T1D JillyBean

Sailing NCL with T1D...



The cruise ship we traveled on is the Norwegian Jewel and the Norwegian cruise line offers Freestyle Cruising. Which made traveling with T1D all the easier. Their tag line is 'Do what you want - when ever...'. And unlike tradittional cruises that tell you where and when to eat NCL lets you do it pretty much how you want. The signature resturants have cover charges but they have 4 free ones - one of which is a buffet and the other is a 24 hour restaurant with a limited menu. From the 24 hour restaurant we would order a chicken sandwhich with nothing but the grilled chicken breast as she hates buns and a side of ranch for Jilly when she needed an evening snack.

We ate most of our meals at the buffet and often times took the food up to our room. We could have ordered food service but it was much easier to allow Jilly to pick out what she wanted to eat. And much more romantic to eat it on our balcony. The food offered in the buffet wasn't outstanding but it was good with lots of selection. Jilly usually eats the same things so we used the Calorie King to figure out carb counts.

The islands were a bit more difficult. We didn't find out until after the trip and going through the paperwork that local laws fobid bringing food from the ship to islands. No one ever checked our bags though. We would go to the buffet for breakfast and take some fruit and a couple of hard boiled eggs for later in the day. Jillly is a picky eater and the islands were all developing. It was very different from what we were used to. I felt I couldn't trust we'd be able to find the food we needed when we needed it. So along with the eggs and fruit we also brought some of the food we traveled with. I'm glad we did. Even though everyone assured me that we'd have plenty of food we ended up using the snacks and food we brought frequently when off the ship. Sometimes to round out her meals.

We booked all our tours through the ship. It's more expensive this way but we felt it was easiest to make sure we got back in time. And on the dune buggy beach tour the tour guides told us they had first aid training. I'm not sure all the tours had this but it made me feel safer.
The crew members in the kids club also had first aid training. And in the kids area Jilly met another little boy with T1D. They offer phones for parents dropping babies off and we requested one of these in case she needed us. We never had to use it - they are really good at putting on the schedual when the kids are eating so you can plan around that.

Overall the trip was fantastic. We even survived the chocolate buffet. We allowed Jilly to fill up her plate with what ever she wanted. Fed her a chicken breast first (it helped fill up her tummy and she had missed dinner) then figured out the carb count for a single bite of everything. Our coverage of that was perfect. No high or low.
We had so much fun on this trip and totally want to do it again.