Luxury cruises
Winter sun for the whole family, on ships that make Christmas and half-term easy.
The Caribbean is the winter answer: guaranteed warmth, calm seas, and a week that works for a seven-year-old and a seventy-year-old at the same time. The luxury lines favour the smaller islands — the Grenadines, St Barths, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands — where yachts anchor off empty beaches rather than queueing at a cruise pier.
Christmas and New Year sailings are the big multigenerational occasion, and they sell first. If you are thinking about a family Christmas at sea, the time to start is January of the same year.
Highlights
Planning figure for a typical week in a veranda suite. Final price depends on sailing date, ship, suite and availability.
Start PlanningExplora and Ritz-Carlton for children's programmes, water sports and connecting suites.
Regent and Seabourn for warm, easy, inclusive weeks; Silversea for yacht-size ports.
Best cruise lines here
Modern, relaxed, generous with space, and genuinely happy to see children.
Hotel-style luxury on yachts of roughly 300 to 450 guests, with a surprisingly warm welcome for children.
Butler-served suites, serious destinations, and one of the strongest expedition fleets afloat.
The most inclusive fare at sea, on all-suite ships that take elegance seriously.
Small, sociable, quietly luxurious ships, with a sister expedition fleet.
How to choose
Derived from our own ratings of the lines above, not from brochures.
Explora Journeys and Regent Seven Seas Cruises are mid-size; The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is yacht-style; Silversea and Seabourn are small-ship. Smaller ships reach the smaller harbours in Caribbean; larger ones carry more for children and more dining choice.
Explora Journeys and The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection keep it relaxed; Regent Seven Seas Cruises leans formal and traditional. Ask us which suits the party before anything else.
Explora Journeys and The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection rate highest with us for families here; Seabourn is effectively adults-only. Children's facilities vary more than brochures suggest; we will say which ships really have them.
Silversea, Explora Journeys, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Seabourn lead on food in our experience of Caribbean sailings.
Cruise ideas
Planning figures per person.
Barbados round trip over Christmas with the Grenadines, connecting suites and someone else cooking.
Connecting suites, different activity levels, dining that works for everyone, and transfers that suit grandparents and toddlers alike. The best family suites go first, so start early.
Further reading
Our own planning notes: who a ship suits, how many cabins to book, when to go.
Why a ship is one of the easiest places to gather a family for an occasion, what we can arrange on board, and the ships that do celebrations with grace rather than a cake and a song.
Good to know
It is one of the best ways to do it: one booking, everyone together, warm weather and no cooking. Suites and connecting cabins for the festive sailings sell out early, so we advise starting the conversation in January or February.
Around 8 to 9 hours direct from London to Barbados or Antigua. We usually add a night or two before the cruise so nobody boards exhausted.
Don't spend thirty hours comparing forty ships, cabins, dates, flights and hotels. Give us five minutes and we'll narrow it down to what is worth considering.