Beware: I didn’t get this cruise documented in a reasonable amount of time after sailing, so have lost some context, but still want to keep track of all sailings for key reminders and later reference.
A childcare annual shutdown week loomed in early July, and it was clear that we needed some solid plans to avoid early summer boredom, irritation, and sloth. The same week in 2022, Kayla and I were able to sail by ourselves on Norwegian Joy while the kids stayed with their grandparents. In March 2023, though, we’d already gone on Bliss child-free for a week and didn’t want to make the same request of my parents for only a few months later, so thoughts once again turned to a full-family sailing.
With time, we’d also suppressed the challenges of our January 2020 trip with infants in tow on Escape. Things would surely have improved in the intervening 3-and-a-half years! Issues such as mobility, solid food, formula, diapers, and special sleeping arrangements would no longer be in play. And the fully supervised kids’ club, with potty-trained children who were old enough to attend on their own, might give us adults a few occasional hours to relax.
It turns out that cruising with children at this age comes with a new set of things to account for, which made this sailing challenging in several ways. Our kids had a good time on the ship, but not in the Camp Ocean program, and it’s important to catalog this in contrast to many positive reports of the kids club experience.
From my cruise enthusiast perspective, and as someone who had not sailed on Carnival before, I enjoyed seeing what the largest mass-market cruise line had to offer on their newest ship, and was especially impressed with the pool facilities and food options like Big Chicken and Deco Deli. This was also my first sailing without some type of beverage package. I wasn’t a fan of paying by the drink, even if financially Cheers! wouldn’t have made sense for the week.
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