Ep 003 | Part 1: Why I Love Cruises With My Family: The Smart Dad's Recipe for Fun

In this two-part series of The Smart Dad Podcast, Derek Moore explores the joy of cruising as a family tradition that creates lasting memories and valuable life lessons. In Part 1, Derek dives into the experiences that make cruising a perfect family adventure—from creating unique traditions at sea and fostering growth mindsets through food to making every cruise a learning opportunity for homeschooling on the go. He also shares how the whole family bonds over activities, navigates social interactions, and practices independence with simple “ship laws” that help keep everyone safe and free. Whether you’re a seasoned cruiser or just starting out, this episode offers insights and inspiration for turning any family vacation into an unforgettable journey of connection and learning.

Chapters

00:00 Cruising into Family Adventures

04:14 The Joys of Regular Cruising

07:11 Food as a Growth Mindset

10:07 Learning Through Experience

12:59 Cultural Connections

16:18 Family Fun and Flexibility

19:11 Creating Lasting Memories

22:13 Safety and Independence at Sea

25:00 Intentional Family Experiences

31:11 Finances and Logistics of Cruising

Takeaways:

1.Building Family Traditions at Sea – Discover how recurring family cruises create lasting memories and traditions, from one-on-one trips with kids to holiday cruises that strengthen family bonds.

2.Learning Through Experience – Learn how cruising offers unique opportunities for homeschooling, from geography lessons to studying sea life, and cultural experiences through interaction with diverse crew members.

3.Growth Mindset via Food Adventures – How trying new foods on cruises, from escargot to exotic desserts, teaches kids a growth mindset and fosters open-mindedness.

4.No Childcare Needed – Explore the benefits of spending quality time together as a family, opting out of childcare services, and instead, teaching kids to engage across all ages.

5.Practical Life Skills on the Water – The “3 Ship Laws”—simple rules that teach kids independence and responsibility while ensuring safety and respect on family cruises.

Follow Derek on socials:

X @dntmoore

IG @dntmoore

TikTok @dntmoore

To hire Derek for Life, Leadership & Executive coaching, visit dntmoore.com.

Transcript

Welcome to the smart dad podcast where we help you lead well at home, in business and in life. I'm your host, Derek Moore. Smart dads are intentional, engaged and ever learning. Whether you're a seasoned dad who's been through it all a new dad, still figuring it out, a supported dad with a great woman at your side, or a solo dad carrying the load alone, this podcast is for you. No matter your background, your challenges or your goals, fatherhood is a journey of growth and we're here to do it together. Each week I'll share insights that I've garnered throughout my life of raising kids, building businesses and leading others. I'll definitely share some failures, some successes, and I'll even be able to show you tools and strategies that you can use to become a smart dad in your own life.

Welcome to another episode of the smart dad podcast. This week we're tackling one of my favorite topics, how we cruise so much as a family. I want to talk about all the joys, all the memories, all the life lessons, experiences, traditions, bonding. I really want to dig deep this week. So hang on. I think you're going to have a good time.

So first of all, the past two and a half years or so, since about August of 2022, when the world opened back up, I had never been on any real regular cruises. And I found through a friend, a cruise line, Royal Caribbean cruise line out of Galveston, Texas. And it's close enough.

For me, 75 minutes doorstep to doorstep. But I thought I'll try this. And my friend introduced me to this world of regular cruising. And I got to tell you, some say we've perfected it. I say we're still working on it. But from August 1st until Thanksgiving of last year, I took 10 cruises and I just want to dive in and tell you how we did that, why we did that, and what's the motivation for a big family like mine to do that. So cruising for me and my family was in this short window, this four month window.

It was a great time for me to really use the cruise ship as a weekend house. The cruise line runs a couple of five day cruises and then every other weekend from Thursday afternoon to early Monday morning, a four night cruise. And so what I did August 1st, I took my 14 year, actually August 1st, I took my nine year old and then I took my 14 year old. Then the day after my three year old's birthday, I took her in August, September. I took my then seven year old. Then I took my four year old and just kept rotating through the kids. took my wife, Kelly on a one-on-one cruise. actually went on a cruise by myself. I took my 12 year old daughter by herself and then I took, my cute little three and four year old girls on a sister cruise. It was phenomenal. for my birthday, we went on a Royal Caribbean harmony of the seas cruise, which is an Oasis class ship.

