Bahamas Cruise?
 

We're looking to do a 3-5 day cruise to the Bahamas when we visit Florida in December. Wondering if anyone has cruise info they could share, as there are SO many cruise liners and sites, it's hard to know where to start . Is there a good comparison website where I can see everything on one page? Does one site give bigger discounts than another? Which cruise liner would you recommend for families with 13yr old and 16 yr old kids? We'd be looking at cruising around the week of Christmas sometime.

This will be our first (and probably last) family cruise experience, so I don't want to book on an old ship that has had better days, kwim? Would appreciate any insights you all have, and any websites you recommend.

I'll bug Marla as she's the cruise expert I know!

I don't know, but my best friend is going on a cruise. Maybe she'll pop in and say what she's doing to give you some more insight?

Can't wait to hear all about your trip!!

We’ve always cruised Carnival and have no complaints. We book right with them directly on their site. They tend to have a younger crowd and your girls would probably love it.

We did a Disney Cruise. It was a little more expensive than other cruise lines, but totally worth it. We loved it. My son really wants to go again. There was so much to do for all of us. They have special Teen areas your girls would love. Adult only areas. Lots of family areas obviously. It was so nice and clean and big.

We have our first cruise planned for this coming Nov.

cruisecritic is a good site to get info, reviews etc.

Carnival is going to be your "cheapest" cruises, but they are also known as the party cruises. I would say just check each of the more reputable/popular/well known cruise lines to compare prices. Do this is an incognito tab so that your searches aren't affected by history, cookies, etc.

You can join Cruise groups on Facebook. Search your ship and your dates, and then you can join a group (at least for our Disney cruise, not sure of others). Do some research on Bahamas (we are going to the straw market right at the port, and then back to the ship to spend the day doing fun stuff on the ship). If you are combining this with time spent in the Orlando area, you will probably want to cruise out of Port Canaveral.

They recommend not arriving the same day as your cruise. And if you fly back the same day you disembark, make sure your return flight is late enough in the day. It is about an hour drive back to Orlando, and you still have customs at the Port, and security at the Airport.

DIsboards has a cruise area (and Disney, and Universal Studios, and Sea World, etc).

I have more information, let me know if you are interested.

That's brilliant to use the incognito tab! I just heard about that tab last week from Carol!

For the groups, do you look for the cruise line? Like my parents cruise with Princess, is that what I would look for? Or is there a generic cruise group that you are talking about?

These are all really good suggestions!! :wub:

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For the Facebook cruise groups, you would search *name of ship* and date. So Princess cruise Aug 21, 2019 for example. I don't know if the other cruise lines do cruise groups. I just know that Disney does. I belong to 2 of them. One of them I'm a moderator.

That's cool to know!! Thanks for sharing that piece of information!! :thumbup:

We did a Caribbean cruise last year on the Norwegian Epic. It was massive... almost 4000 people. I didn't love it. There were way too many people and you just couldn't get away from the noise and crowds unless you were in your room. We had a balcony room, but it was super tiny, and the "bathroom" was a partial height shower door for the toilet... so really no privacy! Also, the main concourse, which you basically had to go through to get anywhere on the ship, had the casino in it. So you had to walk through cigarette smoke and slot machines to get anywhere (unless you wanted to take a major detour.) Not so nice with my 7 year old in tow. I will say that they did have a good kid's program though. All in all, I'd opt for a smaller ship. The regular cruisers in our group all said the same thing.

Taking that cruise made me realize even more that I am 100% a beach person! LOL... not all that helpful, but maybe something to keep in mind to avoid.

We love to cruise. PM me any questions. My kids are similar age to yours. I would recommend Royal Caribbean's larger ships like the Symphony,Harmony, Oasis or Allure. Your kids are the perfect age for it!

My mom, sister, nephew, daughter, and I all did a 5-day Carnival cruise from Charleston to the Bahamas last June, and I enjoyed it so much more than I expected to! We went to Nassau and Princess Cays. The highlight of our trip was spending the day at Blue Lagoon Island while in Nassau. It was gorgeous!

This is what I'm worried about. We want a big enough ship to have all the fun activities etc, but not so big that it's overwhelming. My husband hates crowds as it is.

We were on this Epic this March. The ship does not have the best layout and I would discourage that one!

The Disney cruise was huge, but it was designed and set up in a way that I never felt like it was over crowded.