Can parents go an excursion and leave kids in OA

[Host Jacquelyn]

And I have been on this board for years and have never read one single story about parents being left behind and the ship sailing off with their kids.

 

 

We were on Grandeur years ago and it left Curacao without the parents (mother only, I believe). The ship had to turn back about 30 mins after we left. I head the pricetag was very high...

[Host Jacquelyn]

To the OP,

 

I would be very wary of taking a third party excursion while my kids were at AO. You never know what could happen to cause a delay and have you potentially miss the ship. Although I have done this personally, I would feel more comfortable taking an RCCL excursion as you have the guarantee that the ship won't leave.

[tlatrice]

The comments here have been about leaving young children in AO while parents are ashore. This does not compare to on-ship activities.

 

My comment was in response to this

Family vacation was just that, a vacation with the family, everyone included in everything.

[gerif]

To the OP,

 

I would be very wary of taking a third party excursion while my kids were at AO. You never know what could happen to cause a delay and have you potentially miss the ship. Although I have done this personally, I would feel more comfortable taking an RCCL excursion as you have the guarantee that the ship won't leave.

 

Uh, not quite true. Sometimes they simply cannot wait for a variety of reasons. They will, however, assume responsibility of getting you to the next port at their expense including hotel, meals, transportation, etc.

[Paul65]

Uh, not quite true. Sometimes they simply cannot wait for a variety of reasons. They will, however, assume responsibility of getting you to the next port at their expense including hotel, meals, transportation, etc.

 

I was going to say the same thing. A ship-sponsored excursion definitely does not include a guarantee that the ship won't leave without you. But if you do miss the ship because of an issue with one of their sponsored excursions, they have some responsibility to take care of arrangements to get you back to the ship, rather than it being all on you.

[brillohead]

How on earth did we all survive in the pre-cellphone era? Remember back when people couldn't be contacted for HOURS AND HOURS and yet life went on?

 

I used to babysit kids back in the 1980s while their parents went to the movies.... the ONLY number in the phone directory for the theater was the number for the movie listings -- there was no option to talk to a human being who could go find the parents if I needed them for something.

 

But that's what *I* was there for -- to take care of the children in the absence of the parents. I had the numbers for police / fire / ambulance, and that was it. And everyone survived.

 

The staff in the ship's childcare center are all professionals. The staff in the medical center are available 24/7 (even though the clinic is only open for a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours in the evening, there is a nurse and a doctor on-call at all times).

 

In the event of an emergency, qualified medical staff will be at the child's side MUCH faster than an ambulance would arrive back home (and even then, the ambulance would only have paramedics / EMTs, not a physician and a nurse).

 

I left my 4yo son on board while his father and I went ashore in St. Maarten years ago -- we rented scooters and drove all around the island, something we couldn't have done with a preschooler in tow. We returned to find a happy and well-fed child who was upset that he had to leave the kiddie area to go have dinner with his family. He was slightly mollified when we reassured him that he could return for the evening session (they played games and then watched movies and had a snack in their jammies every evening).

 

A well-adjusted child in a well-regulated environment with well-trained personnel with advanced medical personnel just minutes away is MUCH better off than a child at home with a teenaged babysitter.... and yet how many people here would be saying that parents should never leave a child with a babysitter at home????

[Host Jacquelyn]

I was going to say the same thing. A ship-sponsored excursion definitely does not include a guarantee that the ship won't leave without you. But if you do miss the ship because of an issue with one of their sponsored excursions, they have some responsibility to take care of arrangements to get you back to the ship, rather than it being all on you.

 

Disagree. I would say that the ship would 100% wait for a ship sponsored excursion if there were parents of kids in AO on the excursion. Not a doubt in my mind. If they turned the ship around for a mom not on a ship excursion (which I witnessed first hand), they would not leave port while parents were on a ship sponsored excursion