Club HAL on Noordam for 5 Year Old?

[bzv143]

Looking at a Christmas cruise on Noordam this year--taking our 5 year old granddaughter. Anyone know how the Children's Program will be on board? We have never sailed on HAL.... :rolleyes:

[fqtvguy]

Looking at a Christmas cruise on Noordam this year--taking our 5 year old granddaughter. Anyone know how the Children's Program will be on board? We have never sailed on HAL.... :rolleyes:

 

While never having been on Noordam, we just got off the Amsterdam (14 day Alaskan Adventure) with our four-and-a-half year old, and she loved Club HAL! There were over 130 kids on board during this early July sailing (which surprised us given that this was a 14-day cruise). Our DD loved the supervisors as well as the varied activities - lots of arts and crafts as well as themed evening activities. Club HAL even offered full-day activities on Port days, which was great because we could take our DD out for part of the day on shore and then drop her off and continue exploring on our own. DD loved Club HAL so much that she wanted to go as soon as she got up and didn't want to leave for mealtimes!

 

We'll be taking DD on the Oosterdam later this month and she can't wait.

[jam82]

I'm sorry to say that we sailed on the Oosterdam in June with our 3.5 year old and absolutely hated Club HAL. The counselors were lazy, untrained, and made up rules as they went. They were so bad that is was comical. This was his 11th cruise using the kids club, but it was our first on HAL. On past cruises we have only had great things to say about the activities and the staff, but the situation on the Oosterdam was horrible. One of the activities was to write a letter to the captain. My kid may be slow, but writing is not something he can do. The counselors were not willing to transcribe. Their rule was if you couldn't do the activity then you could sit on the couch or on the line on the floor. My son was not the only one who had to sit out. There were usually 4-5 others sitting out as well. I thought at least they would be able to have an alternate activity or even be allowed to look at a book, but no. It was the scheduled activity or nothing. We felt that since they advertise the Club as being from ages 3-7 that there should have been activities that most 3-5 year olds could be successful with.

 

Since you granddaughter will be 5, I'm sure she will be better able to participate in the activities than my son was. And of course I can't judge the whole kids program by one 7 day cruise, but even though we loved HAL we won't sail them again for a long time. Overall we had a great cruise, but were very disappointed with Club HAL. I realize that 3-7 is a big age range and could have lived with the higher level activities if the counselors would have been helpful, polite, trained or flexible, but they had none of those qualities.

[doclove]

We did a cruise on the Oosterdam for Christmas with our 4 kids last year. DS was the youngest and was 4 at the time.

 

There were plenty of kids onboard and all of my kids had fun at Club HAL. The 4 yo asked to not go to some activities and stayed with us, but that was rare. For the 3-7 range they did crafts, played games, read stories, did dress up, and other age appropriate activities.

 

Extra youth counselors were brought onboard to help out and I think there were usually 3-4 with each group depending on the number of kids.

 

For Christmas all of the kids got to have their picture taken with Santa (of course it cost to get the picture) and receive a present.

[SingleFatherofDD]

I have sailed on the Noordam a few times already before I adopted DD. DD will be going on the Noordam during the New Years cruise, one cruise after yours. Sorry that they couldn't meet up. We recently got off another HAL ship. I can only say that the activities have gotten much better since I was a kid. The youth counselor are so out going for this age group that the make everything great. My DD didn't even want to spend time with me and always asked to go to the club. The activities that they have are age appropriate. They keep them busy. Also the rest of the crew love children. One of the bar waiters would make some type of animal out of paper for DD every night. We had a female room steward who would leave towel animals on DD bed every night. I know this is a common occurrence on the ships now but she would get her stuff animals involved with the towel animal. We have so many pictures of her with these set ups. One night the room steward even used my sun glasses on the towel animal. That monkey looked so cool.

 

Enough rambling. Would I recommend HAL to a family with a child, the answer is yes. Your DD should have an extremely great time on the ship.