tips for Cruising with a toddler
Cruising with a toddler is one of the best ways to explore the world as a family. Your food and entertainment options are just a few floors away from your room. You don’t have to unpack and move from place to place either, much like you do whenever you travel.
This post is part of our cruising series. Here are a few more cruising posts that may interest you:
Here are a few tips we picked up after cruising with our toddler. Hopefully, this can help you plan your cruise schedule and your days onboard. This may also help you as you are planning a future cruise with your kids.
We get asked this question a lot so I thought I would address this here before we start with the tips.
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No. Even if you find a deal that says kids sail free, you still have to pay the taxes and fees for your baby or toddler whenever you cruise. For example, if the port fees and taxes for your 5-night cruise are $180 per person, you’ll still pay $180 for your toddler.
Most cruise lines charge a daily tip or service fee for every night of the cruise. Your toddler still has to pay that daily fee, just like an adult.
When on a cruise vacation, there is no reason to upend your child’s schedule. The comfort of having your room a few steps away from the food and entertainment options is a godsend.
Since our two-year-old still likes to nap whenever he gets tired, we take turns doing events we like while he is sleeping. This means trivia, Bingo, or just shopping in relative peace without the toddler having their own way.
While one parent is out, one parent takes a minute to relax, work, or watch the world go by in the relative quiet of the room (or balcony if you have one). It may not be the best since it usually is more fun to do cruise activities with someone, but it helps to make the most of your time onboard.
Here are a few posts that may interest you:
If the daily tip is $14.95 per person per night and if you are sailing for 4 nights, you’ll pay:
$14.95 x 4 nights x 3 (assuming only the parents and the toddler goes)
That’s a total of $179.40 – you pay for the toddler’s daily gratuity fees too!
The daily gratuity will be billed onboard the ship, on top of what you paid for when you booked the cruise. Save extra money for daily fees that you will incur on the ship! If the ship has a fuel surcharge per person, you will also have to pay that daily fee for your toddler and the entire party.
If you are planning a shore excursion, check if it allows young children to go with you. On a shore excursion for a city tour of Freeport, our toddler was free so we didn’t have to worry about another extra hit to our budget. A lot of city tours are good shore excursions with toddlers since you get to sit on a bus and go to different places with them. Those types of excursions are not strenuous and you can leave stuff on the bus while you explore.
If you want to have a date night or a relatively quiet afternoon, you can drop off your kids at the kids club. As long as the kids are fed and happy, they may be happy to go to the kids club.
Our child does not like going to the kids club so he is essentially an extension of us whenever we travel. We did manage to drop him off for a few hours when we had a sit-down dinner and a show then picked him up in time for bedtime.
This leaves you and your partner with some room for alone time. You won’t feel as if you went on vacation and need another vacation from your kid!
If you need to give an activity to your child so they would use up their energy, then take your kid on a walking tour of the city or the beach. In our cheap shore excursion in Nassau, we walked around to Fort Fincastle and the Queen’s Steps. That was a few thousand steps for our little one!
Alternatively, we also go to a beach with our little one. We make sure to pack his swim clothes, a bucket, and a spade, and off he goes in his own little world. The last time we were on a beachfront vacation, the little one was on the beach for 2 hours. Playing in the water and on the sand is a great way to keep the toddlers occupied if they like the water.
Some children don’t like the water so a beach activity may not work as well for them. In that case, take them on strolls downtown with you. There may be a park, a statue, or a great view of your cruise ship that may pique your child’s interest.
As we also mentioned in our cheap Nassau shore excursion post, it is great to maintain your toddler’s schedule on land aboard the ship. This helps your toddler try to still have a semblance of normalcy even if he’s in a new environment.
Being on a cruise ship means that everything is new for our toddler. He kept saying door whenever we would walk through the hallways. He loved to go to the water park, and of course, the buffet was something new for him!
Whenever your toddler is in a new environment, they get stimulated and excited. They want to explore and try to do everything! This also means they get tired and cranky more easily. It’s all a matter of balance – what time will quiet time be, and what time the other activities will be happening.
Our toddler knows to expect breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks within a certain timeframe. He also gets a certain amount of screen time which is the same as when we are at home.
Having a buffet is a godsend for parents with kids who are picky eaters. With the buffet option, we allowed our child to try new things to eat, and he finally decided that he liked to eat pizza. He would eat a whole pizza and after that eye-opening experience, he then decided that he is more open to trying out new things to eat.
We love that our first cruise changed our toddler’s eating habits. Now, when he tries something, he at least puts it in his mouth and tells us if he likes it or not. He usually realizes that he likes a lot of new things, except meat. Our toddler is a vegetarian.
Use the variety of food available on the cruise to teach your toddler to try and eat new things. During the buffet, we would sit at a table and he would randomly just grab food from our plates.
Carnival and Margaritaville at Sea have a rotating buffet where the food for lunch and dinner changes with no set menu until you actually go up to the Lido Deck. However, Carnival offers staple food options like Guy’s Burger Joint (burgers), a taco place, and a pizza place. Read more about our Carnival Elation restaurants and bars post.
By having a rotating buffet with some fixed staple options, you can teach your toddler to try new things and if it doesn’t go well, you can always fall back on some staples! Even eating in the main dining room was a great experience since the menus change daily as well. The dining experience is what makes cruising with a toddler so convenient.