And that was phenomenal. I took Kelly, just the two of us. So this four month period, I embarked on 10 cruises and you gotta say, you know, why would someone do that? I've never cruised this much before August, 2022. And now it's an integral part of my family rhythm, my family habits. Well, remember the world shut down the 2020, 2021, and a lot of 2022. And as a family, homeschooling, homeschool blending, and having a lot of kids, I decided I'm done. I'm tired of being locked down and I want to get away. So these one-on-one cruises have actually been going on really since the beginning, Labor Day of 2022.

We've done some holiday cruises where we go back to back or back to back to back and we just stack the kids up. We have two or three rooms. Sometimes my college age child or children will come. Sometimes my in-laws will come. We took a couple of waiters with us in January, a couple of years ago on an Oasis class ship as a thank you for their 30 plus years of service to us at this amazing restaurant that we love to eat at. And it's just part of who we are. I'll tell you what's crazy. These ships are so amazing. There's everything on them. So the class called the Voyager class for Royal Caribbean, it's a great size ship, 4,000, 4,500 guests, I think. And there's music and the food is amazing. And the decks are amazing. The pools are amazing. The stars at night are amazing. 

And what I've done, I've decided to try to push this as a way to see my kids grow in real life. You know, as a dad, sometimes you, you, you bring the fence in too close. Like we've talked about in previous episodes, but this is a chance in the real world in the wild to let them have a little taste of what it's like to be in the real world. And I'll talk about at the end of today's podcast, what our rules are on the cruise ship. But one of the things I want to talk about besides family and besides fun is food. Everybody has food habits when you go home. Mom likes a meal or dad likes a meal. Kids like meals. Maybe somebody likes to cook, maybe grandma's, maybe you like your favorite restaurant, your favorite fast food. We use the cruise ships as a training ground for a growth mindset.

Now let me explain. don't know if you know this, but these cruise ships have incredible, incredible calculations. They have formulas and they have spreadsheets and they know how much food to buy, how much food you're going to waste. And some things they can't do anything about other things that are really good at efficiency. We tell our kids, you don't have to like it, but you have to try it. So one of my favorite stories is escargot. Now you may be like I used to be, not know what escargot is. It's just a fancy French word for snails or slugs or bugs. But escargot is a French delicacy and it's on the menu, I think every night in the dining hall and they dip these things in garlic butter and they are drowning and where the kids would pluck them out and try them.

And you know what? They didn't always hate it. And that is a good growth palette. we go to these upscale restaurants, these specialty restaurants, and sometimes in the dining hall, they would have the same thing. Scallops, fried calamari, fried octopus, man, fried shrimp. It's a different texture. Adults and kids alike. You know what we said? Try it. Ooh, I don't like it.

Hey, try it in this sauce. Hey, try it in that sauce. This is a red sauce. This is a white sauce. As long as they tried one bite, they could chase it with watermelon. They could chase it with bread. They could chase it with water, with juice, with an Arnold Palmer, whatever they wanted. We turn to soup. If you've ever had the mushroom soup, how many kids? -4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14- say, I love mushrooms. Not a lot of mine do. They try the mushroom soup. I can't even taste or see the mushrooms. This is the best soup ever. And they just slop it down, often ask for a second bowl, which you can have. Desserts. What is this? This is weird. 

Hey, you can try one bite of dessert and push it to the side. So what's the point here? We often end up in a routine or there's maybe not a safe place to try new things, but a growth mindset requires that periodically, maybe regularly, not every minute of every day, but we need to grow. We need to push ourselves. We need to push our children into a little bit of discomfort. That's just part of growing. So we have a lot of fun with it. If I don't like something, I don't really like chocolate. So I'll take a bite of chocolate and say, is chocolate. And they go, want it. want it. I want it. 

