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The Dolphin Experience Big Red Boat makes for little smiling faces
By Rick Wilber/For The Tampa Tribune
Tips for The Trip
Premier Cruise Line's Big Red Boat, which cruises from Port Canaveral, offers fun for adults and their children.Bugs Bunny had to work hard to win over our little pirate.
Samantha, at 4 years old, was more than a little worried about having this 6-foot-tall rabbit and his assistant tuck her into bed.
But Bugs had all the right stuff, starting with a comforting attitude and including a Bugs Bunny pillowcase (still in good use a couple of months later) and a small Bugs Bunny stuffed doll (ditto), and so eventually Samantha decided that Bugs and his photographer/assistant who crowded into our cabin down on the Atlantic Deck of StarShip Oceanic were all right after all. She accepted a hug, returned a big smile and snuggled nicely into the bed as Bugs and his assistant left, heading for the next child whose parents had arranged for Bugs to tuck their little one in at night.FOR THE KIDS
The special tuck-in service by Bugs Bunny was just one of a long list of special-attention items that the Oceanic, a k a the Big Red Boat, offered Samantha and several hundred other children on board during our recent four-night Bahamas cruise from Port Canaveral.Premier Cruise Lines, which runs the Big Red Boat cruises, works hard at keeping the younger set happy, from providing late-night group babysitting service to running an expansive 24-hour child-care service for ages 2 to 17. Whether the parents stay on the boat or spend the day in port during the cruise, the child can be checked into and out of the day-care facility at the parents' convenience.
It's a major effort on the part of Premier. The cruise line claims, in fact, that the Big Red Boat cruises provide more professional youth counselors than any other cruise line, and we believe it.
The result is an enjoyable cruise for parents and children both. The kids get movies, books, arts and crafts, visits from the Looney Tunes characters and shipboard magicians, and a dizzying array of other activities, as well.
And the parents get a break. By picking and choosing from all the various child-care offerings, we found we could have it both ways, sharing a large amount of the fun and relaxation of the cruise with our 4-year-old, and still budgeting a significant amount of time to be by ourselves or with other adult friends.
One of the first things made abundantly clear when you board the ship is just how careful the cruise line is with your child.
In our case, for instance, Mom was concerned about how the counselors can keep track of the hundreds of kids on a typical cruise.
Not to worry. Each child wears at all times a hospital-style plastic ID bracelet with name and room number on it, and children cannot be checked out of the day care facilities until the kids identify who is taking them. Also, a counselor is at the door at all times, making sure none of the little ones go astray as parents come and go through the day (and night).
By mid-afternoon Monday, as the ship headed out through Port Canaveral and we watched the launching pads at the Kennedy Space Center slide by, an orientation lecture had given us a good idea of just how much the Big Red Boat offers kids of varying ages.
For instance, we received a printed list of scheduled activities for the First Mates (2-to 4-year-olds). The activities started at 9 a.m. each morning and went all the way through group babysitting service beginning at 10 p.m.
The wide variety of options helped make the whole system work for us. On our first evening at sea, we dropped Samantha off for just a couple of hours of day-care to get acclimated while we took a look around the ship. Then we gathered her up and joined the couple we were traveling with - award-winning novelist Joe Haldeman and his wife, Gay - for first seating at dinner, sharing our large table with a delightful family from Long Beach, Calif., who were starting a two-week vacation in Florida with the cruise before spending the rest of the time in Orlando showing Disney World to their two children and a niece.
Following a fine Italian meal (no smoking in the dining room, by the way), we happily took advantage of the ship's babysitting service that first night, watching the floor show in the ship's Broadway Showroom, then losing a few dollars at blackjack in the casino before cutting our losses and simply watching the Florida coast go by in the distance while the ship headed south toward the Bahamas.
FOR THE ADULTS
By mid-morning of the next day we were fully into cruise mode during our day at sea. While Samantha worked away on a series of artistically daring finger paints and enjoyed the skills of Magic Jason, the adults checked out the ship's various adult offerings.I chose to do a little jogging, spinning merrily around the 1/8-mile running track that circles the top deck. It's a little dizzying, to be sure, rounding those tight corners so often on that small a track; but enjoying the endless vista of blue sea, blue sky and occasional passing ships while watching the flying fish skim from wave top to wave top more than compensated for the constant turning. There are worse ways to get a workout.
The Big Red Boat spends the second full day of the cruise in Nassau, but we took a pass on visiting the town, where we've been before. While the city has its appeal, especially for first-timers, we opted instead for the Salt Cay excursion and spent the day on Premier's private out-island, just a half-hour or so from Nassau by ship's tender.
Salt Cay offered us a chance to stroll on the beach, relax in the shade, and spend a couple of hours on a marvelous snorkeling trip, all while Samantha played supervised pirate, marching all over the island in search of buried treasure along with a couple of dozen other young buccaneers.
She was a little nervous about it all at first and like several of the other children needed some parental urging. But by the time a few hours of treasure hunting had gone by and she had acquired plenty of booty in the form of a cardboard pirate's hat and sword and assorted forms of candy, our problem became how to tear her away from the fun.
