All aboard
With a growing number of cruise lines catering to families, Amanda Morison sailed one of the most child-friendly ships to find out if its facilities really stood the test
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEMMA DAY
Note to self: the next time I try to take a photograph of one of the world’s largest cruise ships, stand well away from the water’s edge.
I now have a jigsaw-puzzle set of pictures of Independence of the Seas. At 339 metres long, our holiday home for 11 days is so large that my holiday companion – my three-year-old son, Barnaby – couldn’t initially get his head around its scale: ‘It’s not big. You said it was big.’ It turns out that his little head and eyes weren’t capable of taking in its size in one go, any more than my camera was.
We’d been lured onto Independence of the Seas by its family cabins. Although they are large enough to sleep six, I decided to road (er, sea?) test them before taking along my entire family of five including the husband. As any parent who has ever crammed into a ‘family room’ will confirm, not all are created equal. It’s not just about the space available, but how it is used. You want an area to play in, lots of storage and kids’ beds tucked away out of sight. If a child can see you first thing in the morning, you can forget any idea of further sleep, and just try getting them to nod off when they can see you from their bed.
So I was impressed with the way the cabins cunningly fit two bunks into a hidden-away niche, with even a curtain to pull across. The other four berths are a large double bed, plus a sofa bed. With just the two of us, we had plenty of room to spare, as Barnaby proved the second he got into the cabin. He climbed into each of the three wardrobes, bounced on the bed and sofa, pressed his face and body against the two large portholes, clambered onto the top bunk, and hid in a ‘stowaway seat’, a stool with hidden storage.
Phew. The ship hadn’t even left Southampton for our 11-night Canary Islands cruise, and Barnaby was clearly going to take to life on the ocean wave with ease.
Apart from the excitable three-year-old, so far so stress-free. We had nipped down to Southampton by train and taxi, and strolled onto the ship with ease – the complete opposite of most airport experiences with young children. Once onboard, and after our cabin blitz, we explored. Which took a long time. As I’ve mentioned, this is one big baby. Aquanaut kids’ club. Vast children’s pool. Endless restaurants. Mini golf. Surf simulator. Casino Royale. Cinema. Not to mention an arcade of shops, complete with a vintage Morgan car filled with two giant teddy bears, and a Ben & Jerry’s café (guess how long it took Barnaby to locate that one?). Plus an ice-skating rink. Truly. You even get shows put on by international skaters. We went to two, and loved them both, from the seat-side drinks service to the dazzling number of costume changes. The point is, there’s a lot to do, so if you don’t want to play bingo, line-dance or brush up your bridge, you don’t have to, though, had the husband been there, he’d have been straight off to meet bridge guru Margret Chaplin to ask about her stance on the Phoney Club bid.
Barnaby and I were hugely excited to be invited onto the actual bridge. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t an area the size of a tennis court, filled with screens, charts, compasses and crew looking intently through binoculars out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. When the ship is steered by crew, rather than on autopilot, it’s done on a wheel smaller than you’d find in a car. We were there at dusk, and the bridge is kept dark to help the crew’s night vision. Voices are kept as low as the lights, and Barnaby sat entranced for an hour and a half as the ship made its way from Southampton into the Bay of Biscay. He was in awe of the captain, a rugged Norwegian by name of Remo. After we’d gone though the ‘secret door’ back to the main ship, we’d hear an excited ripple every time Remo made an announcement over the Tannoy. ‘Ooh, Nemo! It’s Nemo again’, said the teeny guests, thinking of the little fish in the Finding Nemo film. ‘That’s the captain. He’s making the ship move on a small and tiny wheel,’ said Barnaby knowingly to his Aquanaut friends.
So, having avoided the card form of bridge, and not having set eyes on any line-dancers, what was left to do? More than we had time for in 11 days, is the answer. Like family rooms, not all kids’ clubs are created equal. Aquanauts is run by the kind of enthusiastic American and British 20-somethings that give college education a good name. Barnaby went in for a couple of hours each day, skipping back to the cabin with craft projects, including some splendid alien headgear.
He solemnly explained, to those ‘fortunate’ enough to be in the lift with us, that it was used to “hunt baddies from outer space”.
There was a similarly well-run paradise for mums, by name of the Shipshape Spa. I’d heard good things about cruise-ship spas, from a friend who has sailed into the sunset while having a facial more often than most of us have had hot dinners. Apparently, they’re the best in the business, and have to be thorough in order to attract repeat business. ShipShape uses Elemis products, one of my favourite lines because of the way they combine active botanical ingredients with cutting-edge science. My Tri-Enzyme facial was a 50-minute workout using hot flannels, massage, exfoliation and extreme cleansing. I can’t claim that I looked 10 years younger afterwards, though I already felt surprisingly youthful – I was called ‘young lady’ on boarding, something that hasn’t happened in at least 10 years.
Families make up a relatively small percentage of UK cruise goers, but ships like Independence are working hard at changing this. It’s not just the kids’ club, but more a realisation that today’s guests, young or old, don’t necessarily want formality. We had signed onto an ‘open dining’ package, which meant we could eat when we wanted, in a choice of at least three restaurants every meal. Sometimes the quick-and-easy buffet in the Windjammer Cafe was the answer, a choice of everything from chicken korma to burgers and salads. When we did eat ‘posh’, it was in our designated restaurant, the King Lear, and we didn’t bother with ‘formal’ dining nights when you had to glam up in cocktail dresses. We’d sit next to a giant porthole with waves crashing around, dining on an eclectic mix of grilled fish followed by chocolate cookies. Eating early, by 6.30pm or so, meant we didn’t need to worry about tiny tantrums ruining grown-up evenings, and if Barnaby had any energy left he could head up to the kids’ club for more alien-headgear-making.
Outings off the boat were incredibly simple. You could either sign up for an organised activity – a visit to a water park, say – or you could just use the arranged shuttle bus to head into town, depending on which island you were on. You could even, as many passengers did, choose to stay on the ship and enjoy a session poolside on a comfortable sunlounger.
As holidays with children go, this was easy: plenty of fresh air, exercise if you could be bothered – the gym is incredibly well equipped, and there’s an outdoor running track – and more than enough food. Thankfully, having a young child with me meant I didn’t make the 11.30pm buffet, or I really would have rolled off the ship. And, now that Barnaby has killed off the resident population of baddies from outer space, I feel confident enough to return with the rest of the family. And there’s a nice little Caribbean jaunt I’ve got my eye on, complete with bridge lessons. Talk about bon voyage.
For more, call 0800 916 3233, visit www.cruisethomascook.com, your local Thomas Cook or Going Places store, or see Thomas Cook TV, Sky channel 655
MULTIPLE BERTHS
The latest super-sized and interconnecting family suites could even sleep (well, most of) the Brady Bunch
Most of NCL’s 371 family-friendly staterooms on Norwegian Epic - which can sleep up to four and some of which have balconies - are on decks 13 and 14, right next to their biggest-ever Kids’ Crew club. Carnival Dream has the line’s first ever five-berth ocean-view staterooms, with two bathrooms, while P&O’s Azura, a carbon copy of Ventura, will have two six-sleeper family suites, each with two interconnecting rooms and two bathrooms. But don’t worry if you miss the boat on those, as there are 443 quad cabins and 221 triple cabins throughout the ship.
At the luxury end, Crystal Symphony and Crystal Serenity have 10 and 50 connecting staterooms and 89 and 154 triple-berth rooms respectively, while Silversea’s Silver Spirit has six Owner and two Grand suites that can sleep up to four people when joined with a vista or veranda suite.
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