Does this bother you, kids and crusing pranks..

[rgreenpc]

The problem with tolerant parents...

 

I have heard this line before... "Its not like we will ever see these people again."

 

<sigh>

[peanutzmom]

We had the EXACT same thing happen on our March cruise (over Spring Break) with our breakfast room service cards. After the second day, we just stopped putting them out and DH would just call room service as soon as he woke up. Luckily, they were very prompt so it wasn't a huge deal. I can sympathize, though. The three teenage boys (with NO 25-yr-old in the room, per Carnival policy) were up late cranking music the first couple of nights till after 3 AM. I finally broke down and called the pursers desk, even though I hate to complain about other guests, and security started strolling past our room several times each night and would knock on the door if the kids were getting too loud. That definitely cut down on the noise. As an added bonus, the Captain sent us an apology letter our last day at sea with two free drink tickets in it! :) Anyway, I just wanted to say I know where you're coming from. Unfortunately, as a teacher the only time I *can* cruise is during the school holidays!

[cathyoo]

Oh for crying out loud!!!!! GOD lighten UP! It was me that put the part about the 11 year old throwing ice cream overboard. What I meant to imply, but clearly didn't, was that I STOPPED HIM! He never did it again. Now, how many of us have stood at the stern at night, looking down into the phosphorescent churning wake, and wanted to throw something- a cigarette, perhaps? (I DON'T SMOKE, don't bother to yell at me for that- my kids don't smoke either).

 

I wanted to say, in echoing the comments of the guy with four sons, how SOMETIMES small little things that would seem (clearly) totally evil and evidence of neglect on the part of the parents can seem to US (parents of many kids) kind of... funny. That's it.

 

Okay... I have FIVE boys (no girls) and I just cruised with four of them (no husband). It is true- your tolerance level goes way up and some of the things you think are hilarious other people would be upset about... for example... I saw my 11 year old throw an ice cream cone off the stern one night and I said "What the H*ll are you doing???" He said "We always do this, it's great, watch!" Now I am sure someone is going to quote me and write something horrible, but to me? FUNNY. VERY FUNNY.

 

I just think most folks would not have found throwing ice cream overboard funny at all. But again, my children have always claimed I do not have a sense of humor. Now, the switching of the door hangers, that could be funny. I've never had a desire to throw anything overboard except maybe my DH on ocassion. ;-)

[autumns1stangel]

I have traveled with my two boys (15 and 16 now) for years. My husband died when the boys were only 4 & 5 so it's been the three of us for many years now. We have cruised a number of times together and they love cruising. I enjoy doing things with the other adults on board, but ultimately the kids are my responsibility. If I caught them throwing ice cream overboard, switching breakfast order door tags, or behaving inappropriately in other ways, I would immediately put a stop to it. No one should have to put up with rude, mis-behaved children when they have paid their hard-earned money to have a relaxing cruise. About the worst thing I have seen my kids do on a cruise was riding the elevators. My son (10 at the time) was so shocked to see me when the elevator doors open -- a swift talking to and a suggestion that he go to the pool instead.... LOL

[cruizinrican]

Throwing ice cream over board is not funny? And you laughing at it only should your son that it was okay to do, can you imagine what he threw over when you weren't looking? Not only is this behavior unacceptable, I am almost positive it is illegal! Throwing anything over board a cruise is illegal. What are you teaching your child?:eek:

 

Sometimes we as adults need to set a better example, you think?!

 

Cruizinrican

[Seago2]

Oh, I meant to tell you that he had rigged this huge hose up to the ice cream dispenser and was offloading... I would say conservatively... 20 gallons per hour (of course more late at night).

 

So I went up to him and said "Hey! What the H**l are you doing? I mean, go right ahead and continue, don't mind me, but what are you doing?"

 

So he said "Well, I've had this steadily encroaching feeling that I am being raised in a prison, so after you busted me last night throwing the tail end of a cone into the sea I figured I would come back tonight with a better plan."

