We recently cruises with our 6 month, 2 days old daughter. Here’s my brief tips We ended up not using the pack&play since floor space was so limited. It would have blocked the veranda door. Instead we put her in the bed with us and also asked that the sofa bed be made up for my husband. He sometimes moved over to it when we were crowding him!
Diaper genie was perfect and stateroom host emptied it daily. The fridge was cold enough to store expressed milk.
Dining- our server asked the first night if our daughter ate any puréed foods and then had them ready each night (we had bananas, carrots, green beans, and cooked pears). They were cooked plain (expect the bananas) and blended, nothing additional added. They also told us we could request puréed food at Cabanas for breakfast or lunch but we never bothered.
We learned that our daughter, normally a real quiet trooper, did not like dinnertime. The timing of it was just off so we put her in the nursery every night and enjoyed our meal. The one exception was when she fell asleep in Animators and my husband just held her. Crush came by onscreen and sang her a lullaby! When we started using the nursery the servers would give us her food in a little covered bowl and we fed her after our dinner.
The nursery did a great job with her. Half the time we went to pick her up she was sound asleep. We got a picture of Tianna rocking her to sleep when she was there. The nursery staff gave us the pic when we picked her up, and Peter Pan was in there one night saying how much he loved to go into nurseries.
On
Castaway Cay we rented one of the flat floats and put her on it to let her float in the water (we both were standing right next to it with one of us constantly holding on to her). We felt like it kept her more stable and no danger of her sliding out of arms. They also have sand strollers right by scuttles cove you can borrow for the day (just walk up and take it). It worked really well on the beach.
We took an umbrella stroller for the airport and then for the ports, but I only used it one time on the ship. I stayed onboard with her iN Jamaica and we walked around the top deck for an hour (the ship was almost empty). People trying to use strollers on normal nights looked a little frustrated with the crowds and narrow corridors. Carrying her was the best option for us onboard.
We definetely got a TON of attention from CMs. A lot of them have small children at home and we had several come up to us and just smile and wave and say something sweet. Nothing intrusive, but you could tell they were happy to see tiny ones. Anytime I was trying to carry her and had to open a door/grab a towel/carry a tray/etc someone was there offering to help.
I can’t think of anything else, but happy to answer any other questions.