50% Towards My Cruise to????

[claudie]

My husband and I have no complaints regarding our Dawn adventure. We are looking forward to planning our next cruise using our 50% credit. We feel NCL is being extremely generous with this offer. (Just look at my many positive postings for more insight as to how we came through this). I enjoyed being on the ship for an extra day so now we're looking into a longer cruise, possibly the 10 day Caribbean April 2006 out of NYC. I will only have one daughter who will be able to travel with us as my oldest will be off to college, boo hoo and yeah!

 

This next cruise would coincide with school vacation but she would be away for a couple of extra days. My wonder is whether a lot of people do this. I know most people with children only do a week long. My TA said longer cruises are mostly taken by empty nesters. I wouldn't want to find absolutely no children my daughter's age (13).

 

Has anyone gone with children for longer than 7 days? What was your experience? Their experience?

[hillslife]

Glad to hear you are taking your daughter. We too travel during school vacation time and our daughter (now 14) has gone on 5 cruises so far, with #6 coming up on the Pride of America, June 25th through the Panama Canal for 13 days. She has been on anywhere from 7-13 day cruises and has a great time. She says the longer the better and the kids love lots of 'sea days' to hang out together.

 

I always worry about her finding friends, but it has never been a problem. There are always lots of kids in her age brackett and she has a wonderfull experience, and so do we. She still emails and corresponds with kids she met on our Mediterrian cruise 3 years ago.

 

I would say as long as you are going on traditional 'school break' time - you will have no problems finding other families.

 

Have a great time!!!

[breeding]

My wonder is whether a lot of people do this. I know most people with children only do a week long. My TA said longer cruises are mostly taken by empty nesters. I wouldn't want to find absolutely no children my daughter's age (13).

 

Has anyone gone with children for longer than 7 days? What was your experience? Their experience?

 

There was a big discussion under the Family Cruising board on this issue just a few weeks ago. There are a few that think you absolutely should not and those who will say the education the get will be more valuable than a whole year in school. You should check out that thread!

[claudie]

Thanks to all for your helpful responses.

 

Breeding, thanks for letting me know about the thread, Family Cruising. I will check it out.

[FLbeachbaby]

since i am an educator, and parent i'll give my humble opinion. my kids have traveled the world with us. we(the parents) have never left them out of any adventure we have gone on. we did a nine night cruise in nov. and will do a ten to hawaii in a few weeks. our now 11 year has never once been bored and would cruise for a month if i let him. our now 20 year did find it boring sometimes when there wasn't much to do for his age group. i do not agree wih parents taking their kids out of school for a week to go skiing, cruising etc. we have plenty of vacations to take advantage of and always plan ours for christmas, thanksgiving, spring break, and summer. with only 180 days of teaching/learning time that leaves 185 days to vacation!

[frontrangecruiser]

Oh boy....I can see where this thread is headed....

 

This subject is very controversial, and has been discussed, trashed, hammered home and argued by every board on CC.;)

[shoreguy]

Oh boy....I can see where this thread is headed....

 

This subject is very controversial, and has been discussed, trashed, hammered home and argued by every board on CC.;)

 

Right to The Coliseum :)

 

claudie

 

Your TA is correct the longer cruise in most cases the older the average age. With a school holiday overlapping that age will come down. There will be kids of all ages every week on the 10/11 day Dawn trips. Instead of 300 teenagers on a 7 day perhaps 75 or so.

 

I have cruised on the Dawn 10 day the last 2 years and even in early feb. we had 300 kids onboard. That number jumped to 1000 the week following which was presidents week.

 

I noticed this year overall the average age had come down from the prior year as people realize buy taking one extra day off they can turn 7 into 10 days onboard. If you did 7 days out of FL on a Sat. you should fly down on friday. You can board the Dawn late thru. afternoon and only loose an extra half day of school.

 

I did a 13 day cruise when my kids were in school they missed 3 days and the value they recieved from the trip was a fair trade. Everyone as a position on this. It is up to you how you raise your own.

