Thread: Which 15 Day Round Trip Cruise from California to Hawaii with Kids

Hi All,

We are considering Celebrity Century or Carnival Spirit in April 2012 to Hawaii from San Diego round trip.

This will be 5th and longest cruise. We have never sailed with Celebrity before and liked Carnival.

Do all the ships that go to Hawaii get close to the Volcano? Celebrity advertises it, Carnival doesn't say anything about it and said it's up to the captain..

As far as kids programs, pools, kids food, which is better or did you like more and why?

Any help would be great,

We booked Celebrity but can always change,

The Carnival has 1 more port call and cost a little more, but will it get close to the volcano?

Something to think about: in April, most likely you won't see too many school aged kids onboard any two-week cruise. Spring breaks are usually just one week long (at least here in Southern California) and the extra five days of missed school won't be tolerated by most school districts, especially if state tests are a few weeks later.

So if you want a full fledged kids program, your best bet is to go during the last couple of weeks of December, which is what we've done. Unfortunately, some of the cruiselines that go to Hawaii don't go at that time.

Not sure about how close the ships go to Kilauea lately. We did sail by on the Island Princess in 2005 and it was so cool to see the lava hitting the ocean at night. But I've heard it stopped being that active in the years after that. Not sure about now. If it isn't that active, it probably wouldn't be worth it. We didn't go by in December on the Golden Princess. You can go to the volcano park when you're on the Big Island.

Thanks, we are on year round still, so we actually have 5 weeks off in April! Figured it would be a good time to go before we go back to traditional.

Jim