Teen "house arrest" on the Oasis

[Little Elm]

No one can be surprised that if teens are allowed to have their own cabin, that they come and go as they please. They have a curfew at 1am. Parents check on them at 1:10am. Teens leave cabin at 1:30a after the parents are asleep across the hall. Teen comes back to cabin at 5am.

So to the Parents, the little angel has been in the cabin all night. :rolleyes:

 

Maybe if there are two cabins, their has to be a parent in each cabin. I know it has to be booked that way, but it's not enforced on the ship. There should have to be a responsible adult in each cabin. If the "angel" causes a problem, hit mom and dad in the pocketbook. Charge $500.00 to the onboard account. (or whatever amount for the problem)

[Langley Cruisers]

Of course in order for them to get from the cabin they're in back to their own cabin before mom and dad wake up, they do have to violate the curfew ;)

 

^ Right there.

.

[cruisinck]

Hi Jeal!

 

I guess that makes two of us gossips and hearsayers :) I wish you had been at the Q&A:)

 

Make that 3 of us. I was not at the Q&A but I did hear the noon announcement

[joe6666]

I'm surprised that this doesn't happen all the time.

[EmTeeNesters]

When cruising with my kids when they were teens, they knew that they had to check in with us if they were not with us at the shows, etc. They could leave a note or a voice mail message or physically find us to let us know as to their whereabouts.

But they also understood that if they were not where they said they were, there would be an issue - they still refer to it as a "mom moment" (and it wasn't pretty) - with consequences. :eek: AND we did check... and they knew it...

They loved cruising too much to have to stay home with grandma (or other relatives) the next time we cruised - so it generally worked. And they knew that mom "took no prisoners" (and grandma had way too many chores/projects that she needed to be done). :rolleyes:

[bigeagle12]

I'm surprised that this doesn't happen all the time.

 

Think it does occur all the time. A lot of times kids sneak back in and parents never know .. or parents know and don't care :eek:

[missyk55]

I have a very respectful almost 13 year old daughter. She is allowed the freedom to go certain places & do things w/o an adult because she has earned a level of independence by being responsible & following the rules laid out to her.

 

I believe some kids can be given independence after proving themselves worthy. Obviously your examples are of children who haven't proven themselves. Don't paint all kids with the same wide strokes.

 

I believe kids can be given independence

 

I was not referring to all kids, and I guess I should have stated that. There are children that are very good and respectable kids. However, I would still have a problem allowing any child to get too far away from me while on vacation either on or off a ship. There are too many mean people in this world and I watch the local news every night here and there is always at least one story about a child missing or harmed. But, I may be over protective too.

[akcruz]

Ok, if this family had late seating for dinner, they could have gotten out of the dining room at 10. From 10 - 4 is 6 hours, where did the 10 hours everyone is stating come from? Now we do not know if they had late seating, but without knowing FACTS how can anyone here state such a definitive time?

 

Also, I agree with others, how do you know the parents woke at 4? Maybe they had been looking since 1 or so, not able to go to sleep without their son back. Maybe they took an hour to look for him themselves, then contacted security which took another hour to search, then finally going to the captain to make the announcement. This is just as likely as what others have said.

 

Amazing how everyone here just dumps on the parents without knowing what really happened.

[bajathree]

I said it before and I will say it again....no kid is put on house arrest with security placed at his door just for staying out.....even if they had to make an announcement at 4am waking up everyone on the ship....there is obviously much more to this story than was disclosed to the passengers.

[akcruz]

I was not referring to all kids, and I guess I should have stated that. There are children that are very good and respectable kids. However, I would still have a problem allowing any child to get too far away from me while on vacation either on or off a ship. There are too many mean people in this world and I watch the local news every night here and there is always at least one story about a child missing or harmed. But, I may be over protective too.

 

How old are kids in your area when they get their drivers license? Most states are 16 or 17. I would hope that kids know how to be responsible and take care of themselves before they head out on the road by themselves. Kids grow up and as parents you need to teach them how to be independent. Teens, regardless of how "good" they are, will push the limits.

 

Baja, I agree, there is more to the story than any of us here know.

[hbr777]

I said it before and I will say it again....no kid is put on house arrest with security placed at his door just for staying out.....even if they had to make an announcement at 4am waking up everyone on the ship....there is obviously much more to this story than was disclosed to the passengers.

