Kids Club Crowded?

[golf4tonys]

Hi,

 

Heading out on the Voyager of the Sea in 2005. We are planning on using the kids club a great deal for our 3-5 and 6-8 yro. Can anyone tell me if the club get crowded or closes to capacity? Do they ever turn people away?

 

Also how do you book the club? Is it a one time thing and then you drop the kids anytime during the scheduled times?

 

Thanks for the help.

[Tromler]

I suppose that the facilities could get filled, but when we brought our 3 year old on EOS last year, it was never filled, lots of kids, but not filled.

 

The first time we dropped him off there is a form that you have to fill out and they also give you a pager for the week, so that everytime your child is in the facility, they will page you when/if you need to pick them up for any reason.

 

After the first time, we could drop him off whenever they were open.

[Tra4]

It really depends on the time of year in which you cruise to how crowded it is. We cruised a 12 day Hawaii trip in Oct. and there were only 33 kids on the entire ship. My two (ages 6 & 9 at the time) loved the extra attention!! That was on the Radiance. Then we went in the summer on the Adventure and there were many kids. Over Christmas last year on the Brilliance was also many many kids. They never were turned away, but it is harder to do the various activities when they are to capacity.

[golf4tonys]

Thanks for the posts so far. Any others with info?

[zooma]

I'm sure it does depend on when you are cruising, but we just returned from the Mariner Christmas week cruise, which I'm sure was up there on the kid-count. Our kids are 5 and 8. Adventure Ocean (either age-group) never seemed overcrowded to us (and we generally are pretty sensitive to that kind of thing). The counselors were terrific and seemed experienced at managing the groups. We went to registration the first night and filled out the requisite consent forms, then just dropped in whenever we felt like it (mostly for the evening programs). I did not see them turn anyone away at any time. When you drop off your child, you sign in and list who is authorized to pick up (we sometimes let grandma pick them up). No one gave us a pager, nor did they ask us to list where we (parents) expected to be while the kids were in there. We were a little surprised about that. One night, our kids really wanted to go to AO, even though we thought they were pretty worn out from the day. We took them but told the counselor who was doing check-in exactly where we would be while the kids were in there, in case they wanted to leave earlier than we had planned. It turned out that our 5yo did want us to get him a little early, but instead of calling us in Portofino, where we were eating, a second counselor called us and left us a message on our cabin voicemail. This, of course, did not do us much good, since we were off having dinner. It was not an emergency at all -- I assume they would have found us if it had been. As it turned out, we checked it on the kids 5 minutes later anyway, so it was not a big deal. But still, if you anticipate something like that, you might want to make sure all the counselors in your kids' group know where would be best to look for you.

 

We and our kids loved the AO program, and we were surprised how often they wanted to participate and how often we used it, finding ourselves with more grown-up time than we had expected. the kids really hit it off with the energetic, fun, and creative counselors. and they were especially enthusiastic about the special Christmas events on board last week, dressing like elves, handing out presents, breaking into Christmas jingles, etc.

 

One last issue I can touch on is bumping a kid up to the next age group. My 5yo will be 6 very soon, is generally(!) pretty mature, and is in school with mostly 6yos. We were interested in having him moved up to the 6-8 group, since that is where his sister was. I had read many posts on these boards before our cruise leading me to believe that kids were rarely bumped up. However, it worked out for us -- the counselors first evaluated him for two sessions in his correct age group and then determined that he would be fine in the 6-8 group. I think it depends on the child and the mix of kids in each group.

 

Anyway, good luck to you all -- I hope you enjoy your vacation just as much as we did.

[Onessa]

Been on several RCCL cruises with my DD (now 9) over the past five years.

 

Number of kids has varied greatly based upon cruise and time of year. Never have had any problem with them reaching capacity for the regular program. If your child wants to eat dinner with the AO group on any of the selected evenings when they do that, be certain to sign up in the morning of the day - that is the only activity I've ever seen get "full".

 

One time register, then drop-in/sign-in whenever they are open. Pagers are only available for the younger kids. We tend to check in a few times to see how she is doing and she has NEVER wanted to leave early. Counselors and activities are wonderful.