Cruising with young children

[sillyselkie]

Hi there! Both my husband and I have never cruised before and we suddenly decided that we wanted to try it. We booked a 6 day cruise, departing from (and returning to) Southampton. As we live in the UK, we figured this would be quite a convenient way to travel. Drive to the port, take all the things we need for our baby with us and be living in a floating hotel for a week. The itinerary is quite nice, but not so exciting that we'd be properly upset if, for some reason, we would need to skip disembarking on a port day if the little one is not playing ball. I like the idea of being close to a room with a safe place for my son to sleep that won't necessarily compromise the whole holiday. 

 

We decided to go with MSC, despite seeing some very negative reviews. As first-time parents, we hardly ever get to enjoy a proper meal anyway, so the fact that the food is meant to be subpar doesn't bother us much. I especially like that MSC offers care for babies. Lots of the other cruise lines we looked at only offer a kids club for potty trained babies, and mostly from age 3. Our son will be 16 months old at the time of the cruise, so definitely still in nappies. He's used to going to nursery, so I'm feeling optimistic that he'd be alright being left in the baby club for an hour during meal times. 

 

What I suppose I wanted to ask is for any tips and advice from you more experienced cruisers. Especially from anyone who has had to travel with a baby or toddler/small child before. If it's been with MSC Virtuosa, that would be even better! 

[Z'Loth]

https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=1787

[sparks1093]

Just a word about reading reviews- most of them need to be taken with a grain of salt and every cruise line receives some bad reviews. Reviews regarding the food are problematic because one person's greasy cheeseburger is another person's juicy cheeseburger. General statements like "all of the food sucked" or "we couldn't find anything edible the whole week" are not helpful and probably a bit exaggerated anyway. I'm sure that the food on MSC is just fine and while some might not be to your liking there should be enough options to get you through the week. I applaud you for taking your little one with you, I remember what we had to do for a day trip to visit grandparents and quail at the thought of a week long trip.

[sillyselkie]

Oh, absolutely! I'm pretty sure a lot of the reviews are a little exaggerated. My husband and I aren't terribly fussy when it comes to food, so I'm not worried about it. 

[crystalspin]

1 hour ago, sillyselkie said:

Hi there! Both my husband and I have never cruised before and we suddenly decided that we wanted to try it. We booked a 6 day cruise, departing from (and returning to) Southampton. As we live in the UK, we figured this would be quite a convenient way to travel. Drive to the port, take all the things we need for our baby with us and be living in a floating hotel for a week.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/49-msc-cruises/

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/544-uk-cruisers/

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/545-the-pub/

[Host Kat]

5 hours ago, sillyselkie said:

Hi there! Both my husband and I have never cruised before and we suddenly decided that we wanted to try it. We booked a 6 day cruise, departing from (and returning to) Southampton. As we live in the UK, we figured this would be quite a convenient way to travel. Drive to the port, take all the things we need for our baby with us and be living in a floating hotel for a week. The itinerary is quite nice, but not so exciting that we'd be properly upset if, for some reason, we would need to skip disembarking on a port day if the little one is not playing ball. I like the idea of being close to a room with a safe place for my son to sleep that won't necessarily compromise the whole holiday. 

 

We decided to go with MSC, despite seeing some very negative reviews. As first-time parents, we hardly ever get to enjoy a proper meal anyway, so the fact that the food is meant to be subpar doesn't bother us much. I especially like that MSC offers care for babies. Lots of the other cruise lines we looked at only offer a kids club for potty trained babies, and mostly from age 3. Our son will be 16 months old at the time of the cruise, so definitely still in nappies. He's used to going to nursery, so I'm feeling optimistic that he'd be alright being left in the baby club for an hour during meal times. 

 

What I suppose I wanted to ask is for any tips and advice from you more experienced cruisers. Especially from anyone who has had to travel with a baby or toddler/small child before. If it's been with MSC Virtuosa, that would be even better! 

 

Howdy @sillyselkie and welcome to the Cruise Critic message boards!

 

Thank you for your new thread on the First Time Cruisers forum! However, it is the forum for general questions regarding first cruises. Your inquiry concerns cruising with a baby or toddler/small child and is off topic there.

To help you out I have moved your thread to the Family Cruises forum where it will be on topic. The majority of your fellow Cruise Critic members cruising with young children frequent this forum and provide feedback here. Browse through the thread titles on this forum looking for threads of interest. You will probably find your fellow Cruise Critic members have already posted questions and received answers that may be of interest to you.

 

The Cruise Critic website and message boards are a great resource for new as well as experienced cruisers and we are so glad you found us! Please feel free to browse the Cruise Critic Community categories list for the various message board forums. Read a few threads in the different forums to get a feel for what each forum is about. Make sure you read any pinned threads (aka Stickies) on the top of the first page of threads in most forums. You will find very important instructions or information there. Also, check out one of the Cruise Critic articles titled Best Cruises for Kids that has a Kid-Friendly Cruises on MSC Cruises section.

 

I sincerely hope this information will be helpful to someone new to posting on our message boards. Welcome again, and we are glad to have you aboard Cruise Critic! 

 

Happy sails,

 

Host Kat