 

I agree, but I have no idea what it might be, and we'll never know.

[reallyitsmema]

Ok, if this family had late seating for dinner, they could have gotten out of the dining room at 10. From 10 - 4 is 6 hours, where did the 10 hours everyone is stating come from? Now we do not know if they had late seating, but without knowing FACTS how can anyone here state such a definitive time?

 

Also, I agree with others, how do you know the parents woke at 4? Maybe they had been looking since 1 or so, not able to go to sleep without their son back. Maybe they took an hour to look for him themselves, then contacted security which took another hour to search, then finally going to the captain to make the announcement. This is just as likely as what others have said.

 

Amazing how everyone here just dumps on the parents without knowing what really happened.

The OP stated the child had not been seen since before dinner. You chose late seating and the end of dinner to come to your figure, I chose first seating and start of dinner. Neither of us know for sure since we do not have all the facts. If he hadn't been seen since before dinner, that could have been 2pm for all we know and it is really 14 hours since the parents saw him.

 

I am not dumping on the parents, I, like you, usually support the kids in these arguments. I do feel the parents are did not act responsibly in this incident but neither did the teen. I also agree that there is more to this story than we know for this kid to be confined to his cabin.

[roe2ship]

I was on the same cruise. The announcement was made a little after 4:00am and repeated about two times. After that (about 4:30am) the announcement was made twice in the cabins A couple of hours later DH and I went to to promenade cafe where a guest service staff member happened to be walking in and DH asked her what happened this morning. She told him that a 15 year old boy was missing and that NOW he will be confined to his cabin because he did the SAME thing the night before!:eek:

 

The Captain apologized at his next noon announcement for disturbing the guests earlier that morning.

[ITMan]

RCI absolutely has a teen curfew. It was not obeyed, in this case.

.

 

However as the Teen in question was in a Stateroom - all be it not the correct one, there was no way for RC to enforce the curfew. How about the Adult who was responsible for the stateroom he was found in? Were they locked up for letting the guy stay after curfew in the room THEY were responsible for??

 

More generally - As ever with these things, whilst I agree with a level of punishment (A 1 day grounding - though I certainly wouldn't agree with the entire party being put ashore at the next stop - that is WAY over the top), the postings on this make it sound like a capital offence! I guess most of the posters here were never kids - or maybe they were all perfect and never did anything stupid!

 

I wouldn't expect to monitor my 15 year olds every move! We took our 16 YO daughter on a cruise and she spent her time on her thing. She checked in from time to time but we did not follow her every move between things. She had a curfew (in line with the teen club which at times was after midnight) and we often went to bed before she was due in - we didn't sit waiting like gooseberries! We trusted her and if she made a mistake or was stupid she would receive a suitable punishment from us.

 

If a husband "goes missing" during a cruise, do they put him in lockdown when he turns up, head in hands too many drinks inside, a while later?

 

(I shall don my helmet and await the flames to begin!)

[Scotty G]

I'm curious. How does the ship captain enforce a "house arrest"? The Oasis is a huge ship. How would they know if the parents/kid complied?

 

On several sailings we have seen uniformed security sitting outside cabins. There was no need to ask what they were doing there.:D

[Langley Cruisers]

...a guest service staff member happened to be walking in and DH asked her what happened this morning. She told him that a 15 year old boy was missing and that NOW he will be confined to his cabin because he did the SAME thing the night before!:eek:

 

Thank you for this little bit of information. Sheds a little more light on things.

.

[hbr777]

I was on the same cruise. The announcement was made a little after 4:00am and repeated about two times. After that (about 4:30am) the announcement was made twice in the cabins A couple of hours later DH and I went to to promenade cafe where a guest service staff member happened to be walking in and DH asked her what happened this morning. She told him that a 15 year old boy was missing and that NOW he will be confined to his cabin because he did the SAME thing the night before!:eek:

 

The Captain apologized at his next noon announcement for disturbing the guests earlier that morning.

 

 

THANK YOU for this! Now we know why the captain was so peeved. I bet this was the"something more" we were all wondering about.

[debache]

Oh stop being a fool. Why would the captain lie? Or are you saying I am lying?[/QUOT

 

There is no way the parents woke up at 4:00 and the captain made the announcement at 4:00....there are protocols ....

