Alaska cruise with kids
 

Hi, we are considering a family Alaska cruise out of Seattle in May 2012. Ages range from 80 year old grandparents to college kids to my 7 and 10 year old boys. Which line(s) do you recommend? I seem to see Royal Caribbean does the best with the little kids. Thanks.

Carnival Princess best for families for me

RCL has sky lounges more recreation ops rock climbing

walls etc... so for adventurous boys and adult partiers

RCL is good.

Princess has the best Denali excursions I really liked them

cruisecritic.com recent reviews on all ships might have

a look over there...

We cruised with www.innerseadiscoveries.com to Alaska this past summer. It was a very small ship and it was amazing!!! Im not sure how active the 80 year old grandparents are - but it was an incredible experience for my family!!! My boys were 8 and 11. There were many multi-generational families on our cruise. Everyone loved it!!

You have a very diverse group. Most of the mass market ships offer kids club so they are all fine.

My sugegstion is to find the "destination". You may think Alaska is Alaska, it really isn't.

I will pick "Glacier Bay National Park and College Fjord" over "Tracy Arm and Icy Strait" any day. I would love to go see Sitka again but it is seldom offered. Everyone stops in Juneau, Ketchikan and Skgway.

You also need to deicde if you want one way cruise (north or south bound) or an inside passage cruise (round trip).

Not all ships are allowed into Galcier Bay National Park. They have quotas and the cruise line has to bid on them as well as they have to abid by rules to be enviromentally firendly, and up to the standard imposted. That partially explains why cruises through Glacier Bay is slightly more expensive as the ship has to pay the National Park a fee.

Princess has the most ships in the area and also holds the most quotas, offering more dates and routes and choices. RCL and Celebrity seems to decide bnot to bid for teh quotas and instead develop their own semi-private area (Icy Strait)

I have cruised Alaska several times, each time with a different cruise lines and different itinary.

One more point to consider is that the shore excursions for Alaska cruise is way more expensive than the shore excursions for the Caribbean. American operators and american staff getr paid much higher wages than the typical island oeprators and local staff.

With such a big group, you may consider booking your own tours separate from what the ship offers.

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