After many calls to multiple cruise lines, we settled on Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas Itinerary. It left mid-July and went to CocoCay, Bahamas (RC's private island), St. Maarten (which none of us had ever been to) and St. Thomas (which we had all been to, but really liked).
Also, just to note, my parents nixed Disney Cruise Lines right away, or else that would have been the perfect choice for my two year old. More on that later.
We got to the ship pretty early, and luckily they were boarding early that day! So we got on board, got to our room and then went to meet up with the family, who were already on board. This is where things start to go wrong for the children's portion of the trip. Remember how I made multiple calls? Well I must have called RC four times asking for sure about their babysitting policies and children's activities for children under 3. Usually cruise lines don't have much for that age group so I wanted to make sure. Every person I talked to assured me there was babysitting from 8am to 2am daily. So we had decided to book a shore excursion for St. Maarten since none of us had been there, intending to secure babysitting the moment we got on the boat for that day.
So as soon as we find everyone, I head off to guest services to book our babysitting and also to let them know that we did not have a crib in our room like we had requested. They promised to have a crib sent right away, and then proceeded to tell us that babysitting was not available during the day, only at night. They advised me to go talk to the Adventure Ocean club for kids to see what my options were. At this time I am annoyed, but had been assured by people on the phone this was not the case, so wasn't too worried. At AO, they told me they didn't have babysitting for children that young during the day, but that there was private babysitting and to just call "0" from our room. So I go back to our room, call 0, and they tell me I have to come to guest services to book babysitting. If you will remember, that is where I went first. Oh, and there is still no crib in our room.
At GS, a very nice lady puts in my request for babysitting, no problem and tells me as soon as it is confirmed they will call our room to let us know. Sigh of relief (for now) and then off to the sail away party on the top deck. Jason stayed in the room to wait for the crib (by now we have also requested that our state room attendant bring us one, as well as have called guest services again) and to give Bella her nap.
We go up top and the weather is great and we all get our sail away cocktails and watch the crew dance and stuff. Don't we look happy?
As far as the ship goes, it was beautiful. It was by far the largest cruise ship I had ever been on and it was really well decorated, with tons of activities such as rock wall climbing, mini golf, surfing, a karaoke bar. All kinds of stuff.
After the party, I go back to the room to get Jason and Bella up so we can go eat. Well, they had never gotten a crib, therefore our daughter had taken no nap. We go ahead and get ready for dinner and as we are leaving here comes our room attendant with our crib. After 6 hours and asking 3 different people for it! We were pretty annoyed, but we tried to shrug it off. We went to dinner with the fam and here is Bella on no nap.
Yeah, she was still pretty happy so we got over it pretty quick.
Now I do have to give RC some props on how they treat children. They must be highly instructed to ooh and aah over kids like they are royalty. Every single wait staff member was always so nice to her and talked to her and fawned over her. This was our friend Richard who would come over every night and make a bunny out of a napkin for her. The bunny only liked Sweet N Low, so Bella would feed it Sweet N Low and then if she gave it anything else, the bunny would spit it out. It was seriously adorable and she ate it up!
Our first port was CocoCay, Bahamas. I love the Bahamas. I recommend them all the time to clients because they are absolutely beautiful as well as a lot closer than the more southern Caribbean islands! One of my favorite things that I have found, is that the waters are so calm and very shallow for a ways out. It was perfect for us because Isabella could walk out quite a ways, not get knocked down by waves and it was still shallow! My dad is her water buddy always, so she loved having him swing her around.
Since it is a private island, they don't have restaurants, they just have a huge barbecue with hot dogs, ribs, etc and normal sides. Isabella must have eaten ten hot dogs on this trip. She loves dipping them in ketchup. I would say the food at the barbecue was just ok. I say that only because I found the food on the ship to be way above what I normally have on cruise ships. The food in the dining room was exceptional.
Back on board, we still hadn't heard back from babysitting for our confirmation so I go to talk to someone. I won't bore you with every encounter I had with Guest Services about babysitting, I will just say that they obviously do not have their act together when it comes to children under 3, most of the staff had no idea what was actually available to her, and I still couldn't tell you what the actual guidelines are. All I know is they worked it out to where we had babysitting for half the day, and the other half, Bella went to the Ocean Kids club for kids under 3 (that NO ONE had even told us about in all my inquiries). I was highly frustrated by all of this, but we got it worked out so I tried to take a lot of deep breaths and not yell at anyone.
