New to NCL, questions about family activities

[rjm11]

Hello! I am excited that I have booked that Alaskan cruise I have always wanted to take; in an AB penthouse on the Pearl. My kids will be 4 and 3 at the time; my question is, are there times that I can take them to the kids club to play WITH me? I'm not as interested in dropping them off as I am in playing together, but I haven't found if they have any scheduled "family" activities, or playtimes.

 

Also, does anyone have any experience with this room? Do you know if the sofa in the "living room" has been upgraded to a sleeper? (we were considering bringing a 5th family member who would have to sleep there).

 

I have also posted this on the family forum... any information/advice is welcome!

thanks!

[Arwenmark]

I suggest you post on the family board here as well you will get more info on the family activities and the kids club there.

[KerCar]

Hello! I am excited that I have booked that Alaskan cruise I have always wanted to take; in an AB penthouse on the Pearl. My kids will be 4 and 3 at the time; my question is, are there times that I can take them to the kids club to play WITH me? I'm not as interested in dropping them off as I am in playing together, but I haven't found if they have any scheduled "family" activities, or playtimes.

 

Also, does anyone have any experience with this room? Do you know if the sofa in the "living room" has been upgraded to a sleeper? (we were considering bringing a 5th family member who would have to sleep there).

 

I have also posted this on the family forum... any information/advice is welcome!

thanks!

 

There will be various "family" activities throughout the week. In the past, there have been pizza parties, scavenger hunts, etc. Even if you don't plan on sending them to the kid's crew, it's a good idea to sign them up on the first day and get a copy of the weekly itinerary:)

[t.t.]

PEARL AND KIDS

Just off Pearl May 8th. Our kids are 13, 12 & 3. The two older kids just did their own thing.

The 13 yr old was interested in Teen club but due to lack of attendance all organized activities were cancelled. We could have played airhockey in the room but didn't. He would have liked to play Wii but the leader was reluctant to bring our the controllers. That was fine with me, we need the video games, but from a kids perspective, they want to have fun by their standards and maybe the leader could have been a little more willing to satisfy the kids wants.

The 12 year old attended the first nite orientation with the other kids but was the oldest and felt that the activities were a bit young for her (they were). Very difficult to please every one. With so few kids on board it would have been nice to allow her to join the teen room but NCL is very strict to age groupings (almost too much in my view, but difficult to please everyone).

The 3 year old went to Aqua Club 3 x 2hr stints for a little grown up time. He was very reluctant the first two times, too many new faces. The kids in the club did have a solem look to them, and I would say delight was not obvious in any child's expression, but pretty scarry at 3-5 year olds. The orientation allowed families to hang out in the Aqua Club kids room that has tubes-jungle gym apparatus. Our 3yr old like it when we were there. But when the ship is at sea the room is used by the Aqua Club and families cannot stay in the room with their children because it is being used by the Kids Club and their activities. On port days that may have been different - but they do offer babysitting at a cost. We didn't look into that - but I bet they use the rooms so you couldn't use the jungle-gym with your kid those days either.

There was a kiddie pool with some equipment (like your community park might have) and it was always open and available for kids and their families. 3yr old really like this and the pools and hottubs. The card/games room was always open and they have dominos, cards, board games and we had good use of that.

P.S. often I noticed the movie playing for the 3-5yr old group and not a lot of steam-burning-off-activities. There was anywhere from 5-20 kids attending at a time, none of them know each other. They did colour, have a Blues Clues non-birthday with a parade, songs, balloons, cupcakes to decorate - all in all I would recommend this for a little adult time but would not recommend ditching the child for an entire cruise free of children. They did most of the acitivites while the show was on etc. so I didn't really see the activities, and I know they didn't just watch T.V. the whole time, but a little more action may have convinced our 3yr old that we were dropping him off in a fun place instead of babysitting.

(P.S. the daily service charge to your room is $12.00 for all, including children - we went to reception and reassigned our 3 yr olds $60.00 ($12x5days) to the kids klub because they are not automatically included in the daily service charge tips. They worked hard but I didn't feel like paying more than $300 USD for a 5 day cruise for a family of 5 in tips.

T.T.

[rjm11]

T.T.- thanks very much for the detailed information, and the tip about tipping! I was really hoping that there would be more of an opportunity for us to use the Aqua Club facilities together; I work out of the home, so my time with my kids on vacation is precious... but we'll still sign them up in case they like the looks of it (I'm certainly not going to turn down and hour to go to the spa!).

[lamolesky]

The kids club is only for kids so no parents, be sure to register your kids the first day even if you are not sure. The first day is the only day you can go in and look around, you can show your kids everything and stay with them. They have a few activities like dinner in the Italian restaurant where you make pizza together, etc. but not much. I have all the schedules and information from the Gem and the Dawn, they are all almost the same. My kids really enjoyed it and we liked having some time alone too because you do spend a lot of time with them on a cruise.

[bensmom1]

Re: T.T.'s description of the kids club--I'm hoping the summer months will have more kids participating? We plan to use it for our 6yo in August--not all day every day of course, but chunks of time. We took him on a Carnival cruise a couple of years ago and loved the kids club!