cadien

And what are we teaching our kids with priority airport check-in and security lines for people!? What will they thing when they see people cutting in front of all of these other people who have been standing in line forever!?

 

*sigh* The pigeon analogy is oh so true!! lol

Not to mention those priority passes at DisneyLand.

I think what the community can do is to offer helpful suggestions to the OP. First, I think it is poor management for anyone dropping off their children to have to wait 30 minutes or more, Haven or not. Perhaps the parents utilizing the kids club can provide constructive feedback to NCL.

 

Until NCL makes it more efficient, could I suggest that the parents drop off their children during slightly off-peak periods. If something starts at say 8 A.M., perhaps do something until 8:30 or 9 A.M. and hopefully avoid the initial drop off rush. I can't imagine that it takes 30 minutes or more per child all day long since it would then take 4 hours just to check in the 8th parent's child.

 

So give feedback to NCL and check in during slightly off-peak times would be my suggestions.

It depends on the cruise. The reason the lines were so ridiculously long for us was because there were just over 1,000 kids on board and the club had a maximum capacity of 85. (It was the Star. Smaller.) If you weren't in line ten minutes before the club opened, you weren't getting in.

DS was a toddler and had always been home with one or the other of us. Playing with other children was far more exciting for him.

OP's premise is that she is a Haven guest and Haven people shouldn't have to wait in line for anything.

OP's premise is that she's a Haven guest and NCL heavily markets special treatment -- including line-cutting -- for their Haven guests.

If DH doesn't want to do it, why doesn't DW do it? If neither wants to do it, leave the kids at home. You obviously do not want to be responsible for their care.

I'm not the OP but really, it can be awful. It feels like there's never more than an hour before you have to go stand in another line. For 45 minutes at a time. Only on sea days, at least. But it still isn't much fun.

We would not allow anyone else to check out our kids for us.....so many reasons.....

 

The liability for NCL allowing this makes it impossible. We have loved all of our butlers but truly they are strangers to us before the cruise. If they have your authorization to sign out your child they could do it at anytime and take them anywhere on the ship etc......I know that the odds are against this but in this world remember "stranger danger."

The OP did only ask about checking in. The wait to check out is significantly shorter.

I may have posted too quickly after I had 10sec to think about it. Is this because the butlers are defraying responsibility if a request can't be fulfilled? The concierge would clearly handle a restaurant reservation but you'd make the request with the butler, not the concierge. So you want a reservation for 2 for Cagney's @ 8pm with the butler. Butler checks with the concierge, no chance, "Sorry, concierge said no. He's the boss." ... ?

I believe you make all reservation requests with the concierge, not the butler.

The butlers do sometimes delegate to the room steward though. Ours both explained that they worked as a team.

Butlers officially handle in-cabin requests, but there are plenty of anecdotes on this board of them delivering drinks and sunglasses all over the ship.

On our cruise in a DOS, the low point was 30-minute-plus waits for the kids club every time. A third of the passengers were under 18. It didn't occur to me to ask the butler or concierge about a way to shorten that, but it's not an unreasonable thing to wonder with everything else posted.

Not sure about ncl...but on ccl..it had to be a parent to check kiddos in and out...wouldn't even let our teenage daughter do it.

I would doubt the butler wiuld be allowed

When we cruised NCL with family, any adult could check DS in and out. We just had to provide authorized names and cabin numbers when we registered him at the club on the first day.

Searching the board for cocktail party will get you some detailed answers. You could also do a new thread with that in the subject line. Many people with experience may skip over this one thinking it's just a discussion about the staff on this particular ship.

If the birthday is not on embarkation day, you can arrange with the butler to set things up on the actual day. Several suite travelers have described doing this in their reviews, for either a birthday or anniversary.

DS was 3.5 when we cruised as well.

He loved the kids club. Could not get enough time in there.