First of all no parent of a teenager is going to wake up and say Johnnie is not here call captain to find him....

My educated guess as a parent of a 19 year old goes like this...

1. At 1:10 Johnnie is 10 min late, I will give him 10 more min, then I will go look for him.

2. Around 1:30 you go to the teen area to see if they are running a late event (very rarely but they do sometimes).

3. You then try to search the whole ship, as a parent you are torn between anger and worry.

4. Return back to your room around 2:00-2:15..johnnie still not there.

5. Now you are not sure what to do so you go to guest services. They check to see if his key has been used. It hasn't-

6. Guest services contacts security, security comes to guest services, they show picture

od johnnie to security.

7. Security searches ship this is all done around 3:00-3:15. They don't find johnnie.

8. Security calls captain and it his decision to make the announcement .

 

I have done numbers 1-3 and the next night it did not happen again. I do not go to sleep until his butt is back in room. Even at 19 I do not sleep until he is back (even at home).

[renech]

I could never sleep until my child was in the cabin. :confused:

 

Me either. My bedtime just didn't happen until both my kids were in their cabin.

 

When cruising with my kids when they were teens, they knew that they had to check in with us if they were not with us at the shows, etc. They could leave a note or a voice mail message or physically find us to let us know as to their whereabouts.

But they also understood that if they were not where they said they were, there would be an issue - they still refer to it as a "mom moment" (and it wasn't pretty) - with consequences. :eek: AND we did check... and they knew it...

 

That's pretty much how we did it. We cruised through both my kid's teen years and only had a problem one time. My DD (and her friend) were not back by their curfew. I found them in the hot tub with a bunch of other teens and of course they said the time simply got away from them. They were NOT happy with mom go total meltdown on them right there on deck for the world to see. Which was fine. It never happened again.

 

I'm wondering if, at the same time that we are signing a form saying we don't have runny noses, if it would help to have both parents and teens sign a "contract" stating that they are fully aware of the curfew, and understand that both the parents and the teen will face consequences if the teen breaks curfew. I KNOW it's almost impossible to enforce all the time, and most people are aware of the curfew already, but there are those who might just take their parenting responsibility a bit more seriously if they know THEY will feel the impact on their vacation if their teen is out of control. Maybe a little reinforcement of that point is needed in these days of highly populated ships.

[goodml]

I haven't read all the responses so forgive if this is redundant but here's our story. Our kids have cruised 9 or 10 times with us and are now 19 and 22. We often cruise with our good friends whose kids are the same age. We took our most recent cruise with kids two years ago and each family had just the younger daughters along who were 17 at the time.

 

In all our voyages we've never had a problem. They basically grew up cruising, we've made them aware of the dangers, and of our rules (and they're strict ones) all along. Curfew at 17 was 1 am. Not once have they ever missed a curfew or even been a few mins late. Until the last cruise...

 

Second last night of the voyage. I'm one of those moms that doesn't go to bed till everyone is where they're supposed to be. This night in particular, of course, I nodded off. Woke up at 1:25 and went into their cabin which had an adjoining door to ours. Not there. Immediately I was angry, and then that little bit of fear starts niggling at you. Of course, there's no cell phone so suddenly you realize, wow, I am really at a loss as how to try to figure out where they are. I called over to my friends' cabin (already in bed and asleep) and the girls weren't there so the four of us went looking for them.

 

I tell you that ship is a creepy place on the upper decks that late at night. We went to the sports court, to the pool decks, to basically everywhere we could think of and no sign of them. Where I started out angry, I was by then starting to feel seriously sick thinking something dreadful had happened. Finally, we decided to try to go into the closed buffet area because it was one of the few places we hadn't looked thinking they would have been kicked out of there long before. Lo and behold there they were; about a dozen of them having some uproariously hilarious game of some kind of cards that everyone was totally into and totally not thinking about the time.

 

Instantly I went back to fury from worry in a split second. Even though they were really in the middle of harmless fun, the bottom line is, they were late, and we were sick with worry and literally 10 seconds from picking up a phone and asking security for help. I so badly wanted to drag that kid out by the ear just like my dad used to do to me when I was little but I restrained myself:D. Barely.

