Kids Club Video Games

[4boysandme]

Hello...we just booked our first cruise on Wonder for next year and can't wait! We have boys that will be 7 and I know they will love the kids club. Can someone tell me how it works in there? I'm nervous that they would spend the entire time playing the video games. We limit them to 30 minutes/day at home and if they have free rein, they may never get off! haha! Is it like that? Can they can choose to not participate in other things the whole time?

 

[michellekcm]

They can choose not to participate in the activities going on.

From my observations, the Wii game (generally Mario Kart or Mario Party 10 from what I saw on the Magic) gets restricted, the counsellors make sure that all kids get a turn.

The computers, not so much. I just asked my 7-year old and she said that there were some kids on her cruise who would jump straight on the computers and stay there until their parents came.

Having said that, I never once saw all computers in use when I picked my daughter up. So the number of kids on the computers was pretty small. There are so many fun things happening for that age group.

 

[Maggie'sMom]

Hello...we just booked our first cruise on Wonder for next year and can't wait! We have boys that will be 7 and I know they will love the kids club. Can someone tell me how it works in there? I'm nervous that they would spend the entire time playing the video games. We limit them to 30 minutes/day at home and if they have free rein, they may never get off! haha! Is it like that? Can they can choose to not participate in other things the whole time?

You can communicate your desires to the youth counselors and they will do their best to engage your sons in other activities. The CMs won't force a child to stop playing a video game and join an activity so your children could theoretically spend their entire time playing video games. My DD is a lover of all things electronic but loves the other activities in the kids' clubs enough that she won't spend all her time in front of a screen at the kids club. You definitely need to communicate to your sons that they need to not spend all their time in front of the video games. You should check the daily Navigator and pick out activities in the kids clubs that your boys will enjoy and make sure to drop them off at those times.

 

[xavier2001]

My 8 year old son is a video game lover too (and we restrict him at home like you do). He would spend 1-2 hours at a time in the club/lab and my guess is he was probably on the computers half the time and running around doing activities the other half. The way I look at it is its his vacation too and if that's what he wants to do with his time then he should get that choice. That said if it were up to him he would've spent 8-10 hours a day in the lab and we did make him have lots of family fun time too!

 

[4boysandme]

Thank you for taking the time to answer! I appreciate it!!

 

[RACHEL_GB]

Hello...we just booked our first cruise on Wonder for next year and can't wait! We have boys that will be 7 and I know they will love the kids club. Can someone tell me how it works in there? I'm nervous that they would spend the entire time playing the video games. We limit them to 30 minutes/day at home and if they have free rein, they may never get off! haha! Is it like that? Can they can choose to not participate in other things the whole time?

Hopefully with your boys being older they will be a bit more sensible but my 5 year old spent the entire time on the iPads from what I could see. My 9 year old got involved with the activities but my youngest just wouldn't.
We decided to only leave him for an hour a day as this was what we suspected he was up to. Next year I am definitely going to ask the CMs if they can try and engage him at the start so that he forgets they are there. I can live in hope

 

[NHDisneyFan]

If you are going to have them in the kids club and they are on vacation too, what's an extra hour of video games? If it gives you an extra hour to explore/relax I wouldn't sweat it. There is so much going on if they normally don't play a ton of video games they'll jump into the other activities.