This was our first time on a Princess Cruise since having the girls. While we love sailing Princess, they are not known for catering to families. We did a lot of prep work to make sure things would go as smooth as possible.
Princess does provide baby food as a special request, so we were able to have a ton of baby food and juice delivered to our stateroom our first day onboard. We had so much baby food that we ended up bringing home a big box of stuff. On our last cruise Melia ate a wide variety of food of the menu so I wasn't really concerned about her. Both girls tried a bunch of different foods on the ship. Melia was being pretty picky so she ate a ton of grapes and bread. I thought she was going to turn into a grape! I even broke a bunch of the "mommy rules" for introducing foods to Makena. Here is a picture of her trying fresh mussels from the Murray River in Prince Edward Island!
We pre-arranged to have a pack and play for Makena to sleep in. We made a little bed on the floor at night for Melia out of a bunch of blankets. Somehow both girls usually ended up in our bed, but for the most part sleeping arrangements worked out well. Since someone else was doing the laundry, we decided to test our nighttime potty training out. Melia slept through 3 of the nights without wetting the bed! While I was proud of her, we are back in pull ups
at night at home. Mommy isn't planning on washing the sheets every night yet!
We reserved a table at a fixed dining time so that we would have the same wait staff each night. We really enjoy the "traditional" style of dining on a cruise ship. Plus with kids the routine really helps. Each night they had our table set with two high chairs and the servers quickly learned what we needed. We would sit down and they brought over Diet Coke for Mommy and Daddy, a glass of milk for Melia and a small spoon for Makena's baby food. The wait staff the entire cruise loved entertaining the girls and the girls loved them too. Melia did decide that she preferred to eat her meals on the floor in the corner near our table most nights. It worked out well where the table was that we had a small little corner where she could relax and eat. As long as she was happy and I could eat my dinner, everyone was happy. We even had compliments from other diners on how well behaved the girls were. So I would say dining overall was a success!
Because Princess doesn't cater to families, their kids program doesn't start until age 3. They will however, allow you to participate in the kids program if one parent attends with a younger child. Chris and Melia spent a lot of time playing in the kids room. Makena and I even hung out with them a few times because they had a great little "toddler" corner with toys and soft padding she could crawl around on. They did offer a special Kindermusik at Sea program for babies and toddler that both girls participate in - they LOVED it! One night they had a dance party for the little kids in the teen club. It was so much fun to see Melia making friends and running around dancing. She loves music! One of the staff in the kids program was a retired school teacher. She really went above and beyond to make sure Melia was included in the kids activities and had a good time. 
Both the girls loved the lights, music and dancing at the evening shows. It was a great way to end each evening before heading to bed. The cruise included 2 sea days where we got to spend some time in the pools and enjoying the onboard activities. For a cruise line that doesn't cater to kids, the staff was wonderful with the girls. We had a great time onboard. We visited 6 ports of call during our Canada New England Cruise. Blogs about our shore excursions are coming soon!
