Have you sailed during Spring Break?

[FamilyGuy1010]

I prefer to go out of San Juan at spring break if possible. Just that added expense seems to weed out a few and makes it a little bit more calm. Still plenty of kids and underaged drinkers, but just a little bit more controlled maybe? I do think the youth security patrol does a great job in trying to keep most things under control.

 

What gets me is all the college kids traveling without their parents. I didn't have the kind of money necessary to cruise when I was in college.

 

That said, this will be the fourth year in a row we take a spring break cruise out of Ft Lauderdale. We have never thought that any of the under 25 crowd were over the top or out of control.

[AZPam]

What gets me is all the college kids traveling without their parents. I didn't have the kind of money necessary to cruise when I was in college.

 

That said, this will be the fourth year in a row we take a spring break cruise out of Ft Lauderdale. We have never thought that any of the under 25 crowd were over the top or out of control.

 

We have gone for spring break every year for the past 10 years and 2007 out of LA was the first time we felt it was a bit over the top. I blame that mostly on the fact that trip was really a pretty cheap one. College kids were more likely to afford this one without much help from Mommy and Daddy, could drive to port from Calif, AZ, and Nevada fairly easy and the drinking age in Mexico is 18.

[sunlover2]

We were both on the infamous Star Princess fire cruise.

 

This is my first cruise with Princess so I never really followed what was happening :o I remember something about the Star Princess fire but no details. Thanks for clearing that up for me~

[wrongwaywatson]

In 2006 we sailed on the CB the second week of March. Lots of college kids, but no trouble at all. Last year we were on the Grand out of Galveston the first week of March and didn't see very many kids at all. As a matter of fact, the 19 year old with us didn't really have anyone to hang out with that year. Actually, the whole crowd was older. We were (40s) some of the younger people we saw.

[Stevesan]

In 2006 we sailed on the CB the second week of March. Lots of college kids, but no trouble at all. Last year we were on the Grand out of Galveston the first week of March and didn't see very many kids at all. As a matter of fact, the 19 year old with us didn't really have anyone to hang out with that year. Actually, the whole crowd was older. We were (40s) some of the younger people we saw.

 

You missed it by one week.:p

[alwalaska]

We were also on "THAT" cruise. At the sail away party there were a bunch of college kids in the hot tubs and around the deck being VERY rowdy. It didn't bother me but you could see a lot of the passengers with an "oh no, what are we getting ourselves into" look on their faces. For the most part the kids were fine for the rest of the cruise. They did get turned away in the dinning room until they learned "how to dress" (and I don't want to turn it into a dressing in the dinning room rant) but after that they always came in dressed nice.

 

And who knew that rowdy college kids were the least of our worries on that cruise! :(

 

OK - You have me curious now. Tell me the whole story.

 

Also, was this a 7 day or longer cruise?

[alwalaska]

This has been pretty much what we have ran into in the past on spring break cruises, and the main reason we shy away from them now. So many kids are turned loose onboard and unless they do some real monitary damage, cruise security won't say a word to them.

We grew very tired of loads of kids playing on the elevators, laying across the staircases, running up and down the halls at all hours, and running through the buffet knocking plates out of passengers hands (I was included on that one). It just wasn't worth our $$$ to run into this sort of behavior around every corner. Guess maybe we are just not that kind of cruiser anymore and if we wanted something like this, we would plan a trip to Disneyworld instead of a cruise ship. As sometimes that is exactly where we felt we must be.

 

Was this on Carnival or Princess. I noticed that you sailed both in the past.

[Toto2Kansas]

Was this on Carnival or Princess. I noticed that you sailed both in the past.

 

We haven't sailed on Carnival in manyyyyyyyyy years. This was on Princess and the main reason we try never to sail during spring break anymore.

[Woodlands_cruiser]

The comments here seem to run towards both ends of the spectrum. My wife and I have cruised both in the summer and during spring break (all on Princess) and, quite frankly, I didn't notice much of a difference in terms of the number of kids and the overall behavior. I was also worried about the potential for high school / college kids running wild before our cruise last spring break, but my concerns proved unfounded. Certainly, there were instances here and there where kids may have gotten out of hand, but in general, there was nothing that would prevent me from cruising at either time. In fact, we are cruising this spring break on the CB.

 

I suspect that this is a topic in which it is difficult to generalize as conditions will change from cruise to cruise based on how well kids are behaved and supervised by their parents.