Kelly doesn't like raspberry sauce on her desserts. And the kids, raspberry sauce is great. So then we learn different people might have different palates. My four year old loves steak. My eight year old loves sushi. My three year old on cruises loves watermelon. My ten year old son just destroys not cakes, steaks. My kids all can eat cakes and donuts and you know what? We let them go to town on it and then they complain my skin is changing. my arms are this. I'm a little sniffly. have you had 14 donuts every day on this cruise? Okay. Maybe I'm exaggerating. And then we talk about food allergies and food sensitivities. We cut out some sugar and they say, wow, I feel better. So this is just a growth mindset, a learning opportunity.

What's the point? There's not a diagnostic lesson. There's not a teacher, a curriculum here. This is life. This is observing and saying, look, try it. You're not going to die. Have you been to the windjammer? The windjammer has this vast array of food, breakfast foods, lunch foods, the dinner foods, the Indian foods, the Asian foods, the hamburgers, the hot dogs. They have pork. They have beef.

They have bacon, have ham, have biscuits, have pancakes, have waffles. It's, it's a cornucopia of food. And you know what? We just look at it and say the buffet means you can get one scoop, you can get one bite. And that's what we're doing. We're doing a buffet. We're not trying to earn our crews and eating them out of their food. We're just trying to try to sample things. So that brings me to homeschooling. What we do as a lifestyle, we don't say that we're necessarily homeschooling our kids all the time, although we do that, but we are always teaching. We're always raising. We're always encouraging them to continue to grow, continue to develop. So when we're on a cruise, the kids are keenly aware that the maps show exactly where we are.

Now we spend a lot of time in the Gulf of Mexico, but we have gone out of Los Angeles before. We have gone out of Baltimore, out of New York, out of Florida. And this geography combined with biology combined with cartography really gives different age kids a chance to learn latitude, longitude.

My daughter loves animals and she loves maps. Guess what? We went on the navigator of the seas out of Los Angeles one time. Boom. All she could tell me was those are California seals. And then over there, and that's the puffer fish. and this is this kind of whale. And this is this kind of dolphin. And this is this kind of shark. And she knew the waters, the temperatures, the, the, mean, I'm telling you what I studied this stuff, but she knew it real time. So the waves, the tides. What's really been a game changer for me, cause I'm a city boy, is the constellations. Okay. Now you may say this guy's a moron and I would not disagree with you. My last name is more. So let's get it on. Right? So I look at the stars and I need the, see the big dipper. I see a Orion's belt. 

I see a few things I did not realize until recently, let's say, that the sun and the moon and the planets all follow the same trajectory across the sky. Now I knew it from a science class perspective because the earth rotates and the planets are in the solar system, but I had not tracked it until I went on these ships and I kept noticing Venus is bright. I see Jupiter. there's Mars. I'm red green colorblind, but I can see it's a little bit red. The moon was setting. The sun is rising.

That conversation with the kids intrigues them. They can see that I'm truly intrigued that we're learning together. So don't be afraid in whatever you do to learn with your kids. Tell them your dad has a biomedical science degree. Your dad's been tutoring, training, coaching, teaching for decades and just didn't store that one in the memory banks. So it's pretty fun.

Another aspect, I think this is fascinating. If you've been on a cruise ship, you know there are folks from all over the world. And I'm not going to bore you right now with all I've learned about Indonesia, all I've learned about Bali. But I can tell you, if you're interested in learning about Bali from my studies, there are four types of names, whether you're a male or female, there's a little twist here and there. First born, second born, third born, fourth born. And they have an I sometimes in front of it. If it's a man, an N I in front of it. If it's a man, a woman, and they'll have the same names recycled through all of their children. If you're the first born and your name is Wayan, like the Wayans brothers or Putu, P U T U.

You know, if the name tag says P U T U, that person is the first child in his or her family. I put two or E put two is a boy and I need put two is a girl. Same thing with way in. And you know what? The only way to know this is repetition. Cause I observe, haven't I seen that name before? yeah. That's not me. That's somebody else. Then I learned about Mauritius. I did not really remember Mauritius on a map.

