Autistic 14 y/o on RCL

[CityChickCruising]

hello :) in 2 weeks my family is leaving on the Jewel of the Seas. the youngest is 14 and highly functioning autistic. I was just wondering on how the teen club would be for him and how making friends is. we want him to be able to make friends on the ship, but are a bit nervous about how big it is.

 

any insight on anything would be amazing :) thank you.

[cb at sea]

I don't think you'll need to worry. They divide the kids by age....so he won't be crammed in with tons of other ages. His group is 12-14....so that should limit the number of kids quite nicely!

 

Definitely go on the 1st evening, when everyone is new, so he gets in on the introductions before friendships have formed!

Edited February 19, 2016 by cb at sea

[Ajat0921]

I was talking to a travel agent at my kids school. Apparently RC is an autistic friendly cruise company. they train their personal to help autistic children. They are actually certified. so there is no worries. :) I plan to use them next time I cruise, my 10 year old is on the spectrum and his twin is ADHD.

[3XX1XY]

I was talking to a travel agent at my kids school. Apparently RC is an autistic friendly cruise company. they train their personal to help autistic children. They are actually certified. so there is no worries. :) I plan to use them next time I cruise, my 10 year old is on the spectrum and his twin is ADHD.

 

No offense, but I cruised with them after they got certified and it was a complete joke. Utterly meaningless. The kids club staff had no idea what autism even was. Their solution to the issue was to park my then 7yo in front of the TV by herself while she was in kids club. We did not get a sperate muster drill. We did not get priority boarding. I notified ahead with the special needs department but when we got there no one had any idea what I was talking about. We were also supposed to have the earliest dinner seating, I called and got that because it would be easiest with an autistic child, and when we got on the ship the reservation had been changed to the "my time" dining, or whatever RCLs version of that is. I called and complained several times to get our didning reservation back and they blew me off and told me I would just have to make a dinner reservation every single day if we wanted to eat at 6pm.

 

While we still had fun, we decided to never sail RC again. Honestly so many broken promises, and their autism "certification" is just so clearly some fake money grab. We are lucky our daughter is high functioning, I can't even imagine being lured on with a lower functioning child. We've had much better luck getting accommodations through NCL honestly. RC was the worst. Carnival was in the middle.

[CityChickCruising]

thanks to all for the help, this really means a lot that you took time to reply. we will definitely see how the teen group works, and I'll update everyone. thanks :)