Leaving children on ship with grandparents whilst doing an excursion?

Hi, some advice please from experienced family cruisers. I am sure I have read you cannot leave children on board whilst visiting a port of call. Does this just mean you can't leave them in kids club? Could we leave them on board with their grandparents whilst doing a ship organised excursion? Or would we have to take them off with us and the grandparents babysit them on land?

This seems crazy but I can also see why the rule about not leaving them on board would be in place.

Which cruise line are you sailing with? Some cruise lines definitely require parents/guardian to stay on board while a child is in the kids club (Cunard does this) while other cruise lines open extra hours while in port, so the parents can go off on cruise ship excursions (or private ones) without their children. The rules vary by cruise line so we need to know what line you are sailing on.

If it is P&O I would strongly recommend emailing them, as there tend to be fewer people who have sailed on P&O on this forum and its possible no one will know the specific answer to your questions. You need to ask them if they allow children to remain in the kids club without a guardian on board, and if that isn't allowed, will they allow the parents to go ashore and the grandparents to remain onboard in case of emergency while the child is in the kids club. I assume the grandparents can also supervise the children on the ship, but that would be a rather long day for them. Most of the American-based lines like NCL, Princess and HAL allow children to remain on board without their parents, but I'm not sure about P&O and Cunard definitely won't allow this.

RCI allows the children to stay either in the Nursery (if under 3) or in the Adventure Ocean kid's club's (3 and up) while you are off ship. RCI has amazing (professional) staff for all their child based care/activities onboard.

On our Carnival cruise last summer we would have been able to leave DS in Camp Ocean while we in port, but wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. My parents were on board with us and stayed with DS while we had a relaxing beach day in St. Kitts. When we got off board and they scanned our cards they did ask where our son was. We just told them with grandparents and that was that. It must alert them when a minor is on the same reservation.

My mom even took DS on an excursion and all was fine. She said she also had a similar conversation with security about where the parents were since they were on two different reservations. We had checked with the excursion desk once we boarded and they said it wouldn't be an issue. It wasn't. They were just asking because they probably have to!

My mom got back on board with DS long before we were back and she just checked him into Camp Ocean and enjoyed some quiet time.

Thanks, yes, this is with P&O, I will call them directly to get a firm answer as suggested as it definitely sounds like evreyone's experiences have varied across the cruise lines. Many thanks all.