The next day we were at sea and went to the pool. This ship is great if you have kids over 3, that are potty trained. There is a huge area with all kinds of fun water stuff for kids who are potty trained. For kids who aren't? There is this...
It is a tiny little wading pool that is not much bigger than this picture. Bella had fun in it, but after about 15 minutes would want to go on to other stuff. Also, this pool is adjacent to all the cool stuff, so of course she wanted to go over there! But she had fun splashing her Aunt Amanda. =)
Pretty much all cruise ships now have what they call 'Specialty Dining'. These are restaurants on board that you pay extra for - anywhere between $5 and $75 or more, depending on the ship and restaurant. This is Chops, the ship's steak house. It was pretty good, but honestly we had a better experience on the Coral Princess ship last year at their Crown Steak House for cheaper. Plus the food on this ship is so good, I am just not sure I would pay extra to go here again. But here we are with Amanda and Jared, enjoying some alone time while Bella played with her grandparents!
The next day was St. Maarten. He is a view from our balcony.
We had booked a shore excursion where we rode four wheelers all over the island, and stopped at Orient Beach for a while before heading back to the ship. It was pretty fun. The French side of the island is much prettier than the Dutch for sure, and you can tell the second you change over. Orient Beach was pretty, but one side is nude and it is NUDE. So if you are in any way modest, don't go to that side. We ate at Andy and Cheryl's on the beach and it was really good. It is owned by some Americans who moved down there to live, and the seafood was really fresh and good.
Here we are with our cute little helmets for four wheeling.
A picture of one of the marinas on St. Maarten.
Here is Isabella in our (very messy) stateroom. She LOVED the cruise by the way.
Royal Caribbean has partnered up with Dreamworks to have their characters appear in parades and shows and stuff on their cruises. They did a character breakfast with the Shrek characters so we went to that one morning. You can see from the pictures below that as long as there is someone between her and the character she is fine. She wasn't crazy about being so close to Puss in Boots. =)
She really enjoyed the Dreamworks parade, too. We have watched Shrek 2 (because that is the one we own) about 2,582,945 times since we got home.
This is a cute picture of Bells in her A&M attire when she woke up. Our room was on the very back of the ship so our balcony was huge and also had more ship after it. That was a very comforting thing to a mom who had nightmares about Bella falling overboard from our balcony. Wasn't going to happen on this balcony!
On our St. Thomas day, we decided to stay on board since we had just been a year before. It was actually great and I think I may start planning cruises where I know I can be on board one port day from now on! There was NO one on the ship so you could have any poolside chair you wanted and do anything on your own. It was really nice and Bella liked having the run of the pool area.
We also went to eat at the other specialty restaurant Portofino that night, while mom and dad watched Bella. It was actually really good. I would have gone back there, especially because it was cheaper than the steak house.
I feel like I have been complaining a lot in this post, but I just want to make sure anyone with small children would know what they were getting in to. They have amazing programs for children over 3 and are consistently rated one of the most family friendly cruises out there. We did have a great time doing all the on board activities. Jason and I won movie trivia for the second time running on a cruise, so we were pretty proud of that. Amanda sang "Fancy" at karaoke one night, and Jared should have won the belly flop contest. He was ROBBED I tell you! Also, Bella got to be in the ice skating show! I wish I had pictures of that! They put her in a sled and took her all over the ice rink. She looked so cute!
Thanks mom and dad for taking us on such a wonderful vacation! I love that our family actually likes to do these things together. I am a very lucky girl.
When we got back to Port Canaveral, we were docked next to the new Disney Dream ship. Mom, Amanda, Bella and I are booked to go on this ship next November (way too far away!), so I was SO excited to see it. It is beautiful, no?
All in all I loved Royal Caribbean, they just have a few logistical things to work out. Loved the ship, loved the food and all the on board activities. I would highly recommend taking them for a spin. Unless you have a 2 year old. Then just go on a Disney cruise!!
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