Kids on HAL during holiday weeks

[marial]

Hi

 

I will be going on the 10 day Sea of Cortez during the Thanksgiving week. My experience with that week on my previous cruises, is there tends to be alot of kids (the Princess one last year there were 1000 kids that week). I know Holland America is known to have slightly different demographics, so I was just wondering if the same is true.

 

Thanks for any input!

[Roz]

Since most school districts don't allow that much time for Thanksgiving break, I'm guessing you won't find a lot of children on a 10-day cruise. Was the Princess cruise you took a 7-day cruise or was it longer? I thought Princess capacity controlled the number of children onboard their ships, but apparently not. 1,000 is a lot, in my opinion.

 

Roz

[marial]

Yes, that one was a 7 day sailing..there were 800 kids under 13 and then 1000 under 18..It was their largest ships, so I am not sure what there maximum capacity was for kids. I do know they had to move one of the kids clubs to the disco, as there was no room in the kids club area.

 

Thanks for your input..

[medfordgirl]

we went on thanksgiving 2005 on Veendam, we thought it would be ok. It wasn't. There were ALOT of children running around unsupervised. Couple of times we were nearly run over. We won't do that again, even if we take our kids, which we are this year. We are going the week after thanksgiving.

[medfordgirl]

Oh forgot to add. We were in a deluxe suite and couldn't enjoy our balcony too much as there were small children in the suite next to us and those children were screaming.

[Roz]

Medord,

 

Was your cruise 7 days or 10 days? It makes a difference.

 

Roz

[Krazy Kruizers]

WE did a 10 day Sea of Cortez cruise in 2005 or 2006 at Thanksgiving.

 

We had over 200 children on board!!

 

Never expected that.

[CowPrincess]

We had over 200 children on board!!

 

Oh I could just cry :( I inadvertently booked us on Ryndam over Thanksgiving (not realizing it was Thanksgiving), but once all the plans were in place we decided to just suck it up. Here's hoping our cruise doesn't have a lot of kids.

[AnneBonney]

we did a 7-day caribbean on the Westerdam over Easter/spring break and there were about 300 kids on boad.

[Babr]

We did a cruise in the first week of December which is in between school holidays (Thanksgiving - Christmas) and still had about 200 children. The comedian even made a comment in his routine about the number of children in the audience. Maybe they had long holidays, were home schooled, or perhaps their parents just took them out of school to take a vacation. Seemed strange to me, but there they were at a time when I would have expected them to be in school.

[cf_chuck]

We did a cruise in the first week of December which is in between school holidays (Thanksgiving - Christmas) and still had about 200 children. The comedian even made a comment in his routine about the number of children in the audience. Maybe they had long holidays, were home schooled, or perhaps their parents just took them out of school to take a vacation. Seemed strange to me, but there they were at a time when I would have expected them to be in school.

 

The days of being able to schedule vacations to avoid having children on board is going the way of the lost civilizations. In addition to home schooling, there are alternative schools which offer increased flexibility over the traditional format and encourage broadening experiences such as world travel, cruises, etc. An additional significant factor is the emergence of year round schools where the traditional school time off is spread through the year rather than packed around traditional holidays and summer vacation. I live in an area that has year round schools and have to remind myself when I see kids playing during school time.

[Aunty Pat]

Thanksgiving 2007 was an anomaly. I was on the Oosterdam’s Thanksgiving cruise and learned that there were a lot of families from the San Diego area that had been displaced by the fires (if your housing & food was being covered by your fire insurance wouldn’t you’d rather spend it on a ship than in a hotel room with your children). The schools in the area were also closed for the whole week to clean up from having been used as fire evacuation centers. This brought the total number of kids up to 400, but that’s still a lot less than on the 700 that were on the Carnival ship of the same size and sailing the same itinerary.

Aunty Pat

 

Barefoot Windjammer - Phantom ‘81

K&D German Rhine Line ‘84

NCL - Norway ’85, Pride of America ’05, Southward ’87, Star ’97 & ‘05, Starward ’92, Sun ’02 & Windward ’93

RCC - Song of America ‘89

American Hawaiian - Independence ‘98

HAL - Volendam ’99, Noordam ’06, Oosterdam ’07 & ‘09, Statendam ’02 & ‘08, Prinsendam ’03 & ’06, Westerdam ’09 & Zuiderdam ’04, ’06 & ‘07

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Cruise West - Yorktown Clipper ‘06

Princess - Golden Princess ‘07

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[medfordgirl]

Medord,

 

Was your cruise 7 days or 10 days? It makes a difference.

 

Roz

 

ours was a 7 day cruise.

[luvtwotrvl]

Since most school districts don't allow that much time for Thanksgiving break, I'm guessing you won't find a lot of children on a 10-day cruise. Was the Princess cruise you took a 7-day cruise or was it longer? I thought Princess capacity controlled the number of children onboard their ships, but apparently not. 1,000 is a lot, in my opinion.

 

Roz

Hello,

I have heard NO cruise line can restrict kids or limit the number of kids. That would be against U S law.............age restrictions.

 

David:D

[Krazy Kruizers]

7 or 10 days --- it doesn't seem to make a difference any more.

There are parents who do not seem to care if their children miss school any more. And these parents and children don't even worry about whether the children make up the work.

One our neighbors a couple of years ago went into an uproar when their daughter was failed for not making up work missed while they were away for 2 weeks.

[Toad]

Going on a 14 dAY this year over Thanksgiving. Hope this is too long to have too many kids! What your opinion?

[CrabbyHarper]

It was a ten day cruise from Norfolk, Va to the Caribbean. I booked it forgetting about the Easter holiday. The ship was overrun with kids. It was really bad - they threw deck chairs over the railings, sat in the first row in the theatre and generally made pests of themselves. HOWEVER, I did meet some absolutely delightful kids and their parents and we had a ball playing trivia and other games and then swimming on HMC.

 

Would I book again during a school break? No way.