Cruising on the Oasis w/ 7 mo. old

New here - hi everybody :)

Before I start, I know there is a family forum here but I did want to specifically ask those who have sailed on the Oasis w/ small children as well to see if there was anything unique to the Oasis we should know.

Also, I also know some of you will say "leave the baby with grandmom!!!", read here* below.

Okay, those disclaimers aside, we're going to be on the March 20th cruise and really excited.. We've cruised before (last being on the Carnival Liberty in '07), but never with an infant..

Specifically with regards to the Oasis (since it's an Oasis board) and a young baby, we are deciding whether we should use our stroller we have now (not big, but not as small as say an umbrella stroller) or whether we should go look into another stroller that is smaller/more nimble? Are the corridors bigger in the Oasis than is typical? And in the public areas?

We have a crib set up for the room, but we're curious of those who have sailed the Oasis w/ infants, is this pretty sufficient? Or were you wishing you had brought your own pack-n-play?

Our room is an oceanview on deck 7 near the bow on the starboard side, has anyone brought anything like privacy curtains to help give the baby a little space? Is there room for this? We asked RC about it but that room isn't eligible for the privacy curtains (I guess we're too cheap :P).. but if we could rig something up temporarily while little man naps it might help keep him from being distracted..

Anyway, any help or insights from those who have traveled the Oasis with an infant would be much appreciated :) (I'd say who traveled the Oasis or a comparable ship, but is there really a comparable ship? ;))

* to that I say - we're not a family without our little man, and likewise we wouldn't go on a vacation such as this with so many shared spaces if we weren't confident that the baby would not interfere with other cruisers' peace and tranquility. He's very well behaved, rarely cries, sleeps through the night (since 6 weeks), etc. He's already travelled Europe with us, and even on those flights we got nothing but "he's such a well behaved baby" comments.

ronchalant,

I´d say that the crib set up is using a Pack ´n Play.

The aisles might be a little wider than on other ships - at least that´s what I thought. Anyway if possible take an umbrella stroller. You definitely have more space in a forward oceanview as you have sort of a sloping wall to the front ot the ship. So you shouldn´t have much problems storing a stroller in your cabin. Anyway I think you´re more flexible using an umbrella stroller.

The Royal Promenade and the Boardwalk are both pretty wide. But in the Central Park the walkways are small.

Here´s a photo of a regular F cabin (F7108)

steamboats

Thanks Steam, that's pretty interesting - we're in 7520 which according to the deck view might have a good amount of extra space due to that curve... here I was figuring our rooms would lose a little space because of the curve :P

There also appears to be a bigger walkway near our door because of that curve.. though it thins out towards the elevator around 7526/28 for probably 10'..

We're thinking we might try to pick up a relatively cheap umbrella style stroller that has a shade of some sort..

Does anybody know if RC actively tries to congregate cabins with small children together? It would seem to make sense..

Hi! We'll be on the March 20th cruise with our 7 month son as well! I'm surprising my husband with the cruise for his 40th birthday, I can't wait! We've cruised before on Princess, but this will be the first time with an infant. We are just using the crib set up through RCI, and I don't think we will miss lugging the PnP around. We're already lugging so much stuff around with an infant, I'm going to take advantage of what we can! We are planning to bring an umbrella stroller instead of our bigger stroller. I think it will be so much easier to maneuver through the narrow hallways and for storage when not in use.

I booked a boardwalk balcony room. might be a little noisier, but I figured we could sit out on the balcony with some wine to watch the shows at the Aqua theater and watch all the people on the boardwalk if we're "stuck" inside our room at nights while the little guy is sleeping.

Can't wait!

I booked a boardwalk balcony room. might be a little noisier, but I figured we could sit out on the balcony with some wine to watch the shows at the Aqua theater and watch all the people on the boardwalk if we're "stuck" inside our room at nights while the little guy is sleeping.

Can't wait!

Not a bad idea. But I can tell you this...it's a LOT noisier on the boardwalk than I imagined. And from what I've heard, that noise doesn't get filtered out much with the balcony door shut. Might make your baby's nap time a problem.

