needed a ticket. I knew I wanted to climb to the fortress and wanted as much time as possible, so I got a ticket. I think if you're just going in to look around and don't mind waiting until 2:30 (or I guess they would call something like "open tender" when you no longer need the ticket) you could go in at the point they stop calling ticket numbers.

 

I hope that makes sense!

 

Have a wonderful trip!!

We didn't get tickets for Kotor, because we didn't want to miss the sail in. I think it was around 1:30 when they called for open boarding without tickets, so much earlier than anticipated.

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I see the photos fine, very nice.

Awesome, thank you!

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My kids and I finished school on June 16th, so I had a little over a week to finish preparations for the wedding and pack for our cruise. Having our wedding in our backyard kept down costs, but it meant lots of planning and work to be done.

The weather on the day of the wedding was beautiful, as was the wedding itself. We did a unity ceremony with my two girls, and it was very emotional. I feel so lucky to have met a man that also loves and accepts my children.

Im going to give posting a couple of photos a go. Please let me know if you're not able to see them.

Months before our trip, I kept getting the urge to pack for the cruise, and I held off. I did, however, splurge on an entire new wardrobe of summer dresses for the trip. I hadn't bought new summer clothes in several years, so this was a great reason (excuse?) to buy some cute new things.

I ended up having to focus completely on the wedding during the week leading up to it, so had no time to pack, leading to a last minute packing and toiletry buying frenzy the day before we left :). We managed to squeeze all of our clothing into one large suitcase and two carry on bags, and we did have space left over for the gifts we bought on our cruise.

We live in CT on the border of NYC, and our flight was set to depart at 5:30 pm. We flew out of JFK, the worst airport in the world, I think. It takes about an hour from our house to get to the airport, but we kept hearing horror stories about security lines, so we left the house at noon. We got to the airport easily, parked our car and took the Airtrain to the terminal with no problem.

The night before I had tried to check into our flight, and was not able to. There seemed to be some glitch that wouldn’t allow me to check in. I wasn’t too worried about it, and figured we’d just check in at the airport. When we walked into the terminal, we encountered chaos. Hundreds of people were milling around being barked at by airport staff. There was some sort of line type thing happening, but it wasn’t clear where we needed to go. It ended up that we needed to be at the end of a line with about 100 people in front of us. The problem was, that it wasn’t clear where the line began and ended, there were no queues. This caused no small amount of fussing and arguing between passengers as people felt like others were cutting in front of them, and there was no organization at all. Not pleasant.

We finally made it to the front of the line after about 30 minutes to find these little kiosks that you’re supposed to use to check in. The one we were directed to would not scan our passports, so we had to manually enter them. Everyone at the kiosks was confused and it was taking forever for people to be processed through. After about 20 min of trying to check in, a little ticket spit out of the machine saying that we were unable to check in and had to go to another line. At this point, we had about 1.5 hours until our flight, and I was starting to freak out. We spent another 30 min. in line and finally were able to check in and were given our boarding passes. We ended up making it to our gate right at time to board. Super stressful, and lesson learned: don’t fly out of JFK if at all possible.

We boarded our overnight flight, and settled in. The flight was uneventful, and though none of us really slept much, we arrived in Barcelona at 7:15 am excited to begin blearily touring the city. Customs was really quick, as was picking up our bags. By 7:45, we were ready to meet our tour guide from Barcelona Day Tours as we exited the terminal. He was there waiting for us…hooray! We stopped by an ATM machine in the airport and grabbed the euro we need to pay for the tour and we were off!

Next up, our first day in Barcelona (we flew in one day before embarkation).

Congratulations and I can't wait to read all about your trip!

 

BTW - my husband is the same. He just tells me to tell him where to show up and hes theres :)

 

Kathy

Thanks, Kathy!

At our meet and greet on the cruise, every couple had one planner, and one laid back partner, lol. It works out pretty well, I think [emoji3].

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We returned home a couple of days ago from an amazing "family moon" cruise on the Brilliance of the Seas, and this is the story of our experiences.

I'm Jen, and my now husband is Jim. I have two girls from my first marriage, and they are 12 and 7. I am a teacher, and my husband works as a construction project manager.

Jim and I got engaged in February of 2015, and we began planning our wedding. Quickly, our guest list began spiraling out of control and we were starting to stress out about the wedding. Jim came home one day last July and proposed that we have a small backyard wedding with just family and close friends, then splurge on a trip, and we decided that a cruise would be a great option. We had decided to take our girls with us, and we had read about all of the wonderful kids activities on board. Jim had cruised once before to Alaska, and had been to Spain before as well, but I had never been overseas, or on a cruise.

It had been my dream since I was 12 to go to Europe, and I excitedly began looking at itineraries. We narrowed it down to two options...the Brilliance of the Seas and the Independence of the Seas. We had initially booked the Independence, but after further research, decided on the Brilliance 7/1 sailing, which was about $1500 less expensive. We chose the Brilliance because of the itinerary. Both Venice and the Amalfi Coast were at the top of my list of places I wanted to see.

We booked two cabins, a balcony for my husband and I (room 9008) and an inside room for my two kids directly across the hall (9009), and this worked out well for us. I was a little bit anxious early in the trip because I had never slept in a separate room from my kids on vacation, but it ended up being just fine.