SHOPPING AND SNORKELING
For the adults, the snorkeling trip was a gem. The water was too choppy that day for the normal shallow-water reef, so the boat took the 30 or so snorkelers to a spot that, while protected from the wind and waves, was much deeper in some spots than most coral reefs we've snorkeled over the years.There were some shallow areas that the beginners seemed to enjoy, but those of us with more experience with the snorkel, fins and mask were able to find spots down to 40 or 50 feet deep where huge brain coral and starlet coral hugged the sandy bottom and then a reef wall rose toward the surface. The clarity was absolutely Bahamian, and the fish included larger varieties of parrotfish and angelfish among the clouds of smaller tropical fish.
That night the adults took in movie musical tributes in the showroom before calling it an early evening with Samantha, who waited nervously for Bugs Bunny's arrival for the tuck in. Other Looney Tunes characters are available for the tuck-in service, as well.
Port Lucaya, the next day's port of call, is an almost Disneyesque version of a Caribbean village. It's been built in recent years primarily for the cruise lines' benefit. The town's shopping, restaurants and casino are fine, but it was the dolphin encounter available from Port Lucaya that we found to be a downright marvel.
THE DOLPHIN EXPERIENCE
The Dolphin Experience, located in nearby Freeport but with a dock and ticket booth for Big Red Boaters in Port Lucaya (you can also sign up for this excursion on the ship), takes you to Sanctuary Bay, where a number of bottlenose dolphins live relatively free lives while they are fed and trained by the Dolphin Experience staff.Scuba divers can head offshore in the Dolphin Experience boat and interact with the dolphins in the open sea. The rest of us can visit the bay training site and after a lecture on both our behavior and the dolphin's behavior, wade into a special area where dolphins swim right up and allow you to stroke their backs.
It was an amazing experience for all of us, from adults right down to Samantha and several other children her age, and certainly qualified as one of the cruise highlights.
It's worth noting that not everyone on the Big Red Boat came with children, but because of the child-care facilities it's not as if the place feels overrun with little ones day or night - they're usually busy in Pluto's Playhouse or the Astro Room or wherever else the staff is keeping them happily occupied.
In short, adults without children shouldn't feel hassled too much by the little ones.
Still, the cruise is clearly aimed at pleasing families, and at that it succeeds admirably. This family, at least, came home relaxed, well-fed and with plenty of pleasant memories and photos. It's hard to ask much more from a four-night vacation.
Book cruises early, then relax and feast
Costs: Cruises vary widely in costs, depending on how far ahead of your travel dates that you book, the time of year you want to sail, the size of your group, the cabin you choose and more. You'll probably be able to negotiate better terms if you have some latitude in when you want to travel. Our travel agent started the process several months before the cruise and recommended that we narrow our dates down to the month in which we'd like to travel but stay flexible within that month. The technique worked fine. For Floridians willing to drive to Port Canaveral, a ballpark figure on the Big Red Boat for a family of four should be about $449 for the first two adults for the four-night cruise, and $349 for the first two adults for the three-night cruise.
Third and fourth passengers (the kids, for instance) are usually about $100 less each. Infants younger than 2 just pay half the port tax of $84.50. Out-of-staters will find a different set of costs that frequently include air fare.
Be advised that there are some hidden costs in cruising.
There is a port tax of $84.50 per adult, and the custom of tipping the staff will add about $20 per person per day to the cruise. Envelopes are provided, and you'll find yourself tipping your cabin steward, your waiter, the maitre d' and others.
The extra excursions that you take from the ship, such as our snorkeling and dolphin experience side trips, also cost extra, usually in the $25 range per person.
There is also a $25 charge for parking at the Port Canaveral cruise terminal.
Otherwise, one of the attractions of cruising is that most of the costs, especially the food costs, are built into your basic fare. The meals on most cruise ships range from quite good to wonderful, and the Big Red Boats are no exception. Not only are the scheduled meals ample and delicious, there are a number of other options for eating and drinking as well, including late-night buffets that include spectacular ice sculptures. Alcoholic drinks usually are not included in your package price.What to wear: The Big Red Boat is definitely a casual cruise, with shorts, T-shirts and swimming suits the typical attire. There are one or two occasions when you might want to dress up, including the captain's reception when you can meet the captain and have your picture taken with him. While some passengers choose to dress up a little more for dinner, others stay quite casual.
How to get there: Port Canaveral is next to the Kennedy Space Center on the east coast of Florida. From the Tampa Bay area, take Interstate 4 to Orlando, and the Beeline Expressway from Orlando to the port.
Cruise schedule: From Port Canaveral, the Big Red Boat three-night cruises leave on Thursday and Friday each week. The four-night cruises leave on Sunday and Monday. The cruises depart in the late afternoon and return early in the morning. The itineraries are similar, with the four-night cruise including one day at sea in addition to the Nassau and Port Lucaya ports of call in the Bahamas. This story was originally published in The Tampa Tribune September 10, 1995.