Just got back from a cruise on Oasis last week, along with my 13month old.

Plenty of room for strollers, i brought one, but i primarily used my baby back pack from deuter. (http://www.rei.com/product/749078). The pack let me take long strolls, and go up and down the stairs here and there.

They have babyseats at all the restaurants, and the staff always helped get the baby highchair seats ready, and gave extra attention to my son to keep him occupied, especially in the Opus dining room, and this cruise was the first time my son would actually stay in a high chair for a whole dinner without flipping out and needing to be walked around because hes bored...

The royal tots program is for 6months to 3 years, and its a very reasonable price at $8 an hour, so I recommend using it at least for an hour here or there, so that your buddy can hang out with other non-old people. Its on the 14th floor right above you along the same elevator you are near, and around there is where youll see alot of the babies.

altough you see pictures of the giant splash pools, there is only one small 14 foot circular pool there that babies with diapers are allowed in. No other kids exept babies with diapers are allowed in that particular splash pool, in case a baby poops and it causes a biohazard.

I think your doing the right thing bringing the baby along, because they develop so much in that one week from all the personal interactions and new sights sounds and environments,and you can get some very beautiful family pictures.

The royal tots program is for 6months to 3 years, and its a very reasonable price at $8 an hour, so I recommend using it at least for an hour here or there, so that your buddy can hang out with other non-old people. Its on the 14th floor right above you along the same elevator you are near, and around there is where youll see alot of the babies.

Waterdave, do you know what the hours are for the royal tots program?

Good information.. We're very excited for the cruise; we thought about trying a balcony room but were worried that the noise would be too much on the inside.. plus we get to save a few bucks :)

carefreeht,

Another poster posted links to Compasses and other info (including Royal Babies and Tots info) for their cruise on Oasis, which was January 2-8. We were interested because we'll be taking our 2-year old on Oasis this week (Feb 27 cruise).

Here were the hours for the nursery on the January 2-8 cruise:

Day 1: No nursery, just open house 12:30pm-3pm and 6pm-9:30pm

Day 2: 11am-4pm, 5:30pm-12:30am

Day 3: 11am-4pm, 5:30pm-12:30am

Day 4: 8am-1pm, 5:30pm-12:30am

Day 5: 8am-1pm, 5:30pm-12:30am

Day 6: 11am-4pm, 5:30pm-12:30am

Day 7: 11am-midnight

The posts I've read indicate that each parent is allocated an initial number of hours (around 20) on day 1 for use throughout the week; remaining hours/slots are then made available first come, first serve.

We'll be cruising this week (Feb 27) and staying in an 8th floor boardwalk balcony room with our two year old. We'll be in the 4th room from the back of the ship. We read some reviews that indicated noise may be a challenge in the early evening hours, while others indicated that noise was a non-issue with the doors closed.

For us, the potential benefit of a balcony and being able to stay up after our little guy went to bed, have a few drinks, watch the aqua show or movie, people watch, etc. outweighed the noise risk. We'll report back on how it goes. We also plan to use the nursery some during the early evening hours so mom and dad can squeeze in a little "us" time.

We'll be cruising this week (Feb 27) and staying in an 8th floor boardwalk balcony room with our two year old. We'll be in the 4th room from the back of the ship. We read some reviews that indicated noise may be a challenge in the early evening hours, while others indicated that noise was a non-issue with the doors closed.

 

For us, the potential benefit of a balcony and being able to stay up after our little guy went to bed, have a few drinks, watch the aqua show or movie, people watch, etc. outweighed the noise risk. We'll report back on how it goes. We also plan to use the nursery some during the early evening hours so mom and dad can squeeze in a little "us" time.

I had a boardwalk balcony on 14297- it was a little noisy even w the doors closed, but- its not the kind of noise that would keep a baby up- propabl;y more like the opposite effect... The noise is there to remind you that theres fun stuff to do!

