Cruise ships’ private islands offer fun for families

The beach at Castaway Cay

By John George

A stop at a private or secluded island has become almost mandatory for cruises in the eastern Caribbean. Most of the cruise lines, including Disney Cruise Lines, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and Holland America, have private islands for their guests. The basic program is similar: You will enjoy a beach, both paid and free activities and a barbecue lunch. Don’t forget the fruity drinks at the tiki bar, either!

A word to the wise: If your idea of the perfect family vacation day is just lounging on the beach, get there early enough to claim your lounge chairs. While there are hundreds of them, our experience was that they quickly get taken.

We have had the pleasure of visiting both Great Stirrup Cay, (Norwegian Cruise Lines) and Castaway Cay (Disney) while cruising the eastern Caribbean on family vacations.

Great Stirrup Cay
We’ve been to this slice of paradise twice, with stops during four-night and seven-night cruises.

The beach at Great Stirrup Cay

For us, the highlight of Great Stirrup Cay each time was the family Beach Olympics — a well-organized event with activities to challenge the kids and parents. The leaders were even able to engage the teens in the group, which amazed me. Breaking through the eye-rolling, I’m-too-cool facade of these young adults requires a special skill, as parents are all too aware.

The activities were both silly and challenging. Although the friendly competition was fierce, the team our family joined came away with a medal, which still hangs proudly in Zeke’s bedroom!

Our experience at Great Stirrup was more relaxed during the seven-night cruise. I think with four-night cruises, there may be more of an urgent feeling among the guests to “do everything” in the short time they will be at sea.

Castaway Cay
Disney is known as a family vacation specialist — dedicated to guests’ enjoyment, and this experience was no different. We stopped here on the third day of our four-day cruise.

The writer and his son on top of the lookout tower on Castaway Cay.

Disney has constructed a proper dock here, so there’s no need for tenders. This made access very easy, especially for the families with younger kids in strollers. There’s a half-sunken replica of a pirate ship in the bay, and we enjoyed the Disney character “encounters” along the way to the beach. There’s a motor tram going to the beach from the dock, but the walk was easy enough for us.

After the barbecue lunch, we took a hike to the lookout tower above the old airstrip, which gave us a panoramic view of the island. The terrain was quite different away from the beach — almost desert-like. We encountered a lot of lizards along the way, much to the delight of the kids.

Disney offers an adult-only beach here, which we did not visit. I’m sure this was a relief for the cruisers without small kids to supervise.

The highlight of our visit to Castaway Cay was the snorkel diving. The beach area is protected by a reef, and they’ve sunk many items to provide shelter for the fish.  About halfway into our dive, we even ran into a stingray. This was a thrill for Zeke, and sent Jenny swimming to shore!

As Zeke and I were walking back to our beach spot, he said: “Dad, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life!” High praise indeed from an 11 year old.

If your idea of a family vacation cruise includes some beach time, I highly recommend choosing a cruise line and itinerary with a private island stop.

Related Oribtz resources:

• Family vacation
• Cruises

John George is a full-time working dad to his 11-year-old son. After visiting every continent, save Antarctica, he was domesticated by his wife Jenny. Their family enjoys cruising, beach vacations and getaways to the Big Apple.

Tagged: Caribbean, Cruise, Family time