Trip planning is one of my very favorite things, and this trip was a planners dream! I spent the next year researching and planning our excursions, going back and forth between options. My husband is not a planner, he's more of a wake up in the morning and figure out what we're going to do today kind of guy. He indulged me in my planning frenzy, and listened to many hours of debate over Florence vs. Cinque Terre. He's so laid back, that he would have been happy with pretty much anything we did, so I had free reign to plan to my hearts content. We make a good team that way, lol. We ended up booking private excursions with 4 different companies, and we joined a group of cruise critic members for our tour in Florence (more details about these later).

I found Cruise Critic last winter, and joined my roll call. There was such a wealth of knowledge on these boards, and it was hugely helpful in the planning process. It was also awesome to chat with fellow cruisers, many of which I met on the ship. I soaked up the few reviews that were written about the Brilliance Med itinerary, and decided that I would write a review on my return to pay it forward.

I'm off from work right now for the summer, so my plan is to try to post one cruise day per day.

I took over 1000 photos, and will try to post the best of them to the review.

Next up, the busy and exciting days leading up to our wedding and cruise, packing and the trip to Barcelona!

Hi Beth! Going through post cruise withdrawl, so I'll follow along :)

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Hi there! We were on the same cruise, just got home yesterday. You're son and my daughter Laura were friends in the kids club :). I have a cute photo of them on prom night that I can post if you like, or send to you. They were all having a blast! Looks like you guys had an amazing time, as we did as well!

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Looks like there are 2 stops that are close...le port and promenade des arts. Not sure which is best or closest. On the map it looks like a toss up. Anyone know which stop is easier?

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That's a definite no. You can't go on holiday to enjoy yourself and leave your child (practically) locked up. If she's fit to be left, then leave her; if she's not, then don't. There are no other options.

There are usually other options, thank goodness, as we can see from the helpful advice of the person who posted after you. Posts like yours make me shake my head. Let's try to help each other rather than spend so much energy judging.

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How about waiting and see how things are going onboard. She might meet some other kids, and you might feel more comfortable leaving her. My 13 year old have the run of our town, but are rarely alone, and there are eyes on them at all times. If my child made a new friend, and I wasn't leaving the ship, I'd be happy to be the adult for someone else's child. If I left my 13 year old onboard, there would be strict rules, like no swimming (and going into other cabins, but that's a rule anyway). I'd also make sure we could keep in touch.

Thank you, for the great advice. My fiancée has said the same thing :).

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That's a tough question that I'm struggling with myself. I've got two girls, seven and almost 13. The seven year old is easy, she'll be in the club, but the 12 yr old not so much. She's super responsible and I leave her home alone for an hour or two, but I don't want her wandering the ship alone while we are off the boat. Haven't decided yet if I'm comfortable with it, but leaning towards no. If she were to hang in the room and not leave, maybe, but that's not much fun.

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We'll be in Villefranche on 7/2, and we were planning to take the train to Nice. I read a thread recently that said that the bus was cheaper/easier. What are the pluses of each? I feel like I read that the Sat. Market in Villefranche is near the bus station, so I guess that would be neat to see. Any thoughts/advice from those that have been there? Where does the bus drop off in Nice? Thanks!

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Joe Banana limo offers a tour of Pisa, Florence and Chianti. We're doing this tour in early July. Looks like it has a quick stop in Pisa, a couple of hours in Florence, then a trip to a winery with lunch.

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I imagine you can get a taxi, but there are lots of private tour groups that provide tours from Salerno. We booked with Mondo Tours, their price is 340 Euros for a full day tour to Amalfi, Positano and Ravello for our July trip. RomeinLimo and Joe Banana tours both offer trips from Salerno as well, and are highly rated. I imagine that a taxi would probably cost about the same, but perhaps someone who's done it can confirm.

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I think that the beach in Villefranche is sandyish. Planning a half day there when our ship docks with a half day in Nice.

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We're using them for a 1/2 day tour in Rome in early July. Everything I read was positive. I hope they're good :). Don't know when your cruise is, but I can post back what our experience was after the trip.

People are comfortable with giving their kids different amounts of freedom. I don't consider ships safer than any other place with a couple of thousands of strangers, but if we never give our teens any freedom, how are they going to learn how to manage things for themselves? I don't want to raise kids that are terrified of the world. I want them to feel confident that they have the skills and knowledge to make good choices. That doesn't mean that I let them run wild on the ship all day, but that I give them boundaries and rules to follow and allow them to go get an ice cream without me, or to hang in the teen club with friends for a couple of hours. The idea that 12 and 14 year old cannot be let out of a parents sight because the world is too scary makes me really concerned for these kids when they are adults. And that article about the missing autistic boy was posted on a page for a lawyer specializing in cruise law. The boy was 11, and went back to his room, where he was supervised by the room steward until the parents returned.

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Thank you! No, she won't be allowed on her own, if anything with her sister but only to run to get an ice cream, etc. I feel like I read that there are options to buy snacks in the kids club, I was thinking about that for her. Do you know if they use their Seapass for that, or does it just get billed to our room? It would probably be safer for her not to have to carry the card around, less chance of it getting lost.

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