WE’RE ALL SHIPSHAPE!
Cruising is for the older generation, right? No, it’s a blast for all the family . . .
WhATeVer preconceptions I once had about cruising, I never expected my first experience to pan out quite like this: watching a dance spectacular on ice in the middle of the Bay of Biscay — with three excited children.
For it’s not just the size of the modern cruise ship that has expanded dramatically in recent years. So has the target market.
Certainly, the large part (if not the majority) of those with us on board royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas were British families with young children. Not that we were going anywhere near the Caribbean. We were on a six-night half-term trip from Southampton to France and Spain and back.
As it turned out, my three children — aged nine, eight and five — would have been perfectly happy if the ship had not stopped anywhere, as they had no great interest in getting off. There is no danger of getting cabin fever on a vessel the size of Cornwall.
The size of it all is giddying. It’s not just the climbing wall or the West end-sized theatre or the ice rink; our two connecting en-suite cabins were each the size of a decent hotel room.
equally intriguing was all the grub. There was just one halfhour window of non-eating time, just after breakfast. Otherwise, you could graze happily from dawn until midnight.
The children would have stayed put in the 11th-floor Windjammer, a vast buffet with a help-yourself ice-cream machine.
But we opted mostly for the more traditional dining room (all-you-can-eat breakfast, a two-course lunch and threecourse dinner, which changed every day, all included in the regular package).
It’s a three-storey affair with uniformed waiting staff (but no Captain’s Table). If you arrive as a family at the start of an evening sitting, they will fast-track the children’s food and then whisk them away to Kids’ Club. That way, my wife and I could have a civilised dinner on our own.
royal Caribbean has childcare well-sorted into three separate age groups. One evening we pulled our nine-year-old out of a decorate-your-own-pillowcase session for a magic show in the theatre. After 20 minutes with her parents, she insisted on being returned to Kids’ Club.
Our first stop was billed as ‘Paris’, an optimistic destination for a ship several sizes larger than the Seine. Sure enough, this involved disembarking just across the Channel in Le havre and travelling in by coach. So we decided to stay on board and make the most of the climbing wall, crazy golf and hot tubs.
Two days later, we were docking at Bilbao, Spain, where fleets of coaches bussed us in to the great Basque city. We had opted for a tour of the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum, hoping that we might perhaps get half way round it before one of the children had a meltdown.
But its futuristic layout and huge installations — not least Puppy, by Jeff Koons, a 40ft West highland Terrier coated in flowers — kept them enthralled.
A day later, there was another stop in the more workmanlike port of Gijon. We failed to make it to the Museum of Bagpipes, as the children were itching to get back to the ship to go skating.
As for the adults, there was everything from sushi classes, to extensive gym facilities, roundthe-clock gambling in the casino and 16 bars spread over 15 decks. Pre-paid drinks packages (all the beer and wine you want for £30 a day) seemed popular; some passengers never strayed on to dry land as a result.
As we sailed back up the Channel, I discovered a new bit of deck with strange markings and families enjoying a cross between bowls, curling and snooker. We’d found the deck games at last. Anyone for shuffleboard?
TRAVEL FACTS
ROYAL Caribbean offers a six-night France & Spain Experience cruise on board Navigator of the Seas from August 19-25, 2017, sailing on a round-trip from Southampton. A Balcony stateroom starts from £3,196 for a family of four. royal
caribbean.co.uk, 0844 493 4005