Keeping Kids Entertained w/o Kids Club?

[SimplyMarvie]

Our next cruise is in Japan, and I'm concerned that although there are going to be a lot of kids on the boat, most of them are going to be non-English speakers. My kids are pretty good at playing with kids with whom they don't share a common language (thank you, 15 years of being Diplobrats...) but I expect we'll be hearing "Mom, I'm bored." a lot more on this trip than we did on our last one. I'm trying to think of things to bring/do to keep them entertained. 

 

We've decided to do travel journals, so we've got sketch books and art supplies and one of those fancy sticker printers to record memories. They've got books on their Kindle Apps, and we're looking for good games for their iPads with "offline mode" and we've got a couple of board games (although we're limited in what we can bring since we're doing a land tour right after...) Any other sleeper hits with teens and tweens that you could recommend?

[kitkat343]

Would they be interested in keeping a travel journal?  Would their school support the use of that as an English assignment/ in lieu of makeup work if your trip is during the school year?  They could spend the ship time organizing/photoshopping pictures they take in port and then writing a description of them. 

[Itchy&Scratchy]

On 7/4/2023 at 9:46 AM, SimplyMarvie said:

Any other sleeper hits with teens and tweens that you could recommend?

well, my kid does not do kid's club at all and doesn't want to play with other kids, but he has never been bored on a cruise. Not once. And since there is more than one kid going with you, how can they possibly be bored? Mine's an only kid... and he tags along to everything on the cruise with us. His most favorite cruise activity is playing ping pong.

 

We do bring a Nintendo switch with some games on it and when he was younger (he is 12 now) - a tablet full of downloaded movies and cartoons (and games as well).

He wouldn't waste a minute of cruise time reading (insert my very sad face, because I love reading and reading on a cruise is a real treat).

[jbrinkm]

Maybe stay active on your roll calls and see if there are any kids around the same age with similar interests? You could meet up with them to see if kids get along and then maybe they'll be more likely to have fun together in the kids club? 

[woostergirl]

You can also bring your own board games. We brought Catan for kids. It's a great cruise game as it can take quite a while to win. We just bought Wingspan but haven't tried yet. We also like Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, a fun slapping game.

 

Your cruise might offer family activities like a scavenger hunt, craft making, or video game tournaments. The Celebrity cruise we were on offered those. The egg drop contest on our Princess Alaska cruise last year was fun and there were tweens/teens who entered.