We used our time onboard the ship by teaching our child about the world. We taught him the difference between up and down and what buttons he has to click on the elevator. He knows that the buffet is on a higher floor than ours, so he clicks the up button. After eating, we go back down to the room, and he clicks the down button on the elevator.
We also taught our boy about big and small. The cruise ship was big and he had a small toy boat, so that was his concept of small. The world itself is a great teacher. In the Bahamas, he saw a big fort and a water tower. He got a straw doll that’s handmade with his name embellished on it. We also got him a stingray plush to teach him some sea life. Not only are souvenirs are a great thing to remember when you travel, we usually buy unique toys for our toddler to enjoy too.
The world is an excellent teacher, and when you bring your kids to travel with you, they learn more about a place and a culture. Our little toddler loves to travel, and whenever we say, “we’re going on a trip”, he knows we’re going somewhere fun and new for him.
You’re in a floating small city in the middle of nowhere. Bring lots of toddler essentials onboard a cruise ship with you! This includes diapers for those traveling with babies or non-potty-trained kids. In fact, bring more than enough diapers with you on the cruise. You don’t know if they carry the size your child wears onboard the cruise ship’s store in case you run out. If they do, expect to pay a high markup for the convenience of buying items onboard.
The same goes for any other item you may need: toothpaste, a toothbrush, feminine supplies, medicine, and the like. The ship’s shop is just there in case you do run out of items, forget them, or worse: your luggage may have been misplaced by the airline if you flew down.
When traveling with a toddler or a baby, one thing you must have at all times is milk. If you breastfeed, then no need to worry, since you’ve got what you need. However, for those who are formula-fed or have already been weaned, bring your own milk.
Our toddler still loves his milk, but we’re not taking changes: we brought boxed milk. Not all cruise lines have great working refrigerators in your room onboard the ship. Carnival’s refrigerator was barely enough to cool down our drink, much more fresh milk.
When I was traveling in the UK, I noticed that there are some milk types that don’t need to be refrigerated. The milk can last for longer periods of time as long as the package is not opened yet. I found it interesting so I searched here in the US for boxed milk.
You can get flavored boxed milk in grocery stores. Usually, they’re chocolate or vanilla flavored, but these would probably have more sugar on them so we didn’t opt for that brand. If you want something that’s as close to regular milk without the need to refrigerate as often, buy boxed milk. They’re available in the baking aisle and can last a few months in your pantry.
Boxed milk can be a bit more expensive. A quart of it is roughly the same price as a gallon of fresh milk. However, boxed milk is easier to transport onboard the ship since there is no need for a refrigerator until you open it. You need to put it inside a refrigerator once opened, but it should last for a few days. We usually bring it on cruises with our toddler as a backup in case we can’t source any regular milk onboard the ship.
During breakfast, some cruise lines offer milk in tetra packs that you can take and drink. We would get at least 2 of them and put them back in our room refrigerator so we can give milk to our child when he asks for them. On our Carnival cruise, these packs are only available at breakfast, and milk was not available in the buffet during lunch or dinner.
There was no milk available at the coffee stations (just creamer), so to have something to drink during dinner and after breakfast, we would just stash milk from the buffet in our room. We saw other families with young children doing the same! Whole milk may not be available but we were happy with 2% or whatever they had. They even have chocolate milk on our Carnival cruise – which is currently not an option for our boy.
Alternatively, you can also buy powdered milk to bring on to the cruise where you can just pour water to make milk. Again, not the best option for our child, but if it comes to that, he will probably drink it if he has no other choice.
If you are traveling with a toddler who’s not potty trained and wants to go to the pool, you may be out of luck. Some cruise lines do not allow non-potty-trained children to go in the pool at all, even if they are wearing swim diapers. Some cruise lines allow children to go to a splash area with no problems at all.
If you are in the middle of potty training and your child still has accidents, I would still put a swim diaper on the child to avoid accidents in a public place. Be discreet about putting diapers on your child if they make it in the pool though!
Splash parks and small water parks are a godsend on sea days for toddlers. Our child can spend hours at the waterpark and still wants to take a long shower afterward. The only reason we pulled him out of the waterpark? Because his fingers were getting really wrinkled and it was starting to get cold. Guess what? He was out for a 3+ hour long nap after that morning in the water park.
The water park is the best way to use up your child’s seemingly neverending supply of energy.
There are Facebook groups and/or nice people who hide rubber duckies aboard the ship for people to find. We managed to find 2 hidden in the ship when we were randomly walking around.
Not all the ships may have this activity, but at Carnival, it looks like a few of the cruisers do it. There is no map and no official guide on where to find these ducks. You just have to be lucky. To all those who leave the duckies on the ship, thank you. As a mother of a toddler, these little treats onboard the ship really excited my toddler and he still plays with the duckies he found.
The ducks are not just meant for children but adults too. However, if you’re an adult and see a child who is also looking for a duck, please be nice enough to give up the duck for the child. If you don’t have a child of your own or someone else who can appreciate the toy, I would just give it to someone else who may.
So there you have it, a few tips for cruising with a toddler. We bring our child everywhere with us on our travels, and over time, he has grown accustomed to our lifestyle. He loves to cruise and whenever he sees a cruise ship, he calls it a big boat. In fact, a week after we came back from our cruise, he asked if he can go back on the “big boat!’. That’s a sign that he loved his experience onboard the ship.
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