Best ferry experience with kids?

[BlueRaspberry7]

Can anyone recommend an enjoyable ferry experience from the UK to either France or the Isle of Wight?

I realise it's subjective, but is there any consensus about the best port/s to desist from/arrive at, best ferry operator?

Also any general tips to make the experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible please!

We do the short hop from Dover to Calais or Dunkirk every year. We usually get breakfast, have a mooch around the ship. There's a little soft play area for young kids.
It's perfectly pleasant and not so long that it feels like a chore. Not mega exciting, although I still love looking out of the windows and spotting land ahoy!

(And we tend to get DFDS ferries, because they are a little cheaper)

Brittany Ferries - pricey, but a real cruise-lite experience. Our kids loved the Pompey - St Malo night boat, and still say how magical it made their holidays. The self-service restaurant is brilliant value; kids entertainment, bars. It's fab.

And it lands you in France on the western side - v handy for Brittany and Vendée

Definitely the Brittany Ferries Portsmouth St-Malo. On the outbound crossing you board at 8pm so there's time for some entertainment before bed (definitely book a cabin!). The return crossing is daytime but has cinema, panto, quizzes etc and a quite reasonable self-service restaurant. My kids love it.

St Malo is a lovely town and there are other nice places nearby- Dinard, Diane, Mont St Michel. Or it's an easy drive to Brittany or further down the west coast.

It does cost an arm and a leg though and gets booked up for the summer sailings very quickly.

Another vote for Brittany ferries from Portsmouth. We've used the overnight crossing and the Liberation trimaran and both were really good.

This is all very helpful, thanks so much

Not a route you were asking about but we love the overnight Harwich-Hook of Holland crossing. Cabins sleep 5 which is very useful if you are a family with 3 kids rather than the standard 2 🙂

If you do book Brittany Ferries, and I can definitely recommend them, lots of stuff to do for kids to keep them entertained, I can give you a code that will give you 10% off the price.

Depends where you live in the U.K. From Scotland, we always went Hull Zeebrugge and I think the kids thought the ferry was the best part of the holiday!

I should have added - we're in the south east of England.

Thanks for all the tips so far, really helpful.

Portsmouth - Caen is another nice route (Brittany Ferries). About 6 hours.

We love IOW. Ferry is short, feels like you're actually going away. We get wight link.

For France we get the tunnel. Usually cheaper than the ferry. And it's quicker.

The IoW ferry is super expensive for what it is, though. It's put us off going.

Definitely Portsmouth -> St Malo, we’ve done it so many times before as had family living in Brittany, it’s not a fast way to get to France but was always quite stress free - book cabins and you’ll have time for dinner, a browse, some time in the arcades or soft play depending on ages/preference, walk about on the decks outside, drinks at the bar, then bed for downtime and sleep - you wake up and you’re there.
We’re doing the crossing again in the summer for the first time in a few years and dh in particular is dead excited about the ferry part of the holiday 😂

Sorry, not France but overnight from Harwich to Hook of Holland is great and you're then only about an hour away from Amsterdam.