We just got back from a ten day Alaskan cruise. My wife and I are both 38 and we have three boys, ages 7, 5, and 2 and a half. We also traveled with my wife=s parents and my wife=s sister, husband, and 10 year old son. This was our second cruise. Last year we all took Celebrity Infinity on a ten day cruise to the Mexican Riviera. It's hard not to compare the two ships, but it is an unfair advantage because my family had a two-room family veranda suite on the Infinity and a very small ocean view room on the Dawn Princess.

THE CABIN:

As I said, we had an ocean view room with two lower beds and two pull-down bunk beds. We were on deck 6 in the front of the ship. The cabin was very small in general and the bathroom was tiny. I am six feet tall and weigh 185 pounds and could barely maneuver in there. The picture window was large and the kids enjoyed sitting on the ledge by the window to watch for whales. The room was in decent shape and our steward did an adequate job keeping the room made up. He was very friendly and brought us cookies and chocolates every night. But I felt that he could have done more special things for the kids. For example, on Celebrity, our steward made various animals out of towels that the kids loved. There was adequate storage space and a mini fridge for drinks. There were only two outlets, including one for the small television. This made it difficult to plug in the chargers for the camera batteries. I would recommend bringing an adapter. Also, our cabin was at the complete other end as the kids= club, an area I traveled to a lot. I wish I would have researched the ship=s floor plans and tried to get a closer cabin. The elevators are also confusing as the front elevators go from decks 5 -14, the middle ones from 5-8, and the rear from 7-14. Since you have to go outside to get from one end of decks 12 and 14 to the other, it required a bit of navigation to get from one end to the other. For example, I had to leave deck 6 from the front, go up to deck 7-11, walk to the back, and take the elevator (or stairs, but we had a stroller) to deck 12 to the kids club. While having the kids added to this problem, I encountered several passengers wandering about confused about how to get to the other end of the ship without going outside. Finally, we encountered pretty rough seas on our way up to Alaska, and I believe that a cabin towards the back on a lower deck would have moved less. Read more