Worried about HAL Christmas Cruise

[holidaybound]

I have been looking at a Christmas cruise on the Noordam for our family with two daughters aged 7 and 10.

 

In reading through some member reviews though, there were some reports of the kids club being inadequate for the number of kids on holiday sailings.

 

This worries me because I think without the kids club - they would be bored.

 

Does anybody have any recent experience with HAL's kids club they can relay? In particular a holiday sailing?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

[brazilgirl]

What ports will be visited and what the dates? That is important in determining the number of kids...

[holidaybound]

It is a 10 day Caribbean cruise visiting Tortola, Barbados etc

 

I assume this would be popular with families.

[rebeccalouise]

I am sure it will be fine. Relax. If you want to research it, pull up 10 day cruises from last year at Christmas in the Caribbean. There should be comments about the kids programs in the reviews.

 

I pulled up a review from Noordam for last Christmas. It was a Caribbean cruise out of NYC with a total of 166 children (half of them were teens) and they were all "well-behaved". That left approximately 83 to be the divided into two age groups. So even if all the kids participated there would only be about 40 in the 3-7 group and 40 in the 8-12 group. From my experience with cruises- only about half the kids onboard are ever in the youth program and certainly not for every hour the kids program is open. I suspect your children will have about 20 kids to play with in the youth program at any given time.

[holidaybound]

Thank you for your research! I think I will go ahead and book it.

 

We are taking our kids for an Alaska cruise this summer......so hopefully I am not getting ahead of myself in booking another cruise so soon.

 

Thank you again.