 

So I said "Where the H**l are your brothers? Out putting honey and jam on deckchairs again? vandalizing the elevators? Taking food off the buffet, stepping on it, putting it back, taking more than they need and more than they can eat? Running around unsupervised? Not that I mind, of course, just curious because I'm off to bed."

So basically, that was my night. And I think you will find that people who have five kids keep a VERY tight ship. People with one look at me and ask me how I make it look so easy and why my kids are always so well behaved. All I can think is "If I had ONE like yours, I would have stopped in 1984."

 

Thanks for the support, everyone, and for fixating on one little thing and jumping all over it. I meant it as a lighthearted thing, but now I'm being helpfully told it is ILLEGAL. Where are you guys when I am cruising? Why is it that I always meet the coolest people who are having a good time?

[CruiseIsGood]

This thread is why I cringe every time I read a post about someone getting one room for the adults and one for the kids. I doubt there is a parent out there who thinks their kids would do anything like what happened to the OP. But they will and some obviously did. I'm sure that if confronted, the parents of the shoe polish kids would swear that their children weren't capable of that behavior.

 

I went on a Thanksgiving cruise out of So. Cal. and never will do a holiday cruise again.

[nrdsb4]

Earlier in the thread:

 

Please, this is jamming me up, I won't come to this thread again, but can we please not focus on the bad here? I thought it was funny- little ha ha funny things, but now the police have taken over.

 

And later:

 

Oh, I meant to tell you that he had rigged this huge hose up to the ice cream dispenser and was offloading... I would say conservatively... 20 gallons per hour (of course more late at night).

 

So I went up to him and said "Hey! What the H**l are you doing? I mean, go right ahead and continue, don't mind me, but what are you doing?"

 

So he said "Well, I've had this steadily encroaching feeling that I am being raised in a prison, so after you busted me last night throwing the tail end of a cone into the sea I figured I would come back tonight with a better plan."

 

So I said "Where the H**l are your brothers? Out putting honey and jam on deckchairs again? vandalizing the elevators? Taking food off the buffet, stepping on it, putting it back, taking more than they need and more than they can eat? Running around unsupervised? Not that I mind, of course, just curious because I'm off to bed."

So basically, that was my night. And I think you will find that people who have five kids keep a VERY tight ship. People with one look at me and ask me how I make it look so easy and why my kids are always so well behaved. All I can think is "If I had ONE like yours, I would have stopped in 1984."

 

Thanks for the support, everyone, and for fixating on one little thing and jumping all over it. I meant it as a lighthearted thing, but now I'm being helpfully told it is ILLEGAL. Where are you guys when I am cruising? Why is it that I always meet the coolest people who are having a good time?

 

Oops! You just couldn't help yourself could you?:D

 

Why are you so upset about what a few anonymous human beings on a message board think? I guess your situation just proves how even though we think our children are so incredibly cute (and mine are really cute as bugs too), not everyone agrees that their hijinks are all that adorable.

 

No biggie, sometimes when you tell the punchline you don't get the laugh. Life goes on, you gotta shake it off...

[Seago2]

Oops! You just couldn't help yourself could you?:D

 

Why are you so upset about what a few anonymous human beings on a message board think?

 

Right on both counts! It is wierd the power that people on a message board have over me.

 

I guess it is because I cruise 2X a year in large part to set off the incredible pressure of my job and of course the other pressures of daily life (5 kids- everything from college tuition bills to spiderman costumes). I come here because it is escapist and it helps me kill the time before I get out of here again. It totally blows to have poster after poster jump all over something meant in jest or innocently posted. It would be so easy to say "haha, been there almost but not quite, LOL, yadda yadda yadda." Instead every word is parsed and now the helpful word "illegal" is thrown down.

 

I actually didn't MEAN to go here again, but flipped down the User CP and clicked. I have been preoccupied with watching a girl get NAILED for asking whether RCCI has a higher class of pax. Two posts later and the "I personally LOVE WalMart!" post gets hauled out of mothballs again. GucciGal got served, I got served, there you go- more cortisol through my body, less fun, WAAH.

