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Antarctica Tours

Minimum age: varies

Antarctica offers dramatic landscapes, stunning wildlife, and exciting adventure activities such as kayaking and ice camping. These experiences can provide once in a lifetime travel memories to delight the senses of travelers of all ages. However, these unique sea voyages are not a good choice for every family. Parents should carefully consider the interests and limitations of their own children before deciding on an Antarctica tour.

Getting to Antarctica takes much longer than traditional cruise voyages and the relatively small boats have much fewer facilities than a typical cruise ship. These long voyages at sea can become tiresome for even the most hearty child traveler. Entertainment options onboard are often limited to educational lectures, wildlife viewing, and whatever you pack along. Be sure to bring plenty of books, arts and crafts materials, puzzles, or other age-appropriate entertainment options. You may also want to consider upgrading to a larger room or suite to give kids more room to spread out. A few of the larger luxury vessels do offer additional facilities such as swimming pools, cinemas, or in-room television that can also help keep kids occupied.

Since family travel to Antarctica is a relatively new concept, it is unlikely that there will be other children onboard for your kids to play with. Talk with your kids in advance to prepare them for this situation and for the trip demands in general. The more that your family researches and selects options together, the more fun everyone will have!

Since there is no access to medical facilities, children with chronic conditions such as severe asthma, diabetes, etc are not advised to visit. Some vessels have minimum age requirements ranging from 6 to 12 (see below). Other vessels leave it up to the parents to decide whether or not the cruise would be appropriate.

Polar Pioneer 12 Kayaking and camping available on some journeys; Exceptions to minimum age possible
Professor Molchanov 12 Exceptions to minimum age possible
Professor Multanovskiy 12 Kayaking and camping available on some journeys; Exceptions to minimum age possible
Aleksey Maryshev 12 Exceptions to minimum age possible
Grigoriy Mikheev 12 Exceptions to minimum age possible
Akademik Shokalskiy 12 Kayaking and camping available on some journeys; Exceptions to minimum age possible
Akademik Ioffe 7 Kayaking and camping available; Small Pool onboard
Akademik Vavilov 7 Kayaking and camping available; Small Pool onboard
Polar Star 7 Child Discounts available
Clipper Adventurer 7  
Orlova 8 Exceptions to minimum age possible
MS Endeavour 7 Child Discounts available; Has small pool onboard
Corinthian II 8 Exceptions to minimum age possible; All rooms have TV and mini-refrigerator
Explorer II 10 7 years of age minimum age requirement on the Special Family Departures with Child Discounts; Gym, Cinema, and Pool onboard

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