It was going to be amazing. A week in the warm Caribbean with family. No Christmas presents to exchange, no holiday travel splitting and help with the kids while enjoying some much needed time off. My husband and I got engaged on a cruise, it was wonderful and I was excited to share the fun cruise experience with the family.
That was the idea anyway. Life had other ideas.
We’ve traveled a lot with small kids. My son has been to nearly 30 states and toured the Canadian Rockies. I thought we had this down. But this trip nearly broke me.
We left the Saturday after Thanksgiving, making the long journey with our two kids (4 and 1 1/2) from San Francisco to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The two flights out were long but we splurged on the extra airline seat for our baby. All of our flights were completely full so it was well worth the extra $$ in my opinion.
Our first day we boarded our ship, Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. Check-in was total chaos. Lack of directions on steps and what was going on, people everywhere. Our kids were very quickly over it and ready to go home before we started. Once we finally got on board and settled in things were looking up. The kids were excited about the various activities and kids clubs.
The biggest activity on the agenda for the first-night on-board is going to the dining room for the first dinner. We nearly passed out from the heat and crowded bodies waiting for the delayed door opening. The staff was friendly but also had no idea we had signed up for “family time dining” or really what this meant. The kids were once again gone, literally. My son passed out in his chair from the exhaustion of the day.
Royal Caribbean advertises themselves as being very family friendly and is rated all over as the 2nd to Disney in the best cruise line for kids. Family Time Dining is where you can sign up to have your kids meals brought out quickly so they can join up with the kids club. Our dining staff quickly adjusted and helped us get my son out quickly most evenings. This we found to be a pretty cool program and benefit. My son absolutely loved his kid’s club and couldn’t wait to go back the following day.
When we returned to our cabin after dinner our expected diapers were still not in our room. As part of their family-friendliness RC advertises their “Royal Babies and Tots” program. They say you can have baby food, milk, diapers etc delivered to your room. My daughter no longer eats baby food thankfully because they clearly aren’t really on it. We ordered diapers and wipes ahead of time to be sent to our room. It should have been a red flag you can’t select diaper size, the ordering website is called “gifts” and does not seem to be connected to all of the other Royal Caribbean websites.
When we arrived we only had wipes, no diapers. Our cabin attendant told us they didn’t have any diapers in the size we needed. I had indicated on our order we needed size 5. Okay, well they knew this at around 12pm or earlier, we didn’t leave port until 6pm, so find diapers RC and deliver what you promised???? Nope, they told us they only had size 2 or 3 on-board, we were out of luck. They would not assist us in acquiring diapers either but they’d be happy to refund us. That doesn’t get my baby diapers!! So we went part of our first port day going to a grocery store to buy diapers. Thanks RC!
After our first port day and returning to the ship with our diaper purchase, we decided to take a break and take my daughter to hang out in the nursery for a little while so we can enjoy our evening. This was a huge mistake. By 1am my daughter began vomiting. She caught one of those famous cruise norovirus’, but we didn’t know that yet at the time. At the medical facility a little after midnight I was told it would cost $280 for the doctor to come and see my baby in the middle of the night for something she acquired on the ship, After she spent a few hours throwing up all over the med facility then they said that they did not carry medication for young children. WHAT????? You advertise as being family friendly, have a nursery and have no medications for young children?!? The doctor eventually improvised and have my daughter a shot of Zofran and we got some sleep but basically wasted the next day as none of us got sleep. This also made her stomach sensitive and she was sick the next two nights as well. Fast forward, we discovered it was norovirus once the rest of my family feel to this stomach bug.
For all of the trouble and not getting to enjoy more than a day together as a family RC is going to give us credit for 48 hours for a future cruise. I had to escalate this issue 3 times to get that much. I’m not exactly ready to sign up for a cruise again, especially on RC with my family.
If you haven’t been a cruise before, especially the deceivingly inclusive lines like RC, as the last day approaches and you see an enormous bill, $14.95 a day per person for gratuities all shore activities are extra, they have additional restaurants for additional fees and all shore excursions are extra. Then they ask you to add additional tips for all of the service staff. After our really rough week and facing our bill, we felt really robbed and broken at the end of this cruise.
I’m hoping this all was a fluke and bad luck but I know one thing. I’d never go back on a cruise with a child under 3 and I’d never recommend it to anyone else.
A Modern Persistent Mom 