Cruising today - what is it really like?

What happened when a battle-hardened travelwriter took a family cruise with Princess around the Mediterranean

My wife had the brochures out again. “A cruise?” I said. “We can’t possibly go on a cruise with our kids!” She didn’t speak. She simply pointed to the bit where it said cruises now catered for children. “But… cruises are for old people!” I blurted out.

“Well you’ll fit in perfectly,” she smiled and handed me the one she’d chosen.

And that was the end of that. We seemed to have agreed on a two-week cruise of the Mediterranean… with our kids.

Now like me, you may have thought that cruises are a safe but boring holiday for older people wanting to be waited on hand-and-foot without risking too much exposure to foreigners.

I last went on one as a travel journalist about ten years ago and thought it was a bit boring. But since then cruising has been riding the crest of a popular wave. Operators have launched more and bigger ships, and more and better routes. And as competition increases, many cruise lines have made big efforts to attract families on board.

None of which mattered to Harry, six, and Millie, four, of course. They just knew it sounded exciting.

When you board the ship it’s like walking into a huge tower block - so it wasn’t until their first sight of their cabin that they whooped with glee. Their room was next to ours and linked by a shared lounge with a spacious balcony. There were two bathrooms and three TVs.

The whole place was much bigger and more comfortable than the dark cruise cubbyhole I’d suffered on my last cruise. And this modern cabin was much smarter too - it reminded me of a room in a smart American chain hotel.

We discovered all the decks on Princess Cruises’ enormous new ship Star Princess had a similar feel to the cabin. The sun-loungers are plastic not teak, you buy cocktails in plastic glasses and all the milk is UHT. So forget the polished mahogany and brass of the cruise liners of yesteryear, on today’s American ships expect the plywood panelling and shiny pot plants of a huge mobile Marriott.

On a 109,000 tonne, 2,600-passenger ship that’s 1,000ft long, the first couple of days involve finding where everything is. It’s a good argument for a longer cruise; we were still discovering new rooms in the ship at the end of our fortnight.

The first day’s vital jobs were to unpack and unleash Harry and Millie in the Kids Zone.

Incidentally, this was at the opposite end of the ship. For future reference it’s worth booking at the same end of the ship as the kids club otherwise you face several miles of walking corridors every day.

The cruise started during most children’s term time so there were only 18 youngsters on board. In peak times they have hundreds. This meant the Princess staff only used a small part of the areas set aside for youngsters of various ages. Nevertheless our two were able to enjoy ranks of computer games, basketball pitch and open-air playground, dedicated kids’ disco and karaoke, plus soft play and craft areas.

The cheery child-care staff were a wide international mix and security was very tight. Kids Zone was open until ten at night for free then babysitting was available from 10pm-2am (costing £2.50 per hour per child). The kids loved going there and it became more and more difficult to extract them for family meals and shore trips.

These brief stops at ports seem to be what sell cruises. A long list of major sights always looks impressive in the adverts… Not for kids though. Ours were so bored by Venice they were almost unable to walk. They struggled around the ruins of Athens looking ill with dismay until we bought ice-creams and at Corfu they only wanted to rush to a toyshop and then back to the kids club in time for pizza lunch.

Riding the donkeys up the cliff from the quayside in Santorini was a mild diversion but Turkey’s famed Aegean coast, Katakolon in Greece beneath Mount Olympus and the world heritage site of Dbrovnick in Croatia didn’t even lure them off the ship.

And that was just fine with mum and dad. For it meant that we got the break we needed too. Too often family holidays with small children simply mean shifting full-time child-care to a different, less convenient location. And I confess I wasn’t much interested in classical antiquity when I was six either.

Instead we were able to have a lie-in, eat in peace, read books, have uninterrupted conversations, go to the gym and run the jogging track (ten times round the focastle equalled one mile). There’s a lot of food available on a cruise but thanks to those sports facilities I was able to come home fitter than when I started.

So it was a great success - but at the price it should be. If you just want a break from the kids a hotel with a good kids club would do the job as well for half the cost. You pay a lot extra for the sense of a sea voyage, nicely-behaved fellow passengers and glimpses of destinations along the way.

And Princess Cruises confess they make as much from on-board sales as they do from tickets - so that means passengers like us are paying as much again for all the extras and excursions.

So I was very strict with my family’s spending. Our first big saving was walking or taking taxis at each port instead of buying Princess’s over-priced excursions. A half-day walking tour of Venice would have cost our family $246 (£123) so we did a walking tour ourselves for nothing - it was just round the corner from the ship. 

We ignored persistent attempts to sell expensive photography, videos and art to passengers. But with every glass of wine, and beer charged to your account, extras add up over a fortnight. Not even ice-creams, bottled water or children’s squash are free. And every passenger pays a $10 (£5) daily charge to cover tips - that’s £280 for a family of four on a fortnight.

One similar British family were shocked to get a bill of more than £1,000 at the end of the cruise. Our penny-pinching bill was about £400 - small enough to make me crow about my astute financial management. And small enough to make me boast to my wife about MY excellent choice of family holiday…

Princess Cruises offers 12-nights onboard Grand Princess from £8,876 for a family of four sharing the Family Suite (sleeping up to eight people).  Travelling on the Greek Isles cruise onboard Grand Princess, taking in Venice, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon, Athens, Mykonos, Ephesus, Rhodes, Santorini, Naples and Civitavecchia.  This price includes flights from London, transfers, meals and on-board activities.  For more information or to book please visit www.princesscruises.co.uk or call 0845 3 555 800.