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“Cruising is the best way to travel with kids.”
“Family travel is much easier on a cruise because you don’t have to continuously pack and unpack.”
“Why fly when you can get to your destination on a luxurious floating hotel?”
I was told repeatedly by parents that cruising is the most relaxing way to travel as a family. And apparently, “repositioning cruises” provide excellent value, giving you accommodation, food, entertainment, and transport for one low inclusive price.
Unlike a regular cruise, which tends to go in a circle, a repositioning cruise is solely for the purpose of bringing the ship to a different location to reset its itinerary according to the seasons. For example, Alaska and European cruises tend to sail in spring and summer. Once winter rolls around, the ship gets moved across the ocean to the Caribbean.
To avoid sailing empty, cruise lines sell these repositioning trips at half price or less. The ones I was looking at ranged from $800-$1000 USD/person for an interior room for a whole 14 days! That works out to be as little as $57 USD/day/person. Since a cruise is all inclusive for food and entertainment, you can get to Europe from North America for less than the price of the plane ticket and get free food and activities to boot!
Back when we went on cruises for vacation, we were paying more than that for just 1 week! It seemed like the deal of a century and alleviated the long distances flight with my energizer bunny of a son, so of course I jumped on it.
Turns out, cruising with a toddler was not what I thought it would be at all.
Let me tell you about our trip, so you can decide whether cruising as a family is right for you.
The Good
No Jetlag
One of the challenges of traveling with kids is keeping a consistent sleep schedule. If you’ve ever had to deal with a child’s meltdown resulting from a missed nap or a restless night, you know not to piss off the Goddess of sleep consistency.
But travel and jetlag go hand and hand, so when you fly, you just have to put up with a series of miserable nights until your kid can adapt to the new time zone.
This is where cruising shines. Since we were moving gradually towards our destination, we could gradually acclimate our son to time changes. In fact, the cruise keeps track of that for you, and places helpful time-change cards in your stateroom daily, to move the time 1 hour, every other day or so, so that when we arrived in Spain, our bodies had already adjusted to the new time zone.
This was, hands down, my favourite thing about the cruise. My son didn’t miss a beat when it came to his sleep schedule, and we could collectively breathe a sigh of relief.
Itinerary
Even with a significant number of days at sea, the itinerary for our cruise was well thought out.
It included a variety of interesting ports of call: New York, Halifax, St. John’s (Newfound), Ponta Delgada, Motril (Spain), Ibiza, Majorca (Spain), and Barcelona.
It was also spaced out well with at max only 3 days at sea in between them. This would’ve been so perfect if the weather had co-operated (more on that later). With Ponta Delgada in the Azores to break up the monotonous many days at sea when crossing the Atlantic, passengers would never feel bored. At one point, we passed by Gibraltar and Tangiers, Morocco. Being able to see both the continents Europe and Africa at the same time was a thrilling experience.
Family Check-in
Sailing with NCL (Norwegian Cruise Lines) meant that there wasn’t specifically a family check-in line (unlike the more family-oriented lines like Disney, MSC, etc), but they were very accommodating and whisked us to the front of the line whenever there were long lines to get back on to the ship or at check-in. I suspect this is also because there aren’t many families on repositioning cruises, so we could get special treatment.
Food and drinks
The steak on this cruise was excellent. Very high quality and cooked to perfectly. Wanderer enjoyed it so much he said shelling out extra for the premium restaurant wasn’t necessary. The buffet also had a lot of variety. If this had been a regular 7-day cruise, we would’ve never gotten bored with the food. What’s also surprising is that booze wasn’t that expensive. You could get a bottle of wine for $20 USD, which meant their markup wasn’t too high. As a result, I’m glad we didn’t get the expensive “all you can drink” package, which was unnecessary.
The Crew
I’ve never seen anyone on land work so hard, and after talking to our stateroom attendant and a worker from the youth center, I learned that the crew works 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 8 months straight! With that type of crazy work schedule, they still managed to maintain a daily smile and go out of their way to give LMS extra attention, which is a feat I don’t think most humans can manage.
