We are a family of 4, ages 38, 36, 8 (boy) and 5 (girl). We were a part of CC's roll call, also, which added a wonderful element that we'd not experienced in any of our 9 cruises before (this was our children's 7th cruise). I am going to write this review from a different perspective than many of the other reviews, since we were traveling with young children. During the planning of this vacation, it was often difficult finding info pertaining to young children, so hopefully this will be helpful to others like us. I am going to try to be thorough, so that means it will be LONG!

I feel the need to add that we are a very active family and also travel a lot together. Our children usually do abnormally well with long days that require walking, so our plans were probably a lot more ambitious than typical for their ages. I found throughout the trip, though, that even for my children, certain days were just too much for them and we would adapt based on the previous days.

To prepare the kids for this trip, I checked out several children's books from the library on the various places we would be visiting, both fiction and non-fiction. The children's chapter book series, The Magic Treehouse, has several books set in locations throughout Europe that introduces them to the areas. We read the ones about Pompeii, Venice and London. I also made a matching memory card game for them on index cards with photos off the internet of the different things we'd see and visit. They loved this game and because of it, they knew a lot more about the places we'd be visiting than my husband! We also played an ongoing game of answering European Trivia questions whenever we traveled in the car. I feel certain that their prior knowledge of the sights really enhanced their experience, as they would be so excited to point out something and say, "Look, there's _____!" or "That was sculpted by ____!" Read more