More and more families are opting for cruise vacations. Modern cruise ships are safe and fun for passengers of all ages. However, as with any family outing, parents need to be vigilant about assuring that their children remain safe.
One advantage of a sea voyage is that the entire crew is dedicated to the safety and enjoyment of all guests, and especially of the youngest ones. Most cruise lines provide children with color-coded wrist bands that must be worn at all times. This helps reunite lost children with their parents.
Ship railings are designed to be child-safe. They will either have horizontal bars too close together for a child to fit through, or the rails will be covered with thick plexiglass. Still, children love to climb. To be safe, don't ever leave your child to wander on the balcony unattended.
Most children easily adapt to life onboard. After the first day, kids will usually find their way around deck as easily as the adults. However, you should always walk your children from your cabin to the activity center and back, so that the entire family knows the way.
Children should spend their days either with adult family members or participating in the many adult-supervised activities on board the ship. Children's activities are typically scheduled to coincide with adult activities, so that the parents can have their own fun while the crew looks after the kids. Kid's pools, discos, and arcades are common features on today's ships. Babysitting services may also be available. Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2, for example, has children's nurses and English nannies on staff.
Before and during your cruise, discuss and emphasize safety issues with your kids. Be sure to warn them not to stray into "Crew Only" areas, which are strictly off-limits. So long as children remain under the watchful eye of an attentive adult, and heed all directions from the staff, their cruise experience is sure to lots of fun.
Modern cruise ships have an insatiable thirst for fresh water. Some of today's biggest cruise ships, like the Grand Princess, use more than 260,000 gallons of fresh water every day. Rather than carry all this water from the embarkation port, or rely on local ports of call, the newest state-of-the-art cruise ships transform salty sea water into fresh drinking water by a process known as desalination.
The desalination process on a cruise ship uses either flash evaporators or osmosis. Flash evaporators boil sea water and re-condense the steam vapor, producing fresh drinking water. This method is similar to the natural water cycle, where sea water is heated by the sun, rises as steam to form clouds, and then falls back to earth as rain. The second method, osmosis, filters sea water through a fine membrane to separate pure water from salt and other minerals. Cruise ships do not desalinate water near ports or close to land, because coastal waters are the most contaminated.
After desalination, the water is passed through a mineralization plant, which adds minerals. This is necessary because the healthy minerals naturally found in drinking water have been removed by desalination. At this stage, the water is also checked for impurities, sanitized, and the pH is corrected. The water is then sent to massive storage tanks on board the cruise ship. On the Grand Princess, for example, these storage tanks hold up to 500,000 gallons of fresh water.
Next, the water is routed to hot and cold systems. Miles of distribution pipe move the water around the cruise ship.
After the water is delivered through a sink or shower, and used by cruise ship passengers or crew, it must be treated again before it can be discharged. All cruise ships must follow strict environmental laws in the treatment of waste water. Even after treatment, the water is not immediately released, but is held in special storage tanks when the ship is close to land, in port, or other sensitive environments.
It's a complex process, but necessary in order to ensure the health of cruise ship passengers and the natural environment.
On your next cruise, consider signing up for the shore excursions organized by your cruise line. While there are many options available to tourists at popular ports of call, organized excursions offer several advantages over going it alone.
Quality
The major cruise lines carefully inspect all of their ports and offer their passengers shore excursions from only the most reputable local agencies. Remember, these companies are putting their own reputations on the line by selecting and recommending tours. They want to improve customer loyalty by giving their passengers the best possible experience.
Variety
Cruise lines feature popular and interesting attractions on their recommended lists. They cater to customers with varying interests, fitness levels, and budgets. The selection of tours in each port is designed to satisfy the diverse needs of their passengers.
Service
Why cobble together your own tour package when you can let the specialists do most of the work for you? Better to spend your vacation time having fun with family and friends than fret over independent arrangements and last-minute changes. Let the experts serve you.
Schedule
When you are on an excursion organized by your cruise line, the company knows where you are. They closely monitor the departures and returns of all organized tours. Ships do not sail from a port of call until all of their organized tour transportation has returned. However, your ship's crew can't track the whereabouts of passengers who leave scheduled tours or who arrange their own unaffiliated excursions. If an unmonitored tour is late returning to port, there is always the risk that the ship will leave those passengers behind. To avoid this risk, it is highly recommended that you book only those tours organized or recommended by your cruise line.
Safety
Cruise companies put your safety first. From embarkation to return, they are looking out for you day and night. To this end, they only work with the most reliable, safe tour operators.
Value
Local tour operators offer major organizations the best quality shore excursions at the most reasonable prices.
So the next time you choose a cruise, avail yourself of your ship's organized shore excursions. They offer the best quality, variety, service, scheduling, safety, and value for your cruise vacation dollar.