Look at Africa, look at Madagascar and go a little bit East. There's a little Island there. The history of Mauritius with India, with France, with the, the skin tone of the people, with the languages of the people. We have folks from all over the world. are Chinese folks on the ships. There are Europeans, Central Americans, Caribbean, South Americans, Africans, Australians, British, the whole gamut and it's just fascinating. We had Russians and Ukrainians during this war. had every religion on the ship and you know what they do? They figure out how to get along. It's actually very encouraging. And what I teach my children very simply is look at the name tag, try to say their name and then ask them, is that your real name? How do you say your name in your own language?

You can just call me Bobby. I know I can call you Bobby, but is your name Bobby? No, my name is Baba Buki. Okay. Baba Buki. Can I call you Baba Buki? Yes. Call me Baba Buki. My name is Nelesh Nelesh Nelesh. Hey Nelesh. Thank you so much. And we go through and we learn their names and you know what? We wave, we smile, we practice from across the ship and these people feel valued and they are valuable.

And my children learn one of the top rules from how to win friends and influence people. Dale Carnegie written in the 1930s. And it's simply this, the most beautiful sound to someone in their own native tongue is their name. And when you learn someone's name and you repeat it and then you tag it and you say, this is the person that works here. When I go up there, I'm going to look for that person. And then they say, I remember you and your sweet smiling kids. where's your daughter? Do you have your son? Is your wife here this time? Now you have an actual relationship. So I love to help them interact with people. They shake hands. They look them in the eyes. They say, nice to meet you. They say, yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Yes, sir. No, sir. Okay. What about entertainment? What about education? We have been to shows. We have been to dances. We have been to ice performances, we have watched the sporting events on the big screens, we've seen documentaries.

It's amazing the amount of music and the amount of entertainment on a ship. But my, my daughter, Cassidy loves art and we went to the art auction on the Mariner of the seas and Richard and Zurica taught my daughter so much about art. went to everything, the champagne, which I drank and she didn't. We went to the education, to the auctions.

We actually won, literally won a door prize, a beautiful piece of art, a work of art in Cassidy beams and learned so much about art at the art auction. There is so much to learn on these ships. And as a parent, as a dad who educates and exposes his kids to experiences, I see the value in that. 

So as you think, why would you take your kids on a ship? All it is, it's just fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It can be fun. It can be family, but it can also be future. And you can really get a vision for what the future can be, where they might end up in the world for work, for travel, for military. We also see people of all ages, the youngest on our ships are allowed to be six months.

We see pregnant women who are about 20 weeks. We see folks who are very young. We see folks who are very old. We see folks of all shapes and all sizes, all backgrounds. It's a phenomenal blend. It's, you just never know who you're going to run into. So I love experiencing that. I love sharing that with my kids. Let's talk about family plus fun, family fun, can be what you want. By the way, one of the best things to do a little inside baseball, a little pro tip is an inside cabin. Kids need sleep. Sometimes mom needs a nap. Sometimes dad needs a nap.

If you want a balcony or a suite or whatever, great. But if you can get an inside cabin next to or across the hall, man, those kids will play hard and they will crash. There's no sunlight. There's no sunrise to wake them up. It's phenomenal. Why do they get so tired on the cruise ship? One, it's new. It's exciting. It's fun. Two, we love hunting for ducks. If you haven't heard, I think a few years ago, some travel agents used to put some ducks and they would put a little rubber band on it with the travel agent's name and maybe their hashtag or their email address or their social media and then people started hiding ducks and then man the duck Industry is crazy. There are big ducks. There are teeny ducks. There are yellow ducks. There are elephant ducks There are pirate ducks. It's hilarious. It's fun the bigger ships we find the oasis class ships the duck hunting is off the charts, it's amazing and they get tired because they're walking and walking and walking to look for ducks or walking and walking and walking to hide ducks. They read, grab a book, they write, they draw, they color at the dinner tables, in the bedrooms, in the staterooms, they relax. There's a whole lot of nothing when everything is five minutes away. 

