Cruising, blogging, and diapers aren't exactly the best combo. But by ferry, taxi, speedboat, and underwater scooter, Wendy Perrin takes a big-ship itinerary and makes it a showstopper

Most travel writers covering the cruise beat sail in champagne-and-caviar style, admiring idyllic ports from the balcony of a 400-square-foot suite. Then there's me. I ended up on a 2,449-passenger-capacity megaship, sailing a pedestrian itinerary in the been-there-done-that Caribbean, squeezing my family of four into the ship's least expensive cabin—all 170 square feet of it.

And I did this why? You can bet your buffet line it wasn't for my mental health. But 90 percent of cruisegoers travel on 1,500-passenger-plus ships—because these vessels are more affordable or because their services and comforts better meet the needs of diverse family groups—and it was my job to be your guinea pig and test that experience. My assignment: to figure out how to maximize a relatively humdrum big-ship itinerary.

It all began well enough. I chose Celebrity Cruises' Constellation because it was rated the best large ship by Condé Nast Traveler readers in this year's cruise ship poll. The itinerary I picked consisted of five conventional Caribbean ports. So far, so good. But then I made two mistakes. The first was to expect that I could work online on the ship as easily and quickly as I do at home. My daily Condé Nast Traveler blog was running a "Where's Wendy?" contest, which meant I needed to go on the Web daily to post photos and clues about my location, and I'd failed to factor in the excruciatingly slow at-sea satellite Internet connection. (To read my posts from the cruise, log on to the Perrin Post.)

My second mistake: bringing the kids. Celebrity Cruises promotes itself as child-friendly, and as a working mom with a business-travel schedule, I don't see my two boys nearly enough. So why not bring them along, right? Wrong. It might have made sense if this were a vacation. But this was work, and as any sane parent knows, business trips and toddlers don't mix. Thank God I'd invited my mother-in-law (I knew that a babysitter, in addition to the ship's Fun Factory—the child-care center, open from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m.—could be crucial).

The trip did have some fabulous moments: sunset on the ship's aft deck after everyone had (inexplicably) left; quick casual meals at the sushi bar; the thalassotherapy pool in the AquaSpa; dinner in the cover-charge gourmet restaurant; our stateroom attendant's nightly turndown service, which included bed-top vignettes created out of the kids' pajamas and stuffed animals; and nearly every Fun Factory activity, from the shipwide scavenger hunt to the kiddie talent show.

But the trip was ill-fated from the moment I learned, upon embarking in Fort Lauderdale, that Web access would be unavailable for the first three days of the cruise—even though Celebrity had confirmed the night before that the Internet was available 24/7. My panicked pleas to the front desk that there must be some Internet connection available in somebody's back office got me nowhere. So I called my favorite cruise travel agent, Richard Turen of Churchill & Turen, in Naperville, Illinois, who had booked the sailing. He pulled some strings with the front office—without revealing my identity—and a few hours later, I was allowed to use one of its computers. The Internet access was as slow as molasses, but Freak-out Moment No. 1 was over.