Flouders Nursery

[buzz&woody'smom]

Can I take my 17 month into the nursery to play with out a reservation to entertain him if I stay with him?

 

[shellgoodman]

We're leaving today for 9/7/02 and Flounders is definitely in our family's plans. I'll post all the ins and outs of Flounders when I get back. I want to stay with my 2yr old for an hour or so just so she can get used to it. We shall see if she'll cooperate on her own there. Keeping my fingers crossed this week!

 

[GoofyDisney]

I know that there was designated family time when you could be in there with your child to play with stuff or get familiar with everything.I don't know if that means that this is the only time parents can be in with the kids or not.

However, you do need to make reservations. Right when you get on the ship, you go to Flounders when it opens and sign up for every night. THen cancel as you go. (Make sure you know the current cancellation policy) The point of this is to make sure that you can use the nursery when you want to.

FR staff was always really great about beeping us when our DD was upset. They even started to beep us just when she asked doe us, she wasn't upset or anything.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Have a great cruise.

 

[RIDISNEYLOVERS]

Do the CM greet your child when you enter the nursery? I am asking this because DD would probably be okay if they approach her and "play" with her a little bit rather than us having to play with her and then leave her with noone paying any attention to her. She kind of needs to be occupied with someone else rather than just left playing with a toy. She is really good playing with other little ones so hopefully that could be a distraction.

Thanks for your input.

Lisa

 

[GoofyDisney]

There is a desk outside where a CM checks your child in. I am not sure if that CM stays there or not. But CMs always welcomed my DD in to the nursery. Most of the time it was a 1:1or 2:1 kid to CM ratio. I know when it is full it could be 6:1, but the times we were in there it was very nice because there were a lot of cms for the kids they had. And at any time there were three or four or five CMs in the nursery, even when there weren't that many kids. THe kids do get a lot of attention. The CMs interact with them and will hold them in the rocking chair or play with them or read them books. I found them to be interacting with the kids a lot more than I expected. I am not sure if that is the norm, or just our experience, but it was very nice for DD. ANd the CMs were very good at distracting our DD while we stood outside. In the lobby area where the desk is there is a huge "porthole" window that is a one-way window. YOu can see in, but your kids can't see you. You could stand there all night and watch your child play and they would never know it.

Let me know if you think of anything else you would want to know.

 

[shellgoodman]

Just back yesterday and our 2 1/2 yr old loved the nursery.! She called it her "club" and went every night for anywhere from 2-4 hrs. We signed up the first day for every night except Sunday night that way we could decide each day if we really wanted to have our daughter go into babysitting. You have up to 4 hrs prior to your start time for babysitting to cancel. You need to designate the top 3 choices of babysitting for the week. We were told by Brandy that there were 140 babies on board so we probably would only get 3 choices. We ended up getting every night. We walked in the 1st day and stayed for awhile while our daughter played. Drop off was very easy for us. In fact, after the 2nd night, my daughter said kissy and bye-bye to me and ran to the door of the nursery to let her in. My daughter was saying "please, please, let me in" to the staff. The 1st 2 nights she was up til midnight playing. The last nights we would go to pick her up and she was passed out. If you pick your child up early, they charge you half price for that hr. So if you had babysitting scheduled from 8-11 but picked up at 10 instead, the rate would be $15 instead of $18. You still need to pay for your scheduled hr that your child is not there but it is only $3.

The only time we were paged by any staff was the night my 4 yr old decided she didn't want to be in the Oceaneers club. Of course, this is when we had just received our appetizers at Palos. I called from the bar at Palos and they calmed her down. We received 2 other pages that night from the club and went to the club to see our daughter. We changed her into her pjs, gave her a stuffed animal and blankie and then we were off again. She fell asleep 10 minutes after we left. She was just overtired.

All in all, our experience was great with the Oceaneers club and the nursery. Let me know if you have any questions for either.

 

[buzz&woody'smom]

My DS will be 17 months and 1 day on our 10/27 cruise. I was actually thinking of signing him up for 3 of the nights (not the first night) from say 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm). I thought we would feed him ahead of time and then take him for the first part of sinner as we have the early dining time.

Questions:

What time to the shows let out at night?
If we cancel we still have to pay right. i.e. if he is cooperating at dinner or not wanting to leave us?

 

[shellgoodman]

Unfortunately, we had the early seating at 5:30pm which we were always rushing to get to on time from the islands. Two nights we were a half hour late. My husband bought a new diamond setting for me in St Maarten and I had to wait to have my diamond reset. My choice was either be late for dinner and buy the ring or pass on the ring to make the Animator Palate dinner. I chose the former! When you have the early sitting then the show is at 8:00 and lasts an hour.

My 2 yr old could not last in the shows. She was running around in the aisle and I had to take her out. The only show she watched intently was the Hercules musical and Disney Dreams. What I did the first day was to schedule her for the nursery 7 til midnight every night from Monday on (including the last night). Every day I saw how she was acting and made a decision by 3pm what our plans were for the evening. The first 3 nights she slept in her stroller during dinner and then woke up. We grabbed a quick bite to eat for her at 7:30pm and then brought her to the nursery after that. I did not expect that we would have her so much in the nursery but she was asking for her club all day long.

Scheduling the nursery depends on how your child naps and how they are at dinner time. In hindsight, we wished we had booked Palos for 2 nights as we didn't love the food in the dining rooms that much. There were many open reservations for Palos and would not have had problem getting in. We just didn't know any better beforehand. We found the babysitting well worth the money especially since our daughter was so happy to see the CMs.