There's no parking. You don't have to dress up that much. You could throw your swimsuit on with some flip flops and a hat and you're off to the races with a cover up all day long. The towels, you check the towels out. I keep towels all week. Little pro tip for you. I'll check out four or six towels. And then after I finished using them at the pool, they're wet. I'll just turn them in, trade in four or six towels and take those back to the room. That keeps it easy. It makes it where we're ready to go to the pool. We don't have to look for the towel people every time. But here's the other thing, being flexible, huge. I know some of you are planners, but look it's a cruise. There's most days nothing to get off of the ship for. You're stuck there, so you just relax. Sometimes the dining changes. Sometimes your table's not available. Sometimes your waiter's not available. Whatever. Sometimes the rooms change. We've had rooms break, not be available when we get there.

We had a guy next to us who was not a great neighbor. So the ship moved us. We've had room upgrades. We've had room downgrades, which we gladly accepted to get away from a noise or from too much light. You just roll with it. When things don't go according to the plan, it's kind of like a shoulder shrug in a, what?

So why, why do we go on these cruises? Well, really I've used these cruises mainly as a one-on-one getaway for me to spend time with each of my kids, you know, four days, five days. That's been great. We also use it as a family vacation. Spring breaks a good time. Holidays are a good time. Thanksgiving's and we'll just load up all the kids who are available and go.

So you might be asking, what about childcare? What about childcare? Well, my and Kelly's philosophy is generally speaking, if we are taking our children on a cruise, we're going to spend time with our children on the cruise. Not until my birthday cruise, election week, did we ever use childcare. And we took the baby, dropped the baby off, went out for a two hour dinner and came back and picked her up. We did that a couple of times that week. They may charge you five bucks an hour or something like that. It's not a big deal. It's worth it because that was a special event. And of course I'm not a legalist. You do whatever you want. But for me, going to the pool, wearing them out, walking tracks, we would have dinner. I can't tell you how many times we had to stop and go to the restroom. We have to leave pretty long walk. Maybe go back to the to the state room because we had to do some serious damage to the restroom. Maybe we had to go to the restroom there. Well, if I take the kids, it's the men's room. If Kelly takes him, it's the ladies room and our dinners were not efficient and that's okay. We just had to roll with it. 

But you know what? It's so great because then the staff see you for smiling. We learn about mock tales with the kids. We learn about the towel animals. We learned about origami at the table. It, just so many new experiences. So we keep our kids near us. Now we're not scared. We're not doing this because someone, we think someone's going to take our kids because we don't trust the childcare. No, I mean, a lot, actually most childcare is free except for the little bitty ones on Royal Caribbean for us.

We take them because we do want to do life with them. We do want to experience it with them and, they're just great to see in a new environment. So what is the practical takeaway? If you put your kids in school, whether it's public school, private school, homeschool blend, where you pull neighbors together, do it online.

You have your soccer or basketball coach invest in your kids. If you have a youth group, aunts and uncles, other people spend time with your kids, but cruising is a great way to teach your kids. know, kids will pick up your values, right? Your values are caught, not taught. I've said that before. When they see me greeting crew members and they see the crew members waving

Hello, Mr. Derek. Hello, Mr. Moore. And then they say, Hey, little sweet girl, guess what I have in my pocket for you. Somebody has a duck and they get to scream and cheer and big high fives and hugs. That is all the impact. want to have some really good memories. want to say, listen, we are here to have a great time together, but also truly

to find the stories about my man from Montenegro. And he tells me about his family in Montenegro. I want to hear about my friends from Romania and their story. And my, my new friend who is from South Africa, and he tells me about all the things going on in this past generations, so much to learn. And then guess what? We go on these cruises.

These crew members will have six, seven, seven and a half, eight month contracts. They go home and then they come back oftentimes to different ships. But then the ships switch ports and then sometimes we travel and I have seen crew members on ships I've never been on say, wait, weren't you on this ship? Don't I know you? And we have to look back at why I was on this ship this time and they know their contracts and I know my travel. And then we can recall and we can laugh and say, Oh, you did this here on this ship. you, I remember you from this spot. Our first cruise Kelly's and my on the grand tour of the seas, a very old ship, a very small ship was in August and we, we returned labor day of 2022 and in the cruise area, we saw a woman named Tatsiana and Tatsiana was helping us sign up for the, the internet.

