Who knew cruising with kids could be such a delight?

If you had asked me a few years ago what the only thing my husband might find more excruciating than making small talk with a handful of strangers over the breakfast table at a B&B, I would have said "doing the Electric Slide with 3,000 strangers on the lido deck of a cruise ship."

But having a child does strange things to you, not the least of which is make you eat crow on innumerable vows of "I will never ..." (see entry under: "I will never use the TV as a babysitter," and "I will never take my kid to McDonald's"). So when my son, Rowan, was 3, and we decided to see Alaska, we considered our various BC (before child) travel options and concluded that trekking through the tundra with someone who can't hold his own water - in a canteen or otherwise - was not the grand wilderness adventure we had envisioned. With much trepidation, we booked a Holland America cruise headed for Glacier Bay.

At 3, Rowan was a little young to take full advantage of the Club Hal kids program, but a cruise ship, it turns out, is a lot like a giant playground - only stocked with people who are paid to push you on the swing, bring you treats and perform endless magic shows. Which leaves plenty of time for grownups to do things like drink hot toddies while watching orcas leap in triplicate.

Somewhere between the kitchen tour, where we got to watch chefs carve ice sculptures; the parade of baked Alaskas, in which 20 white-coated waiters promenade down a grand staircase carrying enormous plates of sparkler-topped puff pastry; and our entry into Glacier Bay, when we silently slipped past the Marjorie Glacier as enormous chunks of ice and snow broke off and tumbled like dice into the sea - we drank the cruise Kool-Aid.

That first experience inspired us a year or so later to go the Full Monty on a Princess Caribbean cruise out of New York. No sedate nature lovers here. This was a serious cruise, complete with a rum Hurricane sail-away party, George Hamilton look-alikes sipping mai tais in the hot tub, and limbo contests.

After the culture shock wore off, we decided there were a lot more things to like about tropical cruises than the smell of cocoa butter. For one, it's hot in the Caribbean, and a pool is never more than a deck's length away. Our ship had five pools (and seven hot tubs), including a splash pool for little kids and one that sported a 300-square-foot movie screen. For another, you never have to worry about schlepping your suitcase anywhere. Ever. And once aboard, you can go a week and never put on a pair of shoes. Or pants.

Beyond that there is the kids program, which, for parents like us, was something of a revelation. Where else can you find really nice people with degrees in early childhood education whose sole job is to entertain your child round-the-clock? For Princess Pelicans (ages 3-7) there's T-shirt decorating, mini-climbing walls, PlayStation programs, pajama parties, movie and pizza nights, scavenger hunts, and of course, babysitting.

One day the International Piazza was transformed into a carnival with clowns, face painting, balloons, and a make-a-cookie station. Other days, there was a revolving cavalcade of jugglers, stilt walkers, magicians, barbershop singers - even a string quartet.

One evening, as my husband and I sat on the deck of the fancy Italian restaurant eating scampi, sipping Cabernet and watching the moon dance in the ship's wake - and Rowan was off playing musical chairs, or making bracelets, or doing karaoke - it occurred to me that for the first time in a long while, I was really relaxed.

Here are few more things cruising taught me:
-- Whoever came up with the idea of issuing parents of young children a vibrating pager to reassure them that all is well will surely have a special place in heaven.

-- The confines of a ship go from claustrophobic to breathtakingly reassuring when you have a 4-year-old who likes to play the old elevator game of "guess which floor I'm on?"

-- That ship can also feel as big as an ocean when your kid's at one end frolicking in the Pelican playroom and you're at the other end by the adults-only pool getting shiatsued upside and back.
-- The average age of the cruising public sounds geriatric until you realize that you now have 3,000 potential doting grandparents at your beck and call.

-- There is no shame in taking three petit fours, a pile of cream puffs, a slice of black forest cake, and Sachertorte from the midnight dessert extravaganza buffet, as long as you take them back to your room. There is only small shame in eating three of them before you get there.