Many of the restaurant staff were from Southeast Asia and had a soft spot for LMS because he reminded them of their kids/nephews back home and made him special towel animals and toys out of napkins.
Every single penny the staff gets in tips is worth it and we ended up tipping some extra cash above the required amount ($20/day/passenger) because they deserved it.
Other passengers
Since this was a repo cruise, there were only a handful of families. We got to know them well because we all ended up in the Guppies (under age 3) room of the Splash Academy, which is the children’s area. We met a digital nomad family, a real estate investor family, a military family, and an import/exporter family. LMS enjoyed playing with all his new friends and we enjoyed talking to the parents about our unconventional lifestyles.
Other than the nomadic families, 99% of the ship was retirees in their 60s and 70s who adored LMS and thought of him as their surrogate grandson. He got addicted to the attention, and every time we left our state room it was a parade, with us stopping every few minutes to wave to other passengers who treated him like a rockstar.
Not having to cook and clean
As a parent, your days are filled with indentured servitude, so not having to cook or clean was heavenly.
The Bad
Hidden Costs
Even though the advertised price from the cruise lines seems cheap, extra mandatory add-ons like port fees, taxes, and gratuity ($20USD/person/day), easily doubles or triples the base cost.
In addition to mandatory add-ons, you also have non mandatory add-ons like booze, excursions, transport from the cruise ports to attractions, internet, etc. This adds another 50% or so to the cost. We didn’t end up going on any excursions because it wasn’t easy to do with LMS, but we did spend some extra money on booze.
Fake Asian food
Since I was raised in Sichuan, China, I can’t go longer than a week without Asian food. And no, I don’t mean fake Asian food from Panda Express. Just the words “chop suey” makes me vomit in my mouth.
So, when I was asked whether I wanted “jalapeños” in my miso soup, I had a sinking feeling in the base of my stomach. The feeling intensified when I was introduced to a deep fried “sushi” roll. But it wasn’t until I was served “pho” consisting of vermicelli drowned in Campbells chicken stock served in a crème brulee bowl that my soul was finally crushed. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Vietnamese, but it’s easily in the top 5.
Suffice to say, after 1 week of the “Asian” food on the cruise, I started to lose my mind. Luckily, I’d brought some bags of Chinese noodles and was desperately sprinkling the seasoning packets all over everything and snorting the vapours from it like some sort of coke fiend. Funnily enough, I noticed a group of Chinese tourists at the next table doing the exact same thing.
Food quality
In terms of the non-Asian food on the cruise, from talking to other cruisers, they did mention that the food quality has gone down significantly after the pandemic. Apparently, cruise lines lost so much money, they’ve had to cut back significantly, and old staples like lobster which used to be included in dinner menus are now an extra add-on for $25.
I found that most of the food looked way better than it tasted. A lot of the time it was overly salty or cloyingly sweet.
The Ugly
Seasickness
My least favourite part of the cruise is sea sickness. You don’t notice it as much when you only have 1-2 days at sea on a regular cruise, but boy is it obvious when you’re stuck in the middle of the ocean, 5 days from land.
Even though I’d picked my itinerary carefully, I didn’t realize that ports of call can be cancelled at any point due to inclement weather, port strikes, etc. On this trip, we had both. A big storm out of Newfoundland meant that our St. John’s port was cancelled. An impending line workers strike in Barcelona meant that we’d have to skip over Majorca in order to make it to Barcelona one day before our arrival date.
This meant that we had 5 days at sea with waves as high as 8 feet. Apparently, this is nothing to experienced cruisers. But even at this sea turbulence level, I felt like I was sleeping on a roller coaster. I brought some Gravol but it wasn’t nearly enough. Luckily, we splurged for an Oceanview room instead of the cheapest interior room, which helped because at least I didn’t feel claustrophobic on top of the seasickness. Stupidly, I picked a stateroom which was low (5th floor) and towards the front of the ship, which apparently makes the waves worse.
“Child friendly”
I quickly found out that cruises are child-friendly but not toddler-friendly. This means that if your kid is 3 years or older, they can access the childcare center, which means you get free babysitting. Some cruise lines (like Disney, MSC, Canard, etc) gives you childcare for 6 month olds, but 1) they could be 4X the prices as NCL and 2) they didn’t have the sailing dates I needed to get to Spain to meet our friends.
