Best Kids Club

[icedancer43]

Hi. What cruise lines (and ships) have the best kids club? We are looking to take our very active 3-year-old on a cruise and have no experience with taking a child to kids clubs. Do any of the kids clubs have play areas with slides and such in them? I read that there is an outdoor playground on some Carnival ships, but have not been able to find any pictures. Do any other cruiselines have outdoor playgrounds? Thank you for any advice you can give so we can choose the right ship for our child.

[Essiesmom]

Carnival Pride (Spirit Class) 

 

 

Fascination...sorry, the smallest slides are off to the right

 

Better one

 

 

Carnival Dream...low slides in lower left

 

 

Carnival Splendor

 

 

 

NCL Spirit

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by Essiesmom

[Umwakichwa]

While Disney Dream has the most extensive indoor club I’ve seen, it was crowded and the kids didn’t get individual attention. The larger carnival

ships have large clubs and I see you ask about the sometimes attached playgrounds. In our experience, on ships with playgrounds attached to kids clubs the equipment like slides get very hot and isn’t very nice to use so the kids are often kept inside. We have also been on ships like Caribbean princess that have small outdoor area with tricycles the kids can ride and it’s shaded so that was good. The pp included some great pics of the available water parks on some lines but those are not the actual kids club domain. If you’re looking for great kids clubs and want to avoid the expense of Disney the clubs on the larger and newer carnival and royal Caribbean lines are fantastic. The Vista has sort of an arctic theme for your child’s age with interactive indoor igloo with slides and my child loved it at your child’s age. Even smaller ships with less “fancy” clubs have always kept them

entertained because of personal attention from staff and interactive VERY active activities. 

Edited January 9, 2019 by Umwakichwa

[cb at sea]

It's rare for the kid's CLUB to take the kids outside, and they do NOT take them to the pool...that will be up to you.

Carnival, RCI, and NCL have great kid's clubs and the newer ships have other child-friendly activities that you may not find on Celebrity, HAL or Princess, even though they, too, have kid's clubs which the kids do enjoy.

[kitkat343]

I have two very active boys, and my children liked almost all the kids clubs on all the lines they've sailed (Princess, NCL, HAL).  Cunard was their least favorite kids club, with a less dedicated staff than the other lines.  

 

At the age of 3, if your child still naps I'd recommend keeping an eye on the kids club hours.  My son napped from 2-4,  which was a problem on his second cruise since the kids club on Holland America was only open on sea days from 9 – 11:30am, 1 – 4pm and then 7-10 pm.  My son would wake up at 4, and melt down when he would learn that the kids club would be closed for the next 3 hours.  It was so frustrating that I refused to sail from our home port of NYC since those cruises all have a ton of sea days and NCL and Royal Caribbean are closed for two hours for lunch and dinner on sea days (closed from 12-2, 5-7), which are slightly better hours than HAL, but are important to note if your kid's nap doesn't align well to those times.  Dinner is a little harder if the kids clubs reopen at 7 instead of 6, since you don't have the option of bringing your child to the kids club earlier if they have a hard time sitting through dinner.

 

Princess has a great kids club, and is only closed for an hour at lunch and dinner time, so we never had a problem with our son being unhappy on their ships.   Like Umwakichwa noted, the Coral Princess has a small shaded area with small slides and tricycles behind the kids club.  I don't know if the kids club uses this space when there are more than 9 kids on the ship, but it was left open during the kids club closure, and was a nice place for my son to play while I could read a book.

 

One of the issues that sometimes arises on cruises is that extended families travel together and the cousins want to stay together in the kids club.  There are sometimes problems when the children's ages don't align to the kids club age groups and the parents get upset if the kids clubs don't waive the rules to let the children stay together.  Since so many family reunions happen on Disney, they avoid this problem by letting children age 3-12 stay together in the same room in their kids club.  As you can imagine, the kids clubs need to be very unstructured since it would be hard to run an activity for both 3 year olds and 12 year olds together.  Some younger children struggle with being in a kids club with so much other kids or with being in such an unstructured environment; other children have a wonderful time.  But Disney is much more expensive than other lines, so you should be aware of their kids club structure prior to choosing them.

