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Coming back to Princess...with kids.


YellowDog
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My wife and I really like Princess and we’ve been on 4 of their ships. But all of that was years ago before we had kids. Now, we have twin 7yos. We’ve taken them on NCL and MSC. They love cruises. We are a little worried about Regal...for all of its new awesomeness it doesn’t have water slides or anything like that. I’d love to hear from some of you have gone on Princess (or specifically Regal) with kids. How is the kids club? Do they take kids to dinner? How about activities. Any and all info would be helpful.

 

 

 

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I haven't sailed Regal , but I have done MANY Princess cruises with my 2 kids. They both started around 10 months of age and are now 11 and 7 and "elite" so they have a number of sailings under their belts. They both LOVE Princess and choose them over Disney and RCCL (though they did enjoy Carnival). The reason being is that, for my kids, the clubs on Princess are exactly what they enjoy - organised activities, rather than a free-for-all (like on Disney), lots of time to socialise and make friends, lots of arts/crafts, games, etc.

 

The kids club do a couple of nights where they take the kids to the buffet for a kids-only dinner. They also have ice cream parties, dance parties, and you can sign up for the kids to stay onboard during ports while you go off to do whatever you wish (though I have never done that). My kids go in the pool every day so don't really mind that there is no water slide. They also enjoy ping pong, crazy golf, the sports court, and much of the entertainment is suitable for families. I doubt your kids would ever be bored!

 

I am happy to answer any specific questions if you have any!

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I 100% agree with ceilidh1, when I was a teenager and slightly before my family started getting into cruises as I was always looking at RCL and NCL for all their stuff for kids but my parents picked princess. Long story short everything stated below is correct and I don't think they will have any problems staying busy. Their are designated teens only events and activities and their own game room on the ship they can go to. Princess recently added an escape room to most if not all ships which is awesome, did that last Oct. (free) and takes about an hour. Just check the patter a few days in advance for when and where to sign up and they must have an adult waiver signed. They have treasure hunts the crew sets up for kids to go in groups and find all the items all over the ship. But as far as even the pools and hot tubs most princess passengers in my experience don't mind having kids jump around and play in the pool. Also movies under the stars is a big hit and even as an adult it's awesome. Anyway I don't think they will be bored. I'm glad my parents chose princess and after sailing on Celebrity as a kid, princess is full of awesome things. (plus trivia is better on princess) Happy sailings, as mentioned before if you have questions feel free to ask.

 

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My experience on Princess is that the kids uniformly love the programming. The biggest difference between Princess and Disney is that you see very few unsupervised brats on Princess. You see kids with parents and you see kids on their own behaving themselves. We did 20 nights during the summer and I can truly say that I saw only 3 kids being inappropriate. Unfortunately these were huge safety issues--diving into a pool clearly marked "NO DIVING" that was not nearly deep enough and one kid ducking under safety ropes and trying to get into a pool that was clearly closed due to rough seas. It wasn't that these kids were bothering me in any way, it was that that the former lifeguard in me can't watch this and not say something. Yes, I've seen a healthy teen become a quadriplegic from a diving "accident." I'm sure they thought I was the bitchy old lady, but....well, they all walked away from their pool time.

 

And as previous poster said, adults have NO problem with kids jumping around and having fun in the pools. If I don't want to be around kids, I'll go to an "adult only" area.

 

On Princess, kids don't run around the decks knocking over old people or little kids. They don't make disgusting messes out of beverage areas. We loved watching the Japanese kids doing school work on deck in the mornings. They didn't appear miserable, they just knew it had to be done before play time. There were actually a lot of kids on these cruises, but you wouldn't have known that most of the time. They seemed to be occupied in the programming or wherever else having a good time.

 

OK, I'll be ugly. I haven't cruised Disney for a while, despite the fact that it was my favorite line and I still think they have the best service and best looking ships I've seen. First, their prices have increased dramatically to what I consider to be more than I want to pay. And they do a poor job of enforcing signs that read, "This area intended for the enjoyment of guests 18 and older." That's polite for "This is an adult only area, keep your kids out of here." When 1/3 or more of the passengers are under 18, adult only areas are important. And somehow, parents on DCL think that parenting ends when you are on vacation. On Princess, on the first day each cabin received a letter clearly detailing parental responsibility and the potential consequences to parents who failed to supervise their children. Maybe this avoided the sort of issues we commonly encounter on DCL.

