Free child places on a cruise ???

Well its well and truly started , Peaks , or wave , different names from different people, all boiling down to the same thing, its the busiest two months of the year for booking your holidays.

Many years ago (some will remember) it started boxing day , in retail , customers would be queuing outside the stores from boxing day early morning , some years I can remember starting @ 8am just to get a head start. There they would all be with the brochures in hand , little bits of paper sticking out on the pages they had picked , free child places were like gold and had to be booked very quick.

I was actually asked yesterday about free child places on cruises. when I worked for retail, one of the product team told me that the “free” places were actually just the seats on the plane ….mmm made lots more sense after I sussed this out , so they maybe had 10 seats to PMI on a few given dates and then that was it, the properties were usually self catering and already costed for the families, hence it was not a great loss to the company. Obviously they had some to different destinations as well.

Cruises however, are completely different, the children are catered for not only from the sleeping arrangements, but as part of the ship capacity quota, they also get all of the food included, and lets not forget the entertainment.

MSC are still fantastic on the child prices 2-12 year olds only pay a set charge with port taxes, the same all year round , which is amazing, no massive jump in the school holidays, I think its great for the children to be mixed with all different cultures and nationalities, they never seem to have the language barrier.

So FREE kids , very unlikely , there are some cruise lines that charge less , off season , pretty much the same as land holidays

BOOK early , and get the best deals for families , my advice !!