As a result, the other families who had older kids had a great time, but us and all the families with kids younger than 3 were confined to a small room on sea days, where we had to watch our kids ourselves. Since we weren’t allowed to use the pool (only potty trained kids allowed) and there were very few safe spaces for toddlers to be on the outer areas of the ship (there was a huge gap between the railings on the entire ship).
To add insult to injury, we had to pay full fare for LMS even though he barely ate anything and couldn’t use most the facilities! We didn’t have to pay tip for him, but still. Again, I could’ve gotten him on for free or a reduced rate if I optimized which cruise line we went with, but unlike airlines, cruise lines only go to certain destinations at certain times of the year, and NCL just happened to be the only one going at the time we needed.
All this would’ve still been OK because we enjoyed the port days immensely, but during days at sea, I spent most of it stuck in the only toddler-proof room, to avoid the anxiety of him climbing under the railings, since there were no safe area outdoors for him to play in.
Cancellation of Ports
Even though I’d chosen a cruise with a fantastic itinerary with minimal sea days, the weather had the last say. Also, cruise lines are not obligated to compensate you at all for missed ports. So, if you ever go on a repo cruise, don’t get attached to any of the ports of call. Be prepared for the very likely possibility of all ports of calls being cancelled if the weather is bad enough. You might go a bit stir crazy, feel seasick and exhausted if you have a toddler under 3.
Limited Healthcare
Even though there is a clinic and doctors onboard, the equipment is mostly for heart attacks, falls, etc—ailments suffered by elderly retirees. If your toddler comes down with a long-lasting fever, needs a trip to the hospital, and you’re 5 days from land, it gets scary. For this reason, cruise lines won’t let you bring your kid onboard unless they are at least 6 months old for regular cruises and at least a year old for transoceanic cruises.
Lessons Learned
If we were to do this all over again, we’d:
- Wait until LMS was at least 3 years old to take advantage of childcare services
- Pick a better time to travel so we could use the MSC, Cunard, Celebrity, or Royal Caribbean deals where kids sail for free or at a significantly reduced price
- Use cruisesheet.com which includes the additional fees like port fees and taxes rather than the fake cheap base cost shown by the cruise lines or sites like vacations2go.
- Pick a stateroom that’s high up and towards the middle or back of the ship to reduce seasickness
- Bid for an upgrade. Because repo cruises are rarely full (how many people can take more than 14 days off just to get to their destination?), it’s better to buy the cheapest room, then bid for an upgrade closer to the sailing date. The only downside is you can’t pick where your room is, but you’ll likely get a better room for a good deal. For example, on our cruse, it costs $500 or more per person for the largest picture window room compared to the smallest interior, but if you bid, you can get it for $150/person for the entire 14 days.
- Bring my own Asian food
- Bring an entire suitcase full of Gravol
Costs
Here’s how much we spent on our 14-day transatlantic repositioning cruise on NCL:
Adult/day (USD) | Child/day (USD) | |
Base (including port fees and taxes): | $83.45 | $83.45 |
Gratuity: | $20 | 0 |
Add-ons: | $9.42 | 0 |
Total: | $112.87 | $83.45 |
As a family of 3, we ended up spending $309.19 USD/day or $4,328.66 USD total for 14 days after fees, gratuity, and add-ons. Double the advertised cost of $57 USD/person/day.
If you were travelling as a couple, $112.87 USD/person/day which includes accommodations, food, and entertainment might seem like a good deal. Not only will you be able to go to the shows, but you also won’t have to pay full fare for a child. Or if you’re travelling with kids and you manage to find a cruise that lets kids sail for free, you might also find it a good deal. For us, it just wasn’t worth it, at least in my opinion. Wanderer, who isn’t prone to seasickness like I am and can survive without authentic Asian food, had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat, so your mileage may vary.
What do you think? Have you gone on a cruise with your family? If so, how did you find it?
