Kids Club Azura

[blitznbobs]

HI,

 

I am after some information about the kids club on P and O lately. I am a veteran P&O cruiser and have cruised with kids before and found the kids club on P and o fabulous but having not cruised for 2 years I've been looking forward to booking a cruise for the summer. I have heard rumours that the kids club is limiting it's numbers and that you wouldn't be guarenteed to get your kids 'in' for the times you want. Is this true?

 

As my eldest is now in school I have to sail in school hols so going on cruises without many kids is not really an option but I am loathe to pay over 7 grand if I don't have access to these clubs cos they've always made the cruise experience for the whole family.

 

Thanks for your help

 

Blitz

[Eastbourne]

I believe they promise to honour kids in their clubs. We are recently returned with five kids and all got places whenever they wanted! The reef was fantastic! V impressive staff too..

[Yeti72]

We did have problems on Azura in May. Not enough staff on board so numbers of children had to be restricted, which mean't on a couple of occasions we had one disappointed little boy. Annoying because it was during a school holiday and P&O knew how many children would be on board. Unless this has now improved get there early!

[the owen clan]

Just returned from the Christmas cruise with lots of children and didn't hear of any kids being turned away. There seemed to be a lot of children in the club's but also lots of staff. You needn't worry about the standard of the reef team as they are a credit to p and o always lots going on and always friendly. Both my girls loved it and think it's the best kids club they have ever been to

[Suebiker]

We did have problems on Azura in May. Not enough staff on board so numbers of children had to be restricted, which mean't on a couple of occasions we had one disappointed little boy. Annoying because it was during a school holiday and P&O knew how many children would be on board. Unless this has now improved get there early!

 

Hi there I heard rumours about not enough staff in kids club last year and kids being turned away which I have never heard of before. So I wrote a letter to P and O. They confirmed that they had had major staffing issues . I can't remember why tbh but I think it was due to waiting for new staffs CRB checks to come through which left them short staffed or something similar to this. Anyway the long and the short of it was that there are no guarantees that a place in the kids club will always be available however apparently that has always been the case. They said that we should see the clubs back to normal now as they have the staff levels back where they should be.

 

Personally we have never been turned away (touch wood!) and hope that things have returned to normal now. The impression I got was that you should normally be able to get your kid into a club unless they have a major problem with staff. ie illness or unforeseen circumstances.

 

I was worried that they were cutting back on staff and this was going to be a problem for future cruises but hopefully this isn't the case. We will find out on our next cruise. Tbh if my dd struggled to get into the kids club then I would be looking for a new cruise line!

 

Anyway hope this helps

 

Sue

[BrianI]

There were staffing problems in the spring/summer of last year. My daughter and children had some problems getting in. Apparently, it was due to changes in security/qualifications of staff and they did not have enough people qualified under the new requirements to fully operate the childrens clubs and therefore they were limiting numbers.

 

Hopefully they should have enough qualified people by now.

 

Brian

[blitznbobs]

Well, I've read the contract including the small print(yes all of it), I've read the description of the cruise and no where does it say that my kids will be denied access to the kids club if it is busy... Not even hinted at.

 

so have booked for the summer (YAY)... Here's hoping I won't have to take them on for mis - selling.

 

Blitz

[daiB]

Well, I've read the contract including the small print(yes all of it), I've read the description of the cruise and no where does it say that my kids will be denied access to the kids club if it is busy... Not even hinted at.

 

so have booked for the summer (YAY)... Here's hoping I won't have to take them on for mis - selling.

 

Blitz

 

As far as one can tell this was a one off occur acne brought about by a change in rules.

 

No one has reported any problems since that happened.

[Clodia]

I have never had a problem when taking my daughter but heard some families did last year; as others have said I think it was temporary due to CRB regulation changes.

The older childrens' clubs were unaffected too; it was the younger ones who require a higher ration of staff who had to limit, but of course these are the children who enjoy the clubs most and when they are there, parents get a bit of private time!

One of the reasons I've always cruised with P&O is the high quality of the childrens' clubs. Now my daughter is 18 I've booked a last cruise for after her A levels on Oriana; it's going to be strange to be on an adults only ship after so many years of family friendly ones!