The one hiccup we ran into was that he got sleepy too early the first two nights. We had flown west rather than east. The kids club had a quiet area with mats for evening but he wasn't interested. Each time, the club called the restaurant where we were eating and then the waiter relayed the message. The first night we'd just ordered dessert and they gave us a tray to take it back to the room. The second night, we'd just finished appetizers but they delivered my entree and dessert to our cabin. DH and his folks even sent along half a bottle of wine, which I appreciated!

We had family members along who never left the ship, so leaving him in the club for an excursion was no big deal. Otherwise it would be possible but depend on quite a lot.

Learning a lot from this thread. My DD is only 3 so I've got a while before I really need to worry about this. I'm surprised that there are penalties from schools if you miss days! IMO I wouldn't stop doing it until High School at which point I think the make up work would get to be too much.

It does depend on the district. DS starts kindergarten this fall and I was pleasantly surprised to see them specify in the handbook that travel is an excused absence. There's even a sentence about the value of travel to the child. This is a public school district in a rural area.

We were on the Star in April. They did the circus (our son participated) and the show was at 11:00.

On our spring break cruise they turned kids away, yes. 1,000 kids and a capacity of 68. They did put the 10-12s in a separate room and often took the 6-9s outside. But they still had to cut off. You could always come back periodically to see whether enough kids had left.

Also note that some activities required close toed shoes. No sandals.

We are cruising on the Escape in Feb 2016, we will have our grand children ages 6 & 8, we are curious if when the kids are in Splash Academy is there any communication if the kids want to leave, will the staff find the parents somehow?

Both times our son wanted to leave, it was in the evening and he was simply tired. We'd told them where we were eating when we dropped him off and they called the restaurant. Earlier this year.

No idea whether they would have tried something else if we hadn't been there after all, but I can't imagine what their options would be.

The bridge tour procedure must depend on the concierge. We received an invitation without asking first. It went to all the suites.

It definitely depends on the cruise. They can't hold spaces for every person in every suite, after all. We were in a suite on a KSF and most suites were full to capacity with extended families instead of just couples. That made a huge difference in how quickly the specialties filled. The concierge warned us while still in the boarding area that we needed to save spots then, not later. Take it seriously if you hear the same.

As cadien said it may depend on the ship. We received one on the Pearl and on he Star. The Captain did allow pictures to be taken with him on the Star as my DSD asked if he would. I noticed he took pictures with other attendees as well. The invitations came with other paperwork/ship "mail" already in our cabin.

The suite guests did all receive a bridge tour invitation in our case. And a handful of things were canceled because they weren't prepared right after dry dock, so maybe the tour was easier to do than a reception that time. We certainly preferred it.

Simply put, yes.

 

Suites have cocktail party, suite butlers as waitstaff for gathering.usually ships officers are present.

That might depend on the ship. I don't remember us receiving an invitation.

Sago Mini and Toca Boca are our son's favorites. When he was two, also Endless Alphabet and Doodle Critter Math (actually just numbers).

You can download individual 25-minute episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse via iTunes for $2.99 each. Then you can view them without internet.

The capacity of the Splash Academy on the Star was 80-something and we had just about 1,000 kids on our cruise. People did stand in line for 30 minutes because they got in line that long before the center opened, to be sure of a spot. And that was three times a day, so you could call it hours total.

They did open a conference room for the 10-12 group.

Mostly it was the 6-9 group getting turned away. It can happen.

Edit: I just read the review. No one yelled at or cursed the staff while we were in line, which was often. Yikes.

There's only one dolphin encounter in Cabo, on the marina. There is one ins San Jose Del Cabo also.

 

I'm not sure on the picture policy.

We did the one that involved a long bus ride, so I'm guessing that was San Jose Del Cabo.

I'm guessing more than one place in Cabo does dolphin excursions. Ours allowed the observers to take photos, no charge, but had no concessions. That was April of this year.

When we were there in April, bystanders weren't charged. They had a covered area with benches and even received the lunch.

We booked our recent cruise 14 months ahead. And it was my first, although I was traveling with veteran cruisers. I basically spent the entire time on here...