I just looked at my royal tots schedule from 2/13/10 cruise, the only change to the list you posted is that registration on the first day was from 1pm to 4pm, and 730pm to 9pm. They ask for you to book your gauranteed 25 hours of babysitter time in the first couple days, but they actualy had plenty of time slots and were flexible with times as long you call a couple hours ahead. the cisco wireless ship phone they sign out to you (for free) was very usefull too, because we would usually call them to let them know were running late, and they would call me when my kid was getting fussy.

By the way- definetley brng pampers - Its 7$ for 2 pampers at the logo store in the royal promenade, and the biggest size they carried is size 3.

Waterdave: thanks a ton for the update! Good to know the schedules are consistent. We'll post our findings when we return after our 2/27 cruise!

Waterdave: thanks a ton for the update! Good to know the schedules are consistent. We'll post our findings when we return after our 2/27 cruise!

yes give some good updates!

We just got back this weekend from our trip, and I wanted to follow up for any parents of infants/children thinking of taking them or leaving them..

The ship was pretty amazing.. So much to do on the ship - if you can do a back-to-back cruise I would say you might be get to experience most things.. We were toting a 7 month old around a bit so it slowed us down sometimes, but I don't think that much..

First relating to the kids - the ship's amenities for children up to say about 10-12 are fantastic.. they have lots of activities for them, and separate them by age group.. many nights we would go to dinner and a 8 year old or so would be pleading with the parents to just let him/her go to deck 14..

The kids pool areas were always crowded but not packed, lots of kids of all ages running around having a good old time.. the whirlpool was especially popular - even with parents..

The nursery staff for infants under 3 (diaper age I'm guessing is the real cutoff) were fantastic.. it runs $8/hr, but you don't need cash and can put it right on your SeaPass card.. (my understanding is that other ships require cash) My guess is you still need cash for in-room babysitting, but we didn't take advantage of that (I don't think we could actually)..

You CAN go on your excursions and leave your infants on the ship with the nursing staff.. We had been told over the phone by RC that you can't leave them on the ship, so we didn't schedule certain things like scuba.. we quickly changed that up and got the nursery scheduled.. the staff told us that the home office doesn't even realize yet that the Oasis has its own set of rules regarding these things, so keep that in mind..

Our little man had a great time.. The staff was great, he laughed and giggled each time they came by, which was frequent (I'm sure it's part of their job description)..

Not every infant was well behaved, we were lucky.. Most were good, but sometimes we would come up to the nursery and there were 5-6 infants, and 1 or 2 of them were screaming.. but it was rare to see that on the ship itself..

Overall it was great.. two big things I think that should be improved though..

1) The buffet food was average at best, and at times not good at all.. The WindJammer is the best buffet, but except for early in the morning it generally is pretty packed.. but still never THAT bad.. I've seen people complaining about the WindJammer, but except when it was really really busy it wasn't that much of a bother even with a stroller.. It's the food that was generally "meh"..

As an alternative, the Solarium Bistro usually has a decent buffet, though far less selection, on the forward deck 15..

Tip: You can check how busy different restaurants are on the TV in your room... very helpful..

2) The ports of call are far too similar.. All very nice to visit Caribbean locations.. (St. Thomas and St. Maarten are better than Nassau IMHO) But three of them on the same trip? All within 4 days of each other? They need to shake that up, get some more interesting ports of call on the itinerary like Panama or Costa Rica.. By the time we got to Nassau we barely wanted to leave the ship (and many of the other guests seemed to agree, many stayed on the ship and hung out)..

ronchalant - Thanks for posting info about Oasis for little ones. DH and I will be sailing Allure in December, and our DD will be 15 months old at that time. We won't have been on a cruise or real vacation in two years at that point, so we're really, really, really looking forward to it! I agree that the ports are somewhat uninspired and likely monotonous. But, it still beats being at home and, right now at least, Oasis and Allure are the only Royal Carribbean ships offering the Royal Babies/Tots programs and nursery, so DH and I will take what we can get. It would be great if, as some others have posted in other threads, Royal Carribbean decided to expand the program to other ships and retrofit seldom used areas for this purpose. The Oasis class ships are quite pricey and it would be nice to have a bit more in the way of ship and itinerary options. At least once DD turns three we can consider trying out other ships with their Adventure Ocean programs.:D