Survival Guide on Cruising With Your Teenagers

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. Any ship will do!.
Odds are the bigger the ship, the more teens will be on-board and the more activities available for them. This is not as important since teens will usually find each other on their own to have fun, irrespective of whether there are programs available on the cruise. These programs are more important if you have younger kids in tow since the structure it provides means less worries on keeping the small ones entertained.

2. Teens will always complain during the planning stage but always end up enjoying the trip.
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 from my experience, at the end of each cruise, my teens are always glad they came with mom and dad.

3. You don't have to carry their luggage anymore! (just teasing)
Some truth to it though ... remember those days when you have to push them on strollers when you go on vacations? With teens, you can now focus on more exotic locations which you could not go to before.

4. Teens need breathing room, space-wise.
If you have younger kids, a triple cabin or a quad cabin will work since it's a bit cozier than the larger rooms. 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. Mini-suites are usually larger than the largest regular room and you will have curtains to separate the sleeping areas. A full suite will have more space than two separate regular rooms so verify if the pricing is lower if you were to go with the regulars.

If you will be charged the same for a full suite versus two regular rooms, then you need to evaluate which one is better in terms of comfort and privacy. 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 mitigate this, you can always go for the adjoining rooms set up so you can at least hear what is going on with your teens next door.

The adjoining cabins set-up are usually in high demand especially in the summer and at spring break, so try to book 6 months or so in advance.

5. Teens need their freedom.
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!

This is where cruise vacations works great -- you can be together as a family unit while doing those on-shore excursions away from the ship, but once you come on-board, let your teens set their own activities with other teens. All you need to do is implement a simple curfew and check up on them a few times.

Just follow these simple tips and you are on your way to a relaxing cruise with your teenagers. Our kids grow up too fast and before you know it, they will be out of the house, so I say enjoy the time you have with them as much as possible!

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Jane is a retiree living in the heat of Fort Laderdale Florida. In an effort to relieve boredom, while at the same time make some money on the side, she has started setting up a varied collection of sites, so if you are looking for a place with the best selection and pricing on exercise balls or if you are one of the lucky few with an ipad and you are looking for an ipad case , try visiting her sites.

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