My teens are all grown up and one of the nicest experiences we shared as a family has been to go on cruise vacations. Follow these simple guidelines and you can enjoy that cruise with your teens.
1. You can pick any ship and it will work out.
The bigger ships will have more teens and more facilities and programs specifically for them. These programs are nice but not critical since teens, as we all know, just find other teens to hang out with. The opposite applies when you travel with younger kids, they need more structure.
2. Teens will gripe initially about the trip but usually end up enjoying it.
I am sure you have seen this in your teens, not just when you are planning a cruise but just about anything else. They will always say that they would rather just stay at home and hang with friends .. but what usually happens at the end of each cruise is that you teens will be happy that they went with you.
3. Teens can carry their own luggage (just kidding!)
It's true though ... Remember those days when you had to carry them and their stuff when they were younger? Now you can focus on more adventurous destinations that you have always wanted to visit.
4. Teens need breathing room, space-wise.
When the kids were small, going for a triple cabin worked since it was cozier for everyone. Teens will need more space, so depending on your budget, you have several options -- mini-suites or family suites which can hold five or more people, adjoining cabins with a private connecting door between them (similar set-up you can find in hotels), two adjoining cabins with no privacy door, or cabins facing each other with one across the hall and one with a balcony and a nice ocean view!
Each cruise will present you with various options so it's best to confirm the details with a cruise counselor before you book it. In my experience, mini-suites are usually larger than the largest regular room, with curtains separating the sleeping areas. A regular suite will be larger than two regular rooms combined and might be less expensive than the two rooms.
If the pricing between a suite and two separate rooms are similar, then focus on which is more comfortable while providing privacy at the same time. The full suite might be comfortable for the entire family at the expense of privacy requirements for your teens. Just keep in mind that if you go with separate rooms, it's harder to monitor your teens. To address this, you can always book adjoining rooms so you can at least hear your teens activities next door.
Due to the above factors, adjoining cabins are usually the first to be booked during summer and spring breaks, so try to reserve them months in advance.
5. In addition to their need for space, teens need their freedom too.
As a parent, you just want to enjoy that cruise vacation with the entire family. Your teens, on the other hand, might have a different agenda and might just want to be as far away from you as possible!
Not a problem with cruise vacations -- you can compromise by being together on those on-shore excursions but when you are on board the ship, let your teens set their own activities away from you. Just adopt a simple curfew and check on them once in a while.
If you follow these basic guidelines, you are set in terms of enjoying that cruise with your teens. Time goes by too fast for all of us and these teens will be out of the house on their own before you know it, so enjoy the time you have with them as much as you can!
Author Resource:-
Monty is a bored retiree living in the middle of the Las Vegas desert. In an effort to relieve the boredom, he has started setting up a varied collection of sites, so if you are looking for a store with the best selection and pricing on tiffany lamps or just looking for an ipad case for your iPad, try visiting his sites.
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