35th wedding anniversary gift

OK, Family Fun Vacation Director, here is your challenge:

Plan a weeklong trip for a dozen people ages 13 to 72 whose wish list for a good vacation includes good food, swimming and sunning, gambling and Vegas-style shows, spa-quality pampering, partying all night and bingo, bingo, bingo!

Oh, and how about something for the kids?

Well, if you have the cash and the Dramamine, a luxury cruise might be a good option. Even the most finicky traveler would have to admit there's plenty going on aboard these massive fantasy islands on water.

In June, my grandparents, Fred and Edith Dickinson of Peoria, took 10 members of the family with them on a Caribbean cruise to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Three generations of the family boarded the Carnival Pride for a seven-day tour of the eastern Caribbean that featured daylong stops at the Bahamas, St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

Just like our past vacations, there was plenty of laughing and bonding - and irritation, without which any self-respecting family vacation would not be complete. But, boy, was it fun.

Depending on what you make of it, a cruise ship can resemble the Love Boat or the Party Boat (just ask my sister). Or the Catch-Up-On- My-Reading Boat.

Granny and Grandfred, as we call them, celebrated their 35th anniversary in Orlando and had a big family reunion in the Kentucky lakes area in 1999. They discussed the big 5-0 two years ago.

Granny said she didn't want a large party for their 50th anniversary, so Grandfred suggested a cruise. The pair had taken more than a dozen themselves, alone and with friends. But save for one other family member, none of the rest of us had ever been on one.

"It's something we've always enjoyed, and I thought this would be a new adventure for everyone, and we could share it together," Grandfred said.

Once the location was decided, my grandparents turned over the cruise planning to their oldest daughter, Meg.

She had about a year to find a trip that fit within my grandparents' parameters: They wanted it to be a week long, they wanted it somewhere in the Caribbean, and they wanted to spend as close to $1,000 per person as possible for the cruise and airfare together.

Patience is a virtue. After a year of research, negotiation and waiting for prices to fall, they got a pretty sweet deal.

The rate for the rooms (double occupancy, balcony) they wanted was listed in the Carnival brochure at $2,000 per person per room. Meg found a $1,000 discount, then waited to book the trip until the price finally came down to $900 per person.

Add in airfare to Orlando, at $300 a seat.

Grand total for 12 people on a seven-day, seven-night cruise: $14,400.

Don't choke on your pina colada. My grandparents, who have traveled to 73 countries, knew this kind of vacation wouldn't be cheap.

Save for my Aunt Kim, who lives in Tennessee, we're all from the Peoria area. But we don't see each other as much as we should, or as much as we like. We were looking forward to catching up.

Unfortunately, we lost two of my cousins and an uncle before the trip even started due to scheduling problems. That was the only thing that kept the cruise from being perfect, my grandparents said.

"It exceeded my expectations," Grandfred said. "Being with family and seeing them have a good time was well worth the money."

The boat of all trades

Most of us didn't know what to expect on the trip. Which is precisely why I lugged two suitcases roughly the size of armoires onto the boat.

And what a boat it was. If you ever take a similar cruise, expect to get lost trying to find your room the first few days.

Our Carnival 'Fun Ship,' as the line calls its boats, was 963 feet long, 11 stories tall and carried more than 2,100 vacationers and 930 staff members. It had three separate elevator spots per floor. I found it confusing that the hallways twisted and turned - we were, after all, just aboard a large, rectangular, waterproof box.

After we found our rooms, the first order of business was to meet up for a pre-dinner buffet.

And so started the gluttony of food. Cruise ships offer round-the- clock chow, most of it good. There's casual dining, formal dining, extra-formal dining. Twenty-four hour pizza, a seafood buffet, a midnight buffet.

It turned out that the one time a day the whole family got together was for dinner. Though we were on a family cruise, my grandparents had made it clear we were free to split up and do our own thing.

You can do as little or as much on a cruise and come and go as you like. It's all on your own terms.

My grandparents would wake up about 7 a.m.; some mornings, my sister wouldn't make it back to the room until nearly that time.

Granny typically would make an early morning aerobics class, grab breakfast and settle in on the shaded deck to read a novel or do crosswords for the afternoon. She visited the salon and entered a putting contest.

Grandfred rose about the same time, but he would spend a typical afternoon sunning on the poolside deck, reading a book while scanning the bathing beauties.

And they were crazy about the evening 'Vegas-style' shows the crew put on every night. We're talking musical numbers with dancers and elaborate costumes - one was about Yankee Doodle and the other about musicial motorcycles.

They also had a handful of no-name comedians, a man billed as the fastest juggler in the world and 'Lubo the Balancer,' who balanced a 10-speed bicycle on his chin, despite the ship's gentle swaying.

A reminder, should you ever go on a cruise: They bill it as 'Vegas- style' entertainment. Not necessarily Vegas quality.

Which is why most of the under-70 set on the cruise tended to pass on the evening shows and opt for hanging out in a Jacuzzi or at the piano bar or karaoke club.

The younger people used the vacation to stay up late or sleep in (although for me, the timetable wasn't much different than my typical second-shift workday at home). Unless we were disembarking on an island that day, we would stay out until 2 or 3 a.m. the night before, sleep until 11 a.m. or noon, then put on a swimsuit and hit the pool deck.

Room attendants put a daily activities newsletter in your room the second time each day they clean your room. You can lounge around and plan your day around the Ping-Pong tourney, the hairy chest competition, dance lessons or big screen movies.

Or bingo.

You learn things about yourself during a cruise. I, for instance, became obsessed with the twice-daily bingo games.

Also, I found unexpected pleasure in ordering anything I felt like off the free room-service menu. Some part of me got a dirty delight from lounging in one of those plush white hotel-type robes and ordering five things from the menu, nibbling from each, and tossing most of it back onto the plate with indifference.

Who knew it, but I will waste food with abandon if it's free. Classy, huh?

Oh, and another activity the whole family shared - comparing how much weight we thought we'd gained during the trip.

A couple of things on the trip weren't free: booze and gambling. Go figure. They were the biggest moneymakers on the boat.

There's nothing like a daiquiri by poolside, I have to admit. But someone on the trip - I won't name names for fear of being uninvited to Christmas dinner - seemed to spend most of the trip sitting on a barstool and must have racked up close to half a grand in drinks alone.

Not everyone is old enough to drink and gamble, of course.

My 13-year-old cousin, Michelle, was eligible for the 'Camp Carnival' children's program. Camp 'counselors,' as they're called, basically keep kids ages 2 to 15 entertained through the week with a variety of sports, arts and crafts, video games and swimming activities.

And, of course, you can't have a Caribbean vacation without swimming and sunning unless you're my ivory-skinned Granny. Most of us laid out on the top deck every afternoon we were at sea. And the days we visited islands, we visited the water, too.

"Sunbathing with crystal blue water with waitresses serving drinks and all the family around," said Aunt Kim, "was heavenly."

The Love Boat

Though there was much to do on the boat and explore on the islands, we didn't forget why we were on the cruise.

The first formal dinner night, someone told our waiter my grandparents were celebrating their anniversary, and they got complimentary champagne and cake.

After dinner, we presented our gift to them: a memory album. Months earlier, my aunts had mailed scrapbook pages to all of my grandparents' friends and family and asked them to decorate them with pictures and written memories.

Dozens of people obliged, creating a wonderful personal collection of living history. My grandparents pored over that book for an hour, smiling and laughing. Later, Granny read it privately and confessed her eyes got misty at the end.