major disappointment with the Coral kids program

[kgn]

Sorry I lost part of the title in my haste of typing......

We just returned from the Coral's Xmas/New Year's cruise. This was our first time on Princess and unfortunetly will not be returning! The cruise through Panama was great. All the ports we stopped at were wonderful. The food was good (very light on the chocolate desserts!) but not amazing. The service was fine and the little things people complain about like the pool towels, chairs at the pool, and charging for ice cream were minor in comparison to my biggest complaint (which almost ruined our entire vacation)!

 

Now I will start by telling you we like our kids and like to hang out with them, ages 8, 11, 12 & 15. We send the three youngest to the kids program only in the evening, after dinner from 8 - 10pm. This gives us the opportunity to gamble or see an "adult" event like the pg-13 comic etc.

 

We received the kids programming schedule as soon as we got into our room. We went the welcome orientation for the program and signed the kids up and met the staff. Who, for the most part, were very nice. We then reviewed the schedule, 9 out of 11 evenings was a movie! I could not believe it, if I wanted to put my kids in front of the tv I could have left them in the room (or at home for that matter). I thought this just might be an option and there would be other activities. I was wrong!!!!!!

 

After the third evening my kids started to complain about going and sitting and watching movies. They basically refused to go and I did not blame them. It was their vacation too. I decided to talk to the "person in charge" I was told that I should talk to Kara in the kids club and was told she should be up there right now. So off we went. She was not there but we left a message. Night three passed and day four passed. The evening of Day four I went back to the passenger service desk and told them I left a message and have not heard back and wanted to know who her boss was. I was told that Lee the Cruise Director was the one responsible for Kara and that he was hard to get a hold of. I suggested I leave a message for him to call me. Day five came and I received a message from Lee saying that he was not avalaible to talk with but I could page his Assistant Director, Susan. Which I did and I got a return call immediately. I explained the situation to Susan and told her how disappointed I was in the program and instead of grubbling about it to other passangers as othe parents were doing I decided to do something about while there was still time to fix the situation. She thanked me and told me she would check into and possible come up with an amended schedule. She would get back to me.

 

Two hours later I recieved a call from an angry Kara who basically said she did the program this way because this itinarary has a lot of port days so the kids were tired. I explained to her that it was her job to entertain my kids and it was my job as a parent to decide when they are tired and if that is the case I would put them to bed and not send them to the kids programing. I also mentioned that on Saturday and Sunday mornings she had cartoon watching scheduled on sea days (because it has been a long cruise I was told)! I said I was speaking for a number of parents that are unhappy and wanted to try to fix the problem while there was still time! She responded that the schedule was the schedule and that she had not heard any other complaints! I asked her how many children were in the 8 - 12 age group on this cruise and she said there were 80. I then asked how many were coming to the programing and she responded 10. (WOW that is about 12%....pretty pathetic if you ask me but she did not see there was a problem) In the end she told me that if I ever had a problem I should not go to her boss and that I should deal with her directly. Which I responded I tried and you did not get back to me after receiving my message. Her response was she was getting back to me now!

 

We ended up taking the kids swimming most nights and taking them to some shows or playing games with them in the game room. Overall I was shocked and amazed at how poorly the situation was handled and now I understand why there are kids roaming the ship as young as six!

 

Princess has lost the eight of us and many other "potential" returns based on this problem and this cruise.:mad:

[VegasGreen]

Yeah, we got it the first time.