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I believe that children are few and far between on Regent - they are similarly not catered for and very rare indeed on Azamara - the only child I've seen on the cruises I've done with Azamara was a 13 year old girl who was in a visible coma of boredom and loneliness. Mr/Mrs Down - it sounds like a real risk to me.

Oh dear! That doesn't sound too good... When we took ours on Europa, Hapaag-Lloyd staff took them on bespoke excursions, which was great. Perhaps RSSC would be too disappointing.

Regent Seven Seas are an excellent cruise line, but the Europa is rated the best in the world, and they will literally do whatever is needed to keep their customers happy. Did you ever write a report on the Europa, I for one would be very interested in reading one.

http://www.cruises.co.uk/673-cruises_chat_fun/1502-europa_best_ship_world_well_possibly.html This is the link to my review, posted on the Cruise Forum as the Cruise Reviews page wouldn't let me post a review on a Hapaag Lloyd ship!! This was rather annoying as I am sure it would have been of interest to lots of people; not just those thinking of going on the 'best ship in the world' but also those curious to know what it's really like!! If you can't access it via the link the try going to the Forum and putting Europa in the search box, it should come up.

Thank you for that, I found your report very interesting. My wife is a fluent German speaker, but alas my expertise at foreign languages is limited to basic French. Have you tried a Celebrity Cruise? Their standards might not be quite the same as the Europa, but their top suites are the best in the industry. The “Penthouse Suites” on the four Millennium class ships are the very best by a country mile.

We've not taken the kids on Celebrity - we had our honeymoon on 'Century', but that was rather a long time ago! Our children are big fans of P&O because the kid's clubs are so well run; needless to say they prefer them to 'Europa'!! We often get tempted by P&O because of the Free Child/90% discount that they sometimes offer during the school holidays. Next year we have booked a suite on Azura because P&O were offering 90% off during half-term. It was rather an undignified scramble for places on that one! I don't know what type of deals Celebrity do for children - are they generous?

We are great lovers of Celebrity, and we also hate P&O with a vengeance. My theory is that P&O are giving such a good offer because they have not sold their cabins, celebrity do not have to offer such discounts as their standards speak for themselves. Our very first cruise was on the Century in 1996 for our Honeymoon also. Royal Caribbean has the very best reputation for children’s clubs, but I don't think they will be up to your standards. We went on the Independence of the Seas in March, we booked the Presidential Suite, and it was one of the worst cruises we have ever been on, but nowhere near as bad as our last P&O cruise on the Arcadia.

I wonder why you felt Arcadia was so bad? Our last P&O was on Ventura - it's a huge ship but we had a suite, which was very comfortable. Our agent advised us to go for the lowest grade suite at the aft of the ship - we had an enormous balcony, big enough for cocktails for 20! With fingers crossed, we have booked the same numbered suite on Azura next year for my (ahem!) Special Birthday! Since entirely coincidently we have several friends booked on board the same cruise we are going to need that BIG balcony for drinks on my birthday! We have booked two cruises in the past on RCCL, and had to cancel both of them for very different reasons. Since our only RCCL experience was on the maiden voyage of 'Splendour of the Seas' I am guessing we wouldn't like the changes/cutbacks since then! You have inspired me to re-look at Celebrity (are you sure you don't work for them?!) to see if we can afford to take the kids with them. It's a question of maths really - the price that looks tempting for 2 is a killer for 4.

No I don't work for celebrity. We have completed 62 cruises on 9 different cruise lines, 39 of them on Celebrity. We now only cruise with 2 lines, Celebrity and Cunard Queens Grill, which costs 3 times as much as a similar suite on Celebrity, but we don't fly any more, and Celebrity only sail out of the UK between May and September, so if we want a cruise before the Eclipse arrives in the UK then we have to book with Cunard. The reason for my hatred of P&O stems from when we were in Madeira on the Arcadia, We went out for a meal as the food on board was certainly not up to the standards we get on Celebrity. When we returned to the ship there were 2 entrances, one was very steep and spanned 3 floors, and the other was nowhere near as steep and was only one floor. There was only one person on duty, and it was just starting to rain. My wife is disabled and it was impossible for her to climb the steep 3 stories, so I told the security guard that we would use the other ramp. He said it was closed, but you could see reception through the door, so we went towards that ramp, only for the guard to get on his radio and at the bottom of the short ramp, the head of security came out of the "closed" ramp door and physically stopped us from getting on because it was "closed" to cut an even longer story short he kept us waiting in the pouring rain for 20 minutes stating "my staff are all on a break, they are entitled to one you know!" The following day we went to see the staff captain who informed us "he was having a bad day” We had booked their top suite and we were treated like that. Do yourself a big favour and try a celebrity ship, their suites are in my opinion far superior to any suite we have stayed in on P&O ships, in fact better than any other suites. The best suite by far is the Penthouse Suite on any of the Millennium class ships.