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I don’t get it, with most of the crew being Southeast Asian, one would suppose that Asian food would be their specialty. You should have tried befriending one of the chefs and ask them to make you something special.
urgh…that’s expensive!!! And anything with kids is a bummer. I sailed many times in the Caribbean with my two kids and you don’t have a way of relaxing. It’s either dropping them off or picking them up at the clubs or playing with them in the water slides or something..no adult time whatsoever. It sucks, but mom wants dad to play and be present…lucky me!
You can cruise for free if you offer to present lectures on board. If you had announced your lectures on your blog ahead a time, some of your readers might have purchased passage on that cruise to listen to you.
Also, some cruise lines like Princess offer authentic Chinese dishes in the buffet like congee.
You’re only half right on the cabin location you want: middle and low (not middle and high). Simple physics! If you bid, you’re very unlikely to get that location though as it’s popular. It’ll almost always be high up and to one end. Often by a noisy crew area or under/above a noisy public area. In other words, there’s a reason they’re available…
If you chat up the servers, they can have a dish made extra spicy or bring you something to add to it once they can see that your palate isn’t the cruise ship norm. There’s also a special full vegetarian/vegan menu that you can ask to see, usually the day before, and order special from it for the next day. There are often more suitable choices there that they might be able to make a bit more to your liking, too, once they understand your spicy needs are real and you’re not a typical cruiser.
“middle and low (not middle and high). Simple physics!”
You’d think this is true and that’s what the cruise line told us before we booked. Turns out it’s not true at all (at least not on our ship). I also spoken to many of the crew and they all agreed low is bad, higher is better . Maybe it’s highly depending on the ship itself, but for the one we were on, our stateroom was on floor 5 and the rockiness was terrible (as was the toddler center) but when we were in the dining room on floor 8 or 11, it was way better. Our friends who stayed on floor 8 with a history of bad seasickness also said they felt less rocking in their room.
Like others have said, you can have Asian food made. We’ve only taken one cruise on Royal Caribbean and once we noticed that the crew was mostly Asian, we asked if they had an Asian chef. It turned out the chefs were Filipino and Indian. For the next 7 days, they surprised us with Asian food every dinner time. This is in addition to the standard menu.
Note, this was in the sit down dinners (the free included ones) because you are effectively pre-ordering them for your appointed dinner time. I’m guessing you only ate at the buffet?
I was very surprised nobody offered you any Asian food. After our cruise, we found out from others that this is typical of all cruises due to the large Asian crew. Basically they make crew food daily so might as well have some for guests too.
Love these updates. Thank you so much. Especially as a Canadian who is a few years behind you net worth but also wants kids it’s great to see what is possible. Curious a few things. Would you be able to let us know about the travel insurance you use when traveling, obviously a lot of different ones out there but just curious. And also thoughts on dental work as you mentioned it was quite expensive for you this year. This was my
geometry dash meltdown first full year not working full time so I also had an expensive year dental wise but just hoping those costs drop with the new Canadian dental plan. However would be interested if you have gotten work done in Mexico or Thailand as a lot of Canadian dentists recommend against it but at the same time I’ve heard it’s great from people who have tried it.
We use Safety Wing as our travel insurance provider: https://safetywing.com/?referenceID=millennial-revolution&utm_source=millennial-revolution&utm_medium=Ambassador
For dentists, we only used the approved ones from dental departures (have used them in Poland, Mexico, and Thailand, all with good results: https://www.dentaldepartures.com/
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Hi Kristy,
David and Winnie here (as you put it, your neighbors to the south) We live in Minnesota currently but before we had lived in China. I was there 9 years, and Winnie was born and raised there. Your book and blogs are amazing, and we love reading through them. This post especially hit home with your fake Asian food perspective. Winnie tells me all the time how much she misses Chinese food and hates the American versions. She loves to buy Chinese noodles and make her own meal. You three are awesome and a huge inspiration to us.
The author does a great job contrasting the common perception of cruises as relaxing, all-inclusive vacations with the unexpected challenges of family travel. The tone is conversational and Wacky Flip 2 relatable, and the sections on the benefits—like avoiding jetlag and the well-planned itinerary—are particularly insightful.