 

I seriously wonder, however, where these people are when I am on cruises. I usually go with adults but in '05 I cruised NCL on Easter Sunday (with one kid- okay, he's 21) and CCL this August (four kids). No probs, no nasty looks, no unsupervised crazy kids, nothing but smiling faces coming and going. Sometimes it gets so nasty on here and I just wonder why. Blood in the water?

[cutnsew]

I sure hope we don't meet any of these child haters on our cruise. We will be cruising with our 3 boys, and they will be with us in the same cabin and they will be with us predominantly during the entire cruise (they may want to go to the pool a few minutes before I am ready). I think kids should be supervised and not allowed to be unruly also, but I don't think they should be banned from cruising. There is already so much intolerance in society. If you want to take a cruise without kids, then find an adult only cruise. Kids have every bit as much right to a nice cruise vacation as adults do. There are always people of ANY age that can ruin it for everyone else.:mad:

[wavecruiser]

On my cruise last month, there was a pack of 12 year old boys (enough said right there) that my sister and I befriended (more like they followed us around - they thought us college kids were cool). I'm pretty tolerant of pranks,especially on cruises (as someone said earlier - any cruise is better than no cruise)and this boisterous bunch came up with some hilarious antics - pouring salsa from the chips and salsa bar onto pieces of fruit and eating it. I laughed along with most of them, as long as they didn't physically harm the ship or passengers. I did have to yell at one boy who started humping a pole right on the Carnival Boulevard in front of aghast passengers LOL. My sis and I seemed to be the only supervision they had every night - we asked where their parents were and the boys told us they were out getting drunk. Apples don't fall far from the tree.

If unruliness is a problem, I really think Carnival needs to expand their hours of activities for teens - I always hear complaints that the disco closes too early for them and then they are left to find their own fun for the rest of the night.

[MandynJim]

I started cruising in the 5th grade, I'm 26 now. If I had done ANY of the things mentioned my mother would have kicked my a$$. She did not spend the whole trip with me either, I was allowed to go off on my own but knowing she would kill me if I did anything like that was a definite deterent!

[toddv]

but...the topic is hijacking my browser!

 

For details, see my gripes in:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=4811281#post4811281

 

CruisinSteve, my quick detective work suggests your signature block crashes my browser--and the crash seems to happen in Java--is there Java in your signature block?

 

I asked (in the above thread) CC to disallow scripting and applets in signature blocks because of this unsafety. A server-side cgi-script should be safe (and I THINK most countdown clocks are like that--mine is, I know).

 

Todd

[TRISHNBRAD]

I sure hope we don't meet any of these child haters on our cruise. We will be cruising with our 3 boys, and they will be with us in the same cabin and they will be with us predominantly during the entire cruise (they may want to go to the pool a few minutes before I am ready). I think kids should be supervised and not allowed to be unruly also, but I don't think they should be banned from cruising. There is already so much intolerance in society. If you want to take a cruise without kids, then find an adult only cruise. Kids have every bit as much right to a nice cruise vacation as adults do. There are always people of ANY age that can ruin it for everyone else.:mad:

 

I certainy dont consider myself to be a child hater, just someone who expects everyone, whatever age should behave in a way that is considerate and respectful of others. However that does remind me of a line of one of my friends who truly is a child hater. A lady with an obnoxious, running around, screaming and throwing stuff child in tow, turned around and said to my friend, "don't you just love kids" to which Anne replied "yes but I couldnt eat a whole one" The look on the ladies face was priceless and needless to say junior was reigned in very quickly.:D

[TxStacey]

On my cruise last month, there was a pack of 12 year old boys (enough said right there) that my sister and I befriended (more like they followed us around - they thought us college kids were cool). I'm pretty tolerant of pranks,especially on cruises (as someone said earlier - any cruise is better than no cruise)and this boisterous bunch came up with some hilarious antics - pouring salsa from the chips and salsa bar onto pieces of fruit and eating it. I laughed along with most of them, as long as they didn't physically harm the ship or passengers. I did have to yell at one boy who started humping a pole right on the Carnival Boulevard in front of aghast passengers LOL. My sis and I seemed to be the only supervision they had every night - we asked where their parents were and the boys told us they were out getting drunk. Apples don't fall far from the tree.

