Thread: Shore Excursions with Kids

What shore excursions have you done with the kid / kids?
Was it good for them? How about you?
What about beach days, do you find they enjoy that just as much as excursions?
What would you not do with the kids & why besides the obvious.
What would you do diffrent?

I don't have kids, but I'll tell you, beach days with Waverunners are a blast. Nevertheless, I can enjoy beachdays without waverunners too. Snorkeling, volleyball come to mind.

In the past, we consider the specific port. On our E. Caribbean cruise, the girl (age 3 then) stayed onboard when we were at Nassau and San Juan and she came with us at St. Thomas. It was based on our perception of how safe each was.

In Mexico, she stayed aboard in PV and Matzalan but came with hubby in Cabo as I was sick with a hay fever attack (two times in PV and two times my histimines went crazy). And the times we were in Ensenada (after her birth) we just went to that little marketplace by the pier.

In Alaska, she came with us in Ketchikan (I didn't sign her up for in-port sitting early enough) and she was pretty bored on the tour we took. She also would complain about walking around. So I signed her up for the rest of the week immediately and we cancelled her ticket for our Skagway excursion.

In Hawaii, we weren't sure about booking her for excursions but decided to anyway (you can cancel the ship's excursion by a specific deadline on Princess). We planned on Sea Life Park for her and she loved it. She had wanted to do the SLP Dolphin Swim but it would have been complicated booking that online as the time listed was different from just the SLP excursion. And we didn't all want to do the Dolphin Swim so it would have been a waste of money to sign me up.

As it turned out, the times were merged to be the same but we decided to stick with just the straight SLP excursion for the three of us.

She also did the snorkeling trip on Maui because the start time was so early, we would not have been able to get her to the kids' program and make the boat too. Turned out I stayed on the little boat and she went into the water with my hubby.

The surprising thing was that she willingly went with us on our Hilo excursion which was just sightseeing the scenery. Her only complaint was feeling a little iffy near the end probably because we ended up in the back of the van and it was some bumpy roads.

She was involved in the selection of where we were going (she said "Hawaii") and somewhat involved with the planning of our activities off the ship. I also gave her a choice of which clothing to pack.

Patty,

I think I've seen you post this before. But what was the earliest age of your DD that you took her on her first cruise?

My DS will be almost 1yr old when he goes on his first cruise and I know he is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too young for anything...

but I was just curious.

thanks!

For the younger kids....or when they were younger...we pretty much did beachy excursions.

Anything that was more strenuous, we left them on the ship in the kids room.

I know for Cozumel, doing dune buggies....my littlest dd may be staying on the ship. Not sure yet.

Having teens you need to plan a little before you get to the port. I make sure that I have a list of things that we can choose from and then kind of take a survery. I try to meet what each person wants to do, but since no one is fussy about it here it works out well if at one port we go to the beach and another we might do inland excursions or tours.