Are kids club always open?

[Albinroo]

We are planning to go on regal princess for a Mediterranean cruise in October. We don't expect there to be a lot of kids in that sailing but we have several including a baby! I have heard good things about the kids club on-board Princess but my question is if they are always available even if there are not many kids on the actual sailing? 

[1025cruise]

I believe they might merge the younger groups if the numbers are low.

However, I don't believe there are any kids club services for a baby. I don't recall what the minimum age is.

[Rick&Jeannie]

They are not "always available" if by that you mean "always open". They have operating hours.

[roxievegas]

in 2019 when we took our grandkids:

two groups, 3 - 6 years and 6 - 12, and then they had a teen area.  The younger kids had to be signed in and out everytime.  

they were open in the morning and again in the afternoon (sea days).  You had to sign them up for days that the ship was in port.

Our granddaughters liked it and went every day

[skynight]

Here is some information. Min. age is 3 and I believe there are some restrictions like toilet trained.

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/Onboard_Experience/Youth_Guidelines_Registration.pdf

[blizzard44ca]

If you have children under 3, they can visit the kids club if a parent stays with them.

[geoherb]

On one of our transatlantic cruises, there were just a couple of children under 18. Princess only staffs the youth center if there are a certain number of children under 18 on board. This cruise did not have any crew members to lead activities for children. But the great thing for us was they opened the youth center for adults to play the games a few afternoons.

[Albinroo]

4 hours ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

They are not "always available" if by that you mean "always open". They have operating hours.

Sorry, I was unclear. I did not mean always open, but rather operating at all throughout the cruise. We wouldn't want our kids in the club all day anyway.

[Albinroo]

3 hours ago, blizzard44ca said:

If you have children under 3, they can visit the kids club if a parent stays with them.

Yes exactly. We actually prefer this as we would not like to leave our baby in a nursery but rather come with him to the kids club. 

[Albinroo]

2 hours ago, geoherb said:

On one of our transatlantic cruises, there were just a couple of children under 18. Princess only staffs the youth center if there are a certain number of children under 18 on board. This cruise did not have any crew members to lead activities for children. But the great thing for us was they opened the youth center for adults to play the games a few afternoons.

Thanks for this information, my biggest fear is to be stuck on a ship with four young children for almost two weeks and nowhere for them to play between meals, especially since I know princess doesn't really have much for children except the youth center. I don't even need it to be staffed (since us parents can stay with them in the youth center), hopefully they would agree to open it for play as they did for you.

[Roatanfans]

If you call princess you can ask for a kids count.  They will tell you how many kids are booked and then you can ask if it's enough for kids club.

[dreaminofcruisin]

Jumping on this thread...

 

Has anyone ever been on a cruise with their kids and had the kids club NOT open due to low number of kids? Just trying to see if this has happened to people. I would likely be talking about pre-covid since there were restrictions during the initial restart.

 

Planning a cruise with DGD and DGS in 2024. They will be 4 and 7 and would be disappointed if it wasn't open. We are thinking of a January or February cruise and I know that's not the most common time for kids...don't need a lot of kids...just need it to be open. It's a 7 day Caribbean.

[john watson]

The service does vary on port and sea days.  Self-signing in/out where applicable is suspended on port days and a "lock in" occurs because you may leave the children in the club on port days while you go ashore. When this happens a catering for the children service happens and they typically get marched to the buffet and back to the club.  Sea days, the club closes around lunch and an organised morning/afternoon sessions happens not continuous service like on sea days.

 

Regards John

[DCThunder]

11 hours ago, dreaminofcruisin said:

Jumping on this thread...

 

Has anyone ever been on a cruise with their kids and had the kids club NOT open due to low number of kids? Just trying to see if this has happened to people. I would likely be talking about pre-covid since there were restrictions during the initial restart.

 

Planning a cruise with DGD and DGS in 2024. They will be 4 and 7 and would be disappointed if it wasn't open. We are thinking of a January or February cruise and I know that's not the most common time for kids...don't need a lot of kids...just need it to be open. It's a 7 day Caribbean.

On the Enchanted Princess TA there were no teenagers aboard so Marcus the CD announced that anyone was able to go to the game room and play video games or skeeball or the like.  I'm not sure if the club for the younger kids was open, but my guess is it wasn't.

[Musky Ike]

1 hour ago, DCThunder said:

On the Enchanted Princess TA there were no teenagers aboard so Marcus the CD announced that anyone was able to go to the game room and play video games or skeeball or the like.  I'm not sure if the club for the younger kids was open, but my guess is it wasn't.

That is cool. We were on a sailing recently with almost no youth. I mentioned to the DW what a waste it was for those areas to be closed. I wanted to go in and play some skeeball so bad 😃. A kid at heart. 

[DCThunder]

2 hours ago, Musky Ike said:

That is cool. We were on a sailing recently with almost no youth. I mentioned to the DW what a waste it was for those areas to be closed. I wanted to go in and play some skeeball so bad 😃. A kid at heart. 

From what was said (or the way I interpreted what was said) it appeared to be a major decision going all the way up to Commodore Nash and perhaps the home office.  This wasn't just some "there's no kids on board, open up the game room" type of thing.

[bobloblaw007]

Just got off the Enchanted Princess.

 

Kids club hours for sea days are basically 9a-12p, 1p-5p, 6p-10p, with paid sitting available 10 pm - 1 am but need to notify staff before 8 pm that day.

On port days, you can drop them off for continuous care while the ship is docked, where they will bring the kids to the buffet area over the lunch hour.

 

Art/Craft and education activities are scheduled during operating hours while the ship is not in port; otherwise it's basically free play.

 

There were only 10 kids aged 3-7 and 8 kids 8-12 on our sailing. That was still enough for both the Lodge and Treehouse to be fully staffed with a full slate of activities so I think the number would have to be really low if they made the decision not to open the youth center.

 

Heads up - save lots of room in your baggage for all the goodies the kids will get over the course of the cruise!

[rsquirrel]

Does anyone know if numbers are low for the teen area if they would let a sibling that is 19 go with her sister?  I know most cruise lines are quite struct on the age limits.

[Kay S]

3 hours ago, rsquirrel said:

Does anyone know if numbers are low for the teen area if they would let a sibling that is 19 go with her sister?  I know most cruise lines are quite struct on the age limits.

 

I doubt it.  There are liability issues.  You can thank the insurance people.

[rsquirrel]

10 minutes ago, Kay S said:

 

I doubt it.  There are liability issues.  You can thank the insurance people.

That's what I thought.  We were suppose to go two years ago but thanks to Covid, we couldn't.  Now the one has aged out of the teen club.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by rsquirrel

[john watson]

7 hours ago, rsquirrel said:

Does anyone know if numbers are low for the teen area if they would let a sibling that is 19 go with her sister?  I know most cruise lines are quite struct on the age limits.

 

I think you will find that they are so strict that if someone has an eighteenth birthday mid-voyage they get excluded from the day before.  Certainly nineteen year olds have different interests from thirteen year olds and the parents are no longer responsible. The cruise line needs easy to define and implement limits where they realise things could get out of hand.

 

Regards John