If unruliness is a problem, I really think Carnival needs to expand their hours of activities for teens - I always hear complaints that the disco closes too early for them and then they are left to find their own fun for the rest of the night.

 

I also cruise with my daughter who is now 13. She always seems to find other kids her age to hang with. I have said before that I think Carnival does a great job with Camp Carnival for the younger kids but is lacking in the pre-teen and teen age groups. Perhaps if these kids were busy with ship sponsored activites while on board, they wouldn't be planning thier next hoax. I agree, they can be monsters and I hope and pray that my 13 year old daughter has not done anything that I would not approve of. I may never know, but be rest assured, if another passenger came up to me and told me something that she was doing that was not right, she would be in the cabin or with me for the rest of the night:(

[vacaygirl]

Just out of curiosity, how are people able to take their kids out of school for a cruise? I know there are holidays etc. but during the off times, how does that work?

[Mysticks1]

I would think it would depend upon the school and their "rules". My daughter is going with us on the Conquest on 10/30 and will miss a week of school. She attends private school and will make up her work the next week. I wouldn't consider it if she wasn't a good student and normally doesn't have a problem with illnesses.

BTW - she will be very well behaved during this cruise:) as she knows from experience that it is expected and what the consequences are if she is not.:eek:

[yarlenna]

Teens and preteens can be a problem. Some of them don't want any adults to try tell them what fun is for them. They have had years of adults trying to teach them. When they want fun, many just want to "hang out." No cruise line can change that.

[ChadGates]

If I see a teen or preteen running up and down the halls I walk past them and then slap the back of their heads and keep walking like nothing happened.

 

If they wake me up at night with their BS I grab them and take them to their parents cabin and wake them up. Then I call their parents cabin every night we come in late and ask them how it feels.

 

If they are in the adults hot tub and we want to use it I eject them and tell them not to come back.

 

I dont care what their parents like or think about these methods.

 

Security is NO help on a cruise so take the matter into your own hands!

[cruizinrican]

This is really funny!! :) LMAO I have kids and many times I have felt this way but never while on a cruise. Do you really do these things or do you just wish you could like the rest of us?

 

Cruizinrican:D

[Onessa]

. . . take the matter into your own hands!

 

Ah yes, vigilantism is always the best solution!

 

If anyone sees ChadGates breaking any rule or being even the tad-bit most rude or unruley, please feel free to whack him across the side of the head!

[cruznlobo]

If I see a teen or preteen running up and down the halls I walk past them and then slap the back of their heads and keep walking like nothing happened.

 

If they wake me up at night with their BS I grab them and take them to their parents cabin and wake them up. Then I call their parents cabin every night we come in late and ask them how it feels.

 

If they are in the adults hot tub and we want to use it I eject them and tell them not to come back.

 

I dont care what their parents like or think about these methods.

 

Security is NO help on a cruise so take the matter into your own hands!

BRAVO!!!.....If you really do this. But no whacking ANYONE in the head.

[ChadGates]

Ah yes, vigilantism is always the best solution!

 

If anyone sees ChadGates breaking any rule or being even the tad-bit most rude or unruley, please feel free to whack him across the side of the head!

 

Yes, please feel free to do that!! If I am running up and down the halls knocking at doors late at night, or playing grabazz on the elevators, or just being a spoiled brat in general please feel free to smack me!

 

On the other hand, I will continue to smack any kid over 13 that I see doing the above. You'd be amazed at how they chill everytime they see me after that!!;)

[DH30]

"Taking matters into your own hands" is many times not the best answer. There are legal issues here. If you smack a kid in the back of the head, that is assault....a crime....even if the kid was being loud or unruly. With that being said, I am going on my first cruise in under five weeks, so I cannot attest to how well security could handle such problems.

[ChadGates]

 

SMACK!!!!:p