Discovery Camp At Sea "Patter" (Alaska 2023) pictures

[SleepyBunny]

I was desperately looking for the following prior to embarkation!  Sharing this for other travellers with kids 🙂

[EDDY0827]

Good info!

[SuzieQ521]

Thank you so much!

 

We sail on Royal Princess in a few weeks with a 4 year old...a few of the same ports so hoping it will be similar activities!

[SuzieQ521]

If you get a chance to answer: 

 

1) Do they give pagers to parents for the younger kids while on board (I assume not when ship is in port!)?

 

2) Do you know if they have any arcade games in the younger kids room (ages 3-5?). I thought I saw an air hockey table in the pictures.

 

thanks!

[red4u2]

Do you have any of the regular patters?   thank you!

[tutumomickey]

Pagers are given out when you drop off your child. You may also leave child in kids club while in port you just have to let them know a couple of days in advance so they can staff appropriately. I believe the air hockey table on the Discovery and Royal were in the 7-12 year old section. They really did not need arcade games for the "Tree house" younger kids. They have an indoor and outdoor play areas with lots of climbing/sliding equipment plus organized craft and games. Our granddaughters were 4 in Alaska and 5 in Hawaii and never wanted to leave the club. Be prepared, they came home with multiple crafts ans stuffed animals. Luckily one of the crafts was a backpack that could hold some of their goodies.

[SuzieQ521]

3 hours ago, tutumomickey said:

Pagers are given out when you drop off your child. You may also leave child in kids club while in port you just have to let them know a couple of days in advance so they can staff appropriately. I believe the air hockey table on the Discovery and Royal were in the 7-12 year old section. They really did not need arcade games for the "Tree house" younger kids. They have an indoor and outdoor play areas with lots of climbing/sliding equipment plus organized craft and games. Our granddaughters were 4 in Alaska and 5 in Hawaii and never wanted to leave the club. Be prepared, they came home with multiple crafts ans stuffed animals. Luckily one of the crafts was a backpack that could hold some of their goodies.

 

Oh that's great to hear! We were on a NCL cruise in January and my 4 year old loved their arcade; however, the Princess's kids club seems a lot more organized with actual activities (as opposed to just video games and Legos) so I think he will have fun in there, especially on our Alaska cruise. The indoor and outdoor play areas look great too.

 

And that's great about the pagers! For NCL, you had to tell them what decks you might be on but then they really had no way of contacting you other than calling your stateroom (and if you weren't in there, then you would hear the message hours later!). They also were closed on Port days.

 

Thank you.

[SleepyBunny]

On 4/30/2023 at 4:14 PM, SuzieQ521 said:

 

1) Do they give pagers to parents for the younger kids while on board (I assume not when ship is in port!)?

 

They seemed to have a few pagers but I was not given one. My kid is in the mid-range group, I'll ask if they aren't super busy! 

 

2) Do you know if they have any arcade games in the younger kids room (ages 3-5?). I thought I saw an air hockey table in the pictures.

 

There is a Foozeball table and two skee ball (side-by-side) machines in the parents-welcome fun zone, then in the room for 8-12s an air hockey table, a row of computers for videogames, a tablet that acts as a jukebox with pop songs. 

 

I was quite impressed with the current selection of kids books in the library - Amulet, Harry Potter, Geronimo/Thea Stilton, Rayna Tellegmere graphic novels, etc. but sad to hear they can only be enjoyed in the club (though fully understandable!)

[SleepyBunny]

22 hours ago, red4u2 said:

Do you have any of the regular patters?   thank you!

Someone is doing a Semi-Live of our trip (Sapphire April 29-May 10) - check that thread for some patters 😊

[SuzieQ521]

3 minutes ago, SleepyBunny said:

1) Do they give pagers to parents for the younger kids while on board (I assume not when ship is in port!)?

 

They seemed to have a few pagers but I was not given one. My kid is in the mid-range group, I'll ask if they aren't super busy! 

 

2) Do you know if they have any arcade games in the younger kids room (ages 3-5?). I thought I saw an air hockey table in the pictures.

 

There is a Foozeball table and two skee ball (side-by-side) machines in the parents-welcome fun zone, then in the room for 8-12s an air hockey table, a row of computers for videogames, a tablet that acts as a jukebox with pop songs. 

 

I was quite impressed with the current selection of kids books in the library - Amulet, Harry Potter, Geronimo/Thea Stilton, Rayna Tellegmere graphic novels, etc. but sad to hear they can only be enjoyed in the club (though fully understandable!)

 

Thanks!

Is the parents'- welcome fun zone open all the time and when the kids club is closed?

[tutumomickey]

parents fun zone is not for the younger kids. You drop them off and pick them up at the door (for safety reasons)Basically just closed a couple hours around each meal. Open 9-12; 2-5 and 7-10. Yes 10pm and we drug them out under protest every night at 10. They are in bed at 8 at home. They also hurried every night to finish dinner even though we told them club wasn't open yet. There were a few days times varied when they had pajama party or movie night. The only drawback is there is no snacking in the club(allergy reasons) so we got called early before noon a couple times because someone was hungry.

[SleepyBunny]

13 hours ago, SuzieQ521 said:

 

Thanks!

Is the parents'- welcome fun zone open all the time and when the kids club is closed?

The Family Fun Zone opens at the same time as the kids club, and this is the room with skee ball and a few other activities. I have seen a pair of adults enjoying the games without kids, it is not supervised and in a seperate room from the clubs so it didn't feel too creepy 🙂

 

Kids club opens on most days for 3 blocks of time - morning, afternoon and evening. The kids patter I shared above has the times. You don't need to drop off/pick up on the dot - you can do so anytime in those windows. The staff are good and involved and maintain the peace well 😅 They also make changes to activities based on the number of kids (e.g. last night's kids bingo didn't happen since there were only 4 children present, much to my child's chagrin).

 

Because our trip has only 20ish kids total, they have been merging the children together (age ranges 4ish-12). At most, I think there were 8 kids total in the room as a maximum so far. I haven't seen any teen in the room at all, which is good. Not sure the handful of teens are using the teen hangout room at all - I haven't seen any entre or leave during my times up at the kid zone.  

 

I work in children's science education for a living and everything I see with the staff, the space and activities looks right to me 👍👍

Edited May 2, 2023 by SleepyBunny

[jlacy1987]

Thank you for this! My daughter wasn't 3 yet on our pre-Christmas cruise on NCL so she sadly couldn't take part in the kid's club on NCL. But she is 3 now so I'm very excited to let her enjoy the Sapphire kids' club area!