 

Anyway, long story short, we pay close attention at all times to what they're doing and where they are and it happened to us too. Not saying that's the case here, just saying, despite best efforts it can still happen. We didn't need the captain to put ours under house arrest cuz we glued them to us for the rest of that trip. I think that actually might have been more punishment for us than them:rolleyes: but, whatever.

[Merion_Mom]

Me either. My bedtime just didn't happen until both my kids were in their cabin.

 

 

 

That's pretty much how we did it. We cruised through both my kid's teen years and only had a problem one time. My DD (and her friend) were not back by their curfew. I found them in the hot tub with a bunch of other teens and of course they said the time simply got away from them. They were NOT happy with mom go total meltdown on them right there on deck for the world to see. Which was fine. It never happened again.

 

I'm wondering if, at the same time that we are signing a form saying we don't have runny noses, if it would help to have both parents and teens sign a "contract" stating that they are fully aware of the curfew, and understand that both the parents and the teen will face consequences if the teen breaks curfew. I KNOW it's almost impossible to enforce all the time, and most people are aware of the curfew already, but there are those who might just take their parenting responsibility a bit more seriously if they know THEY will feel the impact on their vacation if their teen is out of control. Maybe a little reinforcement of that point is needed in these days of highly populated ships.

You do. It is called the Cruise Contract, and when you purchase your cruise, you are agreeing to all of its provisions. One of those provisions is to abide by the Guest Code of Conduct.

 

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/content/en_US/pdf/Guest_Conduct_Policy.pdf

[debache]

goodmi exactly

[renech]

You do. It is called the Cruise Contract, and when you purchase your cruise, you are agreeing to all of its provisions. One of those provisions is to abide by the Guest Code of Conduct.

 

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/content/en_US/pdf/Guest_Conduct_Policy.pdf

 

I am aware of the Cruise Contract, but do you honestly believe that everyone reads their entire contract? The rules are already established, I'm just wondering if reinforcing this particular one would be of some benefit for those parents who consider the ship an open playground to let their kids run wild.

[akcruz]

The OP stated the child had not been seen since before dinner. You chose late seating and the end of dinner to come to your figure, I chose first seating and start of dinner. Neither of us know for sure since we do not have all the facts. If he hadn't been seen since before dinner, that could have been 2pm for all we know and it is really 14 hours since the parents saw him.

 

I am not dumping on the parents, I, like you, usually support the kids in these arguments. I do feel the parents are did not act responsibly in this incident but neither did the teen. I also agree that there is more to this story than we know for this kid to be confined to his cabin.

 

Believe it or not I am agreeing with you, especially on the fact that none of us know the facts of just how long since the mother had seen the parents. But will disagree with the before dinner. As you can see below the OP stated since dinner, not before. So even if it was early dinner and it took an hour, it still is not 10 hours.

 

 

 

 

I just got off Oasis today.

 

A 15 year old male did not come back to his cabin on Thursday. His mother noticed at 4 am that he had not returned. She had not seen her son since dinner.

 

Two announcements had to be made to locate the boy, waking up a ship of 8,000+ crew and guests at 4 am. The boy was located in another person's cabin.

 

The captain made his disgust known with his own noon announcement admonishing parents to parent their children. I was also at his session an hour later where he takes questions about the ship, and this topic came up. He was very blunt about his disgust with the situation.

 

The captain put the boy under cabin arrest so to speak; he was not allowed out of his cabin for the last full (sea day) of the cruise and one parent had to remain with him at all times.

 

Some people felt the punishment was too harsh - others, not harsh enough.

 

I wonder if they would have made them disembark, if it hadn't been a sea day?

 

debache and goodmi, thanks, I definitely agree with bith of you!

[galavant3]

Of course in order for them to get from the cabin they're in back to their own cabin before mom and dad wake up, they do have to violate the curfew ;)

 

I wasn't thinking that the hallways were public areas but that might be the case. Regardless, I'm totally in favor of a curfew but agree with those that said ultimately, the parents have to take responsibility. If the teens are in a public area they can be chased back to their cabins (or parent called which is what I would do...) If they are in another cabin, it would be impossible to enforce.

 

It's already been said but the curfew really is in the best interest and for the protection of the teens. Even if your teen is not one to break the rules, the reality is that a ship is the size of a small town and crimes do happen.