And we were talking and we talked about business and her life and Kelly is a certified business made simple coach. She's a guide. She offered Tatsiana maybe a scholarship for a year to try something out. And Tatiana took that to heart and logged in. We saw Tatiana just recently, two plus years later, she knew Kelly instantly. She kind of remembered me, but she was so grateful for Kelly investing in her. And we tell the kids that not to brag, but just to say when you're really there to see other people, they will remember you. And maybe you've gone to a restaurant, you know, once a year for a special event. And guess what? People remember you. Maybe you go to a convention once or twice a year. People remember you. So I use it to teach my kids that Dale Carnegie principle to learn other people's names.

Okay. Let me close with safety. We have three ship laws. The laws are important to teach safety and to teach independence. There's simple rules. I think I made them up. I might've stolen them from somebody. If you find someone who has the same rules, great. I don't care who gets the credit. The first rule kind of a la Brian Johnson.

Don't die.

On a cruise ship I tell my kids first rule don't die okay that may sound easy may sound hard but I'm just telling them be thinking about this this is unusual this is new there are lots of ways to mess this up don't don't die I'm not going to expand on that you're a smart kid. 

Number two: Don't cause anyone else to die. Notice I didn't say don't murder don't kill just don't cause anyone else to die.

That's encouraging them. That's throwing them. That's hurting them. Whatever. I don't have to expand on it. 

And then number three, don't go in someone else's cabin who didn't travel with us and don't let them into your cabin unless they traveled with us. In other words, stay with your people. Don't go with any other people into their cabin, into their state room. And you know what? There are cameras everywhere, but there are not cameras in your state room. So one don't die. Two, don't cause anyone else to die. Three, don't go in anyone else's room or let anyone else in your room. They're simple. They kind of laugh about them. They're very memorable and it keeps things safe while giving kids. There's another F word freedom. Do I have to tell them don't run? No, there are lifeguards for that or they'll slip and fall and balk their little head and they'll figure it out.

Do I have to tell them don't eat 14 donuts? No, because when they feel sick and their skin itches and they're sniffly or they drink too much milk, have too much ice cream, they'll figure it out. We, we let them learn and grow. So as I close, I want you to figure out what is your cruising. Your cruising might be basketball at the local park.

I've never done anything like this before two and a half years ago. The pandemic and the shutdowns pushed everything one way. I swung like a pendulum the other way. You might say our family is a swimming family. We all swim. We're on swim team. We do breaststroke, side stroke, backstroke, freestyle, butterfly. You may be a swimming team. That's great. You may be a book team, a mathlete team, you may be a church team, a church planter team, you may be a travel team, your family does rah rah rah, you do you. But when you do it, just remember it's not just about the doing it, it's not just about the vacation or the swimming or the basketball or the fill in the blank. It's about shared experiences. Because at the end of your life, think about it, really...

The main things that are gonna matter are the people you've met and the books you've read. Those are the things that will affect you the most in your life. And when you read the book, when you read the one book and you meet the one person who wrote the book just for you, you realize that's all that life is about. And so reading books, meeting people, and travel is like opening up another world, opening up a book. You open it up an Atlas, a National Geographic, a leisure magazine, whatever. It is phenomenal. So life lessons, priceless, adaptability, confidence, social skills, family bonding. How do you, how do you replace that? How do you duplicate that? Sit on your couch and staring at a TV. You can't, you have to get out and live life. So my challenge for you is figure out how you can create intentional, memorable experiences for your family.

So you may be wondering how in the world do the Moores make this work? One of our Fs is finances. Remember the eight dimensional living while the next podcast join us for the nitty gritty of how we actually pull this off, maximizing all the rewards that are available, all the loyalty perks that are available and all the booking strategies, so that you can have the travel, the experience, the memories of your dreams. Join me next week. We'll tackle the nitty gritty finances and logistics.

Until then, let's do this together. Be a great dad.

Thank you for joining us on the Smart Dad Podcast. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. For resources, links, and more, check out the show notes. Also, if you like what you heard today, please leave us a five star review so other dads can find the podcast and be the dad they are meant to be. Now go out and be a smart dad today.