Thursday 7 July 2016

How to celebrate a Birthday on a Cruise Ship

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On our recent Disney Cruise, Mia turned 5. She's very lucky, with a birthday that will usually fall during half term, she's very likely to be celebrating her birthday while we are away on holiday many times in the future. In fact, I think she believed that the entire holiday was booked in order to celebrate her birthday!

Tips for celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship

As fun as it is being away, it's still nice to be able to mark the occasion in a special way while you are on holiday, so here's what we did to try and make her cruise birthday special.

Decorate the stateroom - Most cruise lines will offer a birthday package meaning that you can purchase decorations for your stateroom. Disney cruise line currently offers this for $45 which I thought was a little pricey, so I spent a fraction of the cost shopping at home and brought the decorations along with us. I then put them up in the room while the children were asleep. As it was a Disney cruise I went with a Frozen theme and I found some very reasonably priced decorations. I bought some Disney Frozen birthday balloons and Snowflake string decorations to hang around the room and this brilliant Frozen door poster to hang on the wall (affiliate links).

Frozen birthday poster

Presents and cards - We deliberately purchased presents which were quite small that we could bring along with us, and we managed to bring enough with us so that she had a few to open. I also brought all her cards along with us so that she could open them on the day and display them.

Birthday badge - we have a Birthday rosette badge (affiliate link) for each child that I recycle each year, so Mia wore that all day, and Mia also received a Disney Cruise Line birthday badge from Guest Services, as well as a second one at dinner. Harry was given an 'I'm Celebrating' badge as well! Then everyone could say Happy Birthday to her when they saw her.

Disney cruise ship birthday badge

Door signs - We made magnetic door signs for our holiday anyway, so I made an extra surprise one to announce Mia's birthday to the rest of the corridor.

Birthday cake - We decided not to have a special cake on her birthday, as she had already celebrated with a cake the week before. You also aren't allowed to use candles on a cruise ship. On most cruise lines you can order celebration cakes which will be served to you at dinner. We did tell our servers in the restaurant about Mia's birthday, and they brought her a special dessert and they all sang Happy Birthday to her which she loved.

Child with birthday cake on a cruise ship

It might be fun to buy a few decorations for the table at dinner, or perhaps some birthday hats for everyone to wear!

I think that Mia had a special birthday, I just hope that she doesn't expect this every year!

Birthday decorations on a cruise ship

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like some of my other posts about cruising:

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