The first thing we noticed when we arrived at our suite was that the cot that we had pre-ordered and confirmed 3 times with our travel agant was not in our room. No problems, we boarded around 1pm and our 2 year old was not due for a sleep until 8pm that night so there was plenty of time to rectify the issue - or so we thought!! And we were not alone!! The family a few doors down could be heard on the phone complaining about the same thing - no cot. So at 10pm my wife had to be escorted to the back rooms of the guest services desk as she was "upsetting the other passengers" with her raised voice while I was doing the same thing up on Deck 8. At one stage the room attendant brought us what looked like a dog bed for our son to sleep on and my only response when I saw this was to laugh and slam the door in her face. A suggestion was also made to push 2 chairs together for him to sleep on which was almost the tipping point. But, under the situation we stayed calm until finally close to midnight we were brought a portable cot. We were later told that there were 44 babies and toddlers on board our cruise requiring cots and only 18 available. Somewhere along the line there is a serious communciation issue that needs to be rectified.

OK - so day 1 was not the best start to the holiday but we were determined to make the most of our first ever cruise. Pardon the pun but from that day on the rest of our trip was smooth sailing and we could not of asked for more. The food was great, especially in the restaurant. Our waiter Victor could not of been more helpful with our requests and our room attendent Joel couldn't do enough to help us out. We prepaid our tips but didn't hesitate giving these guys a bit more for the great service they provided.

For those considering a cruise with kids then wait no longer - the staff in the Nursery and Adventure Ocean were fantastic. We travelled with a 2 year old who was looked after fabulously by the Nursery staff and our 3.5 year could not wait for opening hours at Adventure Ocean - he had an absolute blast which left my wife and I a couple of hours each day to relax and unwind and take advantage of the great cocktails and cold beers the bar had to offer!! Read more