 

If you are planning on sailing with a 3 year old who is a little shy or not used to daycare, I'd strongly recommend considering  sailing during the school year or on cruises with more exotic itineraries that are less likely to appeal to families.  On our Panama Canal sailing on Princess that left on January 10, there were only 9 kids.  The previous sailing over Christmas and New Years had hundreds of kids.  Because the kids clubs were nearly empty, the counselors were able to provide my son with a lot of individual attention and the kids clubs weren't overwhelming for him.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 13, 2019 by kitkat343

[angie7911922]

We cruise Disney with our kids usually. They LOVE the kids clubs there, and they are divided out by age, so your 3 year old will not be with the 10 year olds, etc. I'm assuming the other ships do this also. They do not take the kids outside to the pool, etc. But they do take the kids to other places on the ship at times, and there have even been a few times that our kids have been in performances with the Disney characters on the main stage because they were at the kids club at that time. 

[Tapi]

My kids are 6 and 9 and they started cruising when they were 12 months old. They have taken 10 cruises so far and participated in the kids club on Royal Caribbean, Disney, Holland America, Carnival, and MSC.

 

They have said that MSC is the kids club they have enjoyed the most. Both times they’ve sailed on MSC it’s been hard to pry them away from the kids club. They love it that much. Second in their list is Royal Caribbean and Disney is third. I was a bit surprised that they didn’t like Disney more because they do have amazing kid facilities and that’s what they are known for, but my kids just liked the facilities and activities on the other cruise lines more.   

 

One thing to keep in mind, specially sailing with a 3 year old that may or may not be fully potty trained is that most cruise lines do not allow children in swim diapers in any pool or water area. Royal Caribbean (and only on designated ships) is one of the few, and it has dedicated pools and splash areas specifically for small children in swim diapers. Something to keep in mind if your child falls in that category. 

 

 

[TheLadyK]

All of the Carnival ships we've been on had at least a small kids playground. On the Sunshine its right next to the kids club, and they do close it to the public to take the kids on, but its enclosed with a gate. It was good for our active 2.5 year old, but pretty small. 

 

Kids clubs are going to all be basically good, but will differ by the staff and how many kids are there. We've had a couple of cruises with AMAZING kids club staff, and one with perfectly fine but not above and beyond staff. Its going to amount to what your kid likes, which is hard to predict. Try it, if your kiddo would rather hang out in the pool with you, you'll know. We usually introduce her to the kids club, the pool, and the playground on the first day and then ask her what she wants to do. If you pick up a schedule from the kids club you can make sure that your child is there for the safari party or pirate activities or whatever sounds fun to them and misses out on anything that doesn't sound great for them. (We skip movie time, my kid can sort of handle a movie after she's had 6 hours of running around, so an afternoon movie would be better spent tossing her in a pool so we can hope she sits through dinner.)

 

 

[thehappierhomemaker]

Carnival is great with working with kids who aren't totally potty trained, one of the few that do so without extra charge which is why we started with them when my youngest was less than a year old!

[ugagal07]

We've sailed CCL, RCCL, and NCL with a 3 year old.  The least favorite was NCL.  He asked not to go back and didn't enjoy the programming or facilities at all.  He liked RCCL, especially the Kung Fu Panda training, which RCCL is getting rid of.  He enjoyed the activities and liked going. They do not let the youngest group in the 'extra areas' like the science lab and art studio on the larger ships if you are looking at deck plans FYI.  His favorite is CCL.  He likes the activities the most, we let him pick some of the activities to go or not.  We also liked the dinner option with CCL.  He ate dinner with the kids' club one night.  We dropped him off at the buffet, special section with special menu, and had an adult dinner in the MDR, no extra cost. 

[Itchy&Scratchy]

On 1/12/2019 at 12:52 PM, cb at sea said:

It's rare for the kid's CLUB to take the kids outside, and they do NOT take them to the pool...that will be up to you.

Carnival, RCI, and NCL have great kid's clubs and the newer ships have other child-friendly activities that you may not find on Celebrity, HAL or Princess, even though they, too, have kid's clubs which the kids do enjoy.

on our two NCL cruises, kids were definitely playing outside on the basketball court in the middle of a very sunny day.

 

I had to run to the cabin and get my red head a hat and sunscreen. They were outside for 2 hours, until kids started complaining about being too hot and getting headaches.