While we had cruised on our own before, the experience with twin three year olds is completely different. Here are some of the lessons we learned on this trip.
We travel so much that our kids just naturally get out of the car and start carrying luggage.
You never know who you will run into. Here we are with a friend (and former co-worker) that we ran into on the ship. We had no idea we were going on the same cruise and had fun catching up.
The service is SLOW, especially during dinner. We have cruised before and had exceptional service. This trip the service was painfully slow and many nights we left before dessert because it was simply taking too long. Things like having to ask for more bread or a refill just simply didn't happen on our other cruises.
Bring something (stickers in this case) for the kids to do while waiting for meals. Yes we look silly, but the kids were quiet, contained, and didn't disturb anyone around us. Every meal we got compliments from people around us on how well behaved our kids are.
We are a very active family. We don't spend a lot of time sitting still. We are always on the go and one of our concerns was how our kids would burn off their energy in such limited spaces. The kids' club was fine, but didn't really get the kids up and running around. We took the kids up to the running track every day to let them simply run in circles. The other people on the track loved it and were encouraging. They were giving high 5's and offering words of encouragement.
Our overall impression of cruising with preschoolers? We will try cruising again, but not on this cruise line. The positives simply didn't out weigh the negatives on this trip for us. Honestly, the level of service and entertainment on this cruise line (which we had traveled on more than once before) has gone down so much I don't think we would even consider it without kids. I still love cruising and once we find a good fit I can see it becoming one of our more regular styles of vacation.
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