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Just back from Regal with kids, and we were on Diamond a few years back, and Golden and Caribbean a few years before that. So we've spanned every age group now between 7 months and almost 17! The consensus in our family is that the 3-7 club and 8-12 club are super fun. (Teenagers are just a little more picky, and kind of too old for organized games, etc. but too young to do the adult stuff on the ship. Not Princess' fault.)

 

We like that the programs are large enough to have other kids to hang around (be careful on time of year though!), and the counselors are always very nice. Lines like Royal Caribbean and Disney have so many kids, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. With Princess and HAL, there was much more personalized attention.

 

The facilities themselves are also really great. The 8-12 room had skeeball, air hockey, foosball, tons of video games, plus the usual crafts, games, etc. I didn't get a great look at the 3-7 room this time, but it looked fun with a lot of the same games, and some kind of climbing structure too. The hours were mostly 9-12, 2-5, and 7-10, although on the kids dinner nights, the club didn't open back up until 8. For port days, they requested you sign up ahead of time, but it ended up being ok to drop the kids for an hour or two while we were still in port but back from our excursions.

 

We had kid-dinners available this past cruise on both formal nights. I wish I had known - we brought along dress clothes for everyone and still had family dinner those nights. But it would have been nice to have a kid-free dinner on another night. Oh well.

 

The kids enjoyed the pools on the sea days. There were a mix of people there, but if you really didn't want to be around kids, you could have gone to the retreat pool. My kids ate tons of pizza (both poolside and at Alfredo's) and I think became great friends with the soft serve guy on deck 16 too.

 

Your kids will have plenty of fun, don't worry. However, do note that the rooms are pretty tight! That was a bit of a drawback!

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My kids love Princess also (my twins are turning 7 in a few days). My older son once asked me if we had to get off the ship in Hawaii because he would rather stay in the kids club! Last year we spent 2 days at Disneyland then hoped on a 4 night California cruise- the kids decided they would rather be on a cruise ship then go to Disney (yes, my husband and I high fived each other!). I think my kids would live on the ship if they could!

 

 

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Thanks everyone for all of the feedback. Let me ask: how rigid are the kids group ages? I ask because when we are looking to go my kids will be just 2 months shy of 8yo. On MSC “junior club” is 7-11 and they did really well. I’m unsure that they will be interested in playing with 3 year olds. When I showed them pics of the 8-12 club they were much more excited.

 

 

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Thanks everyone for all of the feedback. Let me ask: how rigid are the kids group ages? I ask because when we are looking to go my kids will be just 2 months shy of 8yo. On MSC “junior club” is 7-11 and they did really well. I’m unsure that they will be interested in playing with 3 year olds. When I showed them pics of the 8-12 club they were much more excited.

 

 

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a little flexible has been our experience

but have witnessed some families on cruises having firm no's

just be prepared to kindly ask and not to be heartbroken if its a no

agreed 3-7 has been an age group I did not favor and we took probably 12-15 cruises during that time period- we were saved a few times when it was mostly 6-7 yo and no toddlers

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We are just off Regal today, our first Princess cruise. We don't have any children traveling with us but there were between 800-900 kids of various ages on this cruise. Pool area and buffet area crowded but no problems at all. We witnessed grown ups behaving badly over saving seats at evening shows. Kids well behaved.

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Just off regal today as well. My kids are four and almost seven. The older one has been on five cruises and says this one was the best. Both say it was their favorite thing about the cruise. Better than the sea turtle center in cayman and snorkeling in Cozumel. They enjoyed that each day was themed and everything was organized and they were given little treats and takeaways. The staff was very friendly and knew each child’s name despite there being 100+ kids in the age group (no name tags etc).

 

We took them to dinner every night (early seating) they are pretty good at dinner but we make sure not to diddle dawdle and the service is very fast, so that’s not a problem. There are plenty of menu options as well and they can order from kids menu or the regular. I did notice that they had one or two dinner nights with the kids club, but we didn’t do it. They enjoyed going to the formal dining room.

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