We've been on almost 20 cruises, but only one prior cruise with NCL. We worked with a cruise consultant in deciding to take our 3 and 5 year old children on a European cruise (instead of locally in the Caribbean). Our cruise consultant (as well as many other customer service reps) assured us multiple times that there is plenty of babysitting on board, and that my wife and I could therefore enjoy the shore excursions together (such as in Paris, which is about 3 hours away from the port). We were now just told from another consultant that while our children are at the Splash Academy (since NCL doesn't offer "babysitting"), that one parent must be on the ship at all times and available to pick up a child within 10 minutes (or else face fines). We had the consultant verify this with a supervisor. We've had a horrible time already booking this cruise with NCL, and this ruins our European cruise. Has anyone else experienced this? Did we miss a written policy? We're past the deadline to cancel without penalty, so we're trying to decide what to do. With other cruise lines, we've always been provided a cell phone when our children are left on ship in case we need to return.
