Travel writer Keri Welham took three generations of her family on an 8-night Royal Caribbean cruise of the South Pacific to try it out. As she puts it, cruising isn't just for bingo-playing seniors and hyper-tanned singles.
Welham brought her toddler to the cruise, which presented a challenge since she felt a lot of the ship's amenities for children were aimed at older kids. She did mention there wer children's play groups scheduled but had to be canceled due to sickness. She did manage to find stuff for her child in the form of a kids pool.
Welham enjoyed the Royal Caribbean staff too, "The Royal Caribbean staff – who made a lasting impression with their friendliness and willingness to help – dropped us off a backpack of age-appropriate educational toys from the onboard toy library, which helped the toddler settle into our room and bought us roughly 10 glorious minutes of silence each day."
Food was also a big hit, "Mealtimes were a dream. Instead of standing in the kitchen trying to fathom where her food whims might lie today, I could wander around the buffet grabbing just a mouthful of a variety of things and she'd try them all until we found something she wanted."
In all, it sounded like Welham enjoyed her cruise, "It was certainly challenging at times but the trade-off was a once-in-a-lifetime experience: We got to take our little girl to Tahiti, introduce her to the spectacle of a mammoth, rolling buffet, dress her up for formal dinners, swim on the top of a 90,090-tonne ship on sunny days, promenade around the decks while moored off Moorea, and watch her fall under the delicate spell of elderly ballroom fanatics on a dance-floor in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."
You can read the full report here.