[Ships R Great]

You are right, frontrangecruiser. I had to change m screen name after I posted my views on taking children out of school for a cruise. Both sides are adamant about the validity of their arguments. They will never agree. So I say with you, let it rest! Do what you think is best as the parent. Just make sure your child's grades will not suffer because of it. Some school systems have rules about absences due to vacations. If you go, enjoy!

[claudie]

Sorry if my initial question wasn't clear but I wasn't really looking for any educational viewpoints regarding taking my child out of school. I can decide that.

 

Shoreguy,

 

Thank you for giving me exactly the information I was looking for regarding numbers of children and whether or not they exist on cruiseships when longer than 7 days.

 

I'll be on that 10 day cruise April 6, 2006 NYC to Caribbean on the Dawn. How many days away is that?

[Huey]

We just returned from a spring break 14-day cruise with our two boys (ages 8 & 14). We were lucky and they only ended up missing 4 days of school. I agree that you are the one that should choose if your child can handle missing the school. My 14-yr. old is a 4.0 student and made sure he was covered for the 4 days that he missed. He was more stressed out about it than we were!

 

The 14-day cruise was the most wondeful experience that I could imagine. Sharing such a trip with our children was a blessing, we would do it again in a heartbeat. The best part was it was a fantastic last minute deal on the Zenith of under $700/per person!

 

As for if there are a lot of children - on our cruise there was not. It was mostly older people (it being over 7 day cruise, a smaller boat and on Celebrity). My 14-year old was a little bored and wanted wished there were more kids onboard...but it just forced us to all spend more time together!

 

Go and have fun!

[Smellytoes]

Are you sure the week of 4/06/06 is your vacaton week. We're from the Boston area and our vacation week is 4/16/06. I will be on the Dawn that vacation week for the 10 day itinerary. 4/16/06 is also Easter Sunday so I hope there will be some kids but not too many.

[claudie]

Our Spring break begins Monday, April 10th. I'm planning on the Dawn's 10 day leaving Thursday, April 6, 2006. School Spring breaks differ from one district to another but this would be ours. I'm sure this will coincide with many others.

[lorn63vt]

I took my kids out of school for this last 4/10 cruise. When I booked it last year, I thought I was booking for the week of spring break but spring break is this week. I had to write a letter to both of thier schools stating why it would be an educational experience (Little did I know how MUCH of an experience). It was no problem. My kids do well in school and they didn't have a problem with it. I, too, am looking to possibly book the April 2006 cruise out of NYC. It will run into a few school days, but better than 5 like it was this year. BTW, there were over 800 kids on board the April 10 cruise this year. So I guess many parents dont have a prob with it.

[claudie]

lorn63vt,

 

Educational indeed! My daughter (6th gr) was the highlight of her oceanography class on Tuesday. The kids were especially interested in seeing the pictures of the water spouts. I thought they were the coolest thing I head ever seen. She slept right through the actual time of the wave's impact so she honestly couldn't describe what she felt.

[shoreguy]

Sorry if my initial question wasn't clear but I wasn't really looking for any educational viewpoints regarding taking my child out of school. I can decide that.

 

Shoreguy,

 

Thank you for giving me exactly the information I was looking for regarding numbers of children and whether or not they exist on cruiseships when longer than 7 days.

 

I'll be on that 10 day cruise April 6, 2006 NYC to Caribbean on the Dawn. How many days away is that?

 

That would be considering

It is now Friday 4/22/2005 at 8:45:41 PM

Event: Aprril 6 Dawn

Scheduled For 4/6/2006 4:00:00 PM

11 months 13 days 19 hours 14 minutes 19 seconds or

50 weekends or

349 days or

8,371 hours (5,581 waking hours) or

502,274 minutes or

30,136,458 seconds

 

 

:D

[claudie]

shoreguy,

 

You are very funny. I'm sure you know I wasn't really expecting an answer to my question "how many days away....?" From your many amusing postings I can see you are a real numbers person.

 

I can't stop laughing. BTW thanks!