We were just on the NCL Getaway July 9-16. I have 2 children, ages 5 & 8. I have cruised with them both children before on Royal Caribbean. I have cruised multiple times with both lines. I looked into the kids club before even booking this cruise, as I didn't want to waste my time booking one yet if the club wasn't open. They LOVE kids club. I was assured on multiple occasions the club would be open by June 1 and there would be no issues. I figured a month and a half to sort issues would be good. That was an incorrect assumption. For starters let me say the staff we encountered was doing the best they could with the hand they were dealt. They handled the situation the best they could and we really appreciated them. Thank you to Jester and Pink. The manager Monkey, on the other hand, was not helpful at all and basically hid after the first night. She couldn't handle the situation as there were MANY upset parents and children. She never stood at the sign-in desk again to face the upset parents. The app and que are INFURIATING. First off, who wants to get up at 5:55am to rapid fire que to "maybe" get your kids into the club for a very limited amount of time. One of the upset parents said he was an app designer and was contemplating sending his resume in so he could fix all of the bugs in it. Parents were literally bonding over their frustration and high-fiving over getting low que numbers. I'm all for meeting strangers on a cruise and bonding- but this is not the way I envisioned it. 😆
The first night, my app said I was good to go and to "head to the kids club." I stood in line with my kids for 20 min, get to the front and was old that means your app "malfunctioned" and you only get "in" if the standby number says "0". Another night my reservation "mysteriously" cancelled while I had already been waiting around for 20 min and I had finally gotten a low enough number that my kids should have gotten in. Instead we were turned away yet again, higher numbers than ours were called and my kids were crying. Then I was crying because I felt like I was failing my kids by not being able to get them into the one thing they were so looking forward to. 🤦♀️ It was a vacation fail moment. The kids club overall was just a VERY stressful component that was absolutely unnecessary. Both the kids club manager and the cruise director said there were "over 1k kids on this cruise." They only had about 5 staff members in there (normally 25 staff is what I was told), taking only around 25 kids a night. This was a MAJOR staffing fail on NCL's part. A summer cruise, with over a thousand kids, and spots for 25 kids. Also they changed the ages allowed in the club after many families had booked; so kids aged 3 & 4 had no drop-off service available. Terrible. Also, the whole thing probably could have been avoided if there were just about 5 more staff members. That probably would have covered the kids that I saw waiting and hoping, every single session.
Anyways, I like you NCL, but this was so disappointing. Please staff your kids club appropriately- or at least warn people that space is so limited. RCCL's Ocean Academy kids club was always welcoming, available and it was NEVER stressful. Please fix this!!!