Oceaneers Club

[LuvThatMouse]

Looking for experiences with the Oceaneers club. Comments? Were the counselors cooperative and friendly to parents and children? Were they really annoyed by younger children who want to do their own thing? Do they really page you every time your child does the least little thing that isn't what everyone else is doing? I've heard some negative stories and just wanted to hear what some of you have to say.

 

[alexandrew]

My DS, 8, has been going to the club since he was a 4 year old...as he has gotten older, he has enjoyed more and more of the programming....The counselors actually do give the children the opportunity to explore the club, without having to participate in "every" planned activity....If the counselors ever were "annoyed" at anything the children do, it certainly doesnt show....

 

[mickeyboat]

My DD's did not want to stay in the CLub without DH and I, but they wanted to participate in the programming, so DH and I spent a lot of time there sitting in the back of the room. I did not see any annoyed counselors, they seemed well trained in dealing with troublesome children or children who had gotten hurt, who were tired, etc.

One thing I would recommend, is do not send your little girls there with one piece bathing suits, it makes it really tough for them to use the bathroom. The counselors are not supposed to assist in the bathrooms in any way - although I did see someone help one little girl at one point.

Towards the end of our cruise, when we had a "date" at Palo, we insisted that the kids stay without us, and you know what, we couldn't get them to leave afterwards. I wish they had realized that at the beginning.

Denae

 

[Lynderella]

Our DD (4) spent hours in the club one day and none the next. Everytime I was in there I couldn't get over how calm and quiet (but not in a bad way) it was. I saw how they handled fighting children (brothers), a potty accident, and a case of "I miss my mommy". In all instances I thought it was professional and appropriate. Friends travelling with us had a DS who didn't want to stay. The mother worked it out so the staff would page her to update DS's behavior. That way we all enjoyed our Palo time without having to run downstairs or worry what was going on.

 

[LuvThatMouse]

Thanks. I'm glad to hear from people who've had good experiences. I read a couple of reviews from parents who felt the counselors were rude and that they were paged for every little thing. Maybe it was just them, not the counselors. Who knows. My DD tends to be very social and usually adjusts quickly to new people. She occasionally will have a potty accident but not usually. It sounds as though she should be fine in the club.

 

[yazee1]

I'm glad you asked about the Club. I'm reading all I can about the Club and the Lab. Our first DC is in April. The opportunity for the kids to have fun while dh and I can get a wee bit of alone time was the pivotal issue on picking a DC. We have an almost 4 (March 1 bd) daughter who will be visiting the Club while her brothers will be in the Lab. I don't know what they do in there but I've read (on several boards), countless times, how the kids want to be there and hate to leave. May it be so!

Looking at your counter, you're almost there!! I'm excited for you. We haven't told the kids yet, and it's driving me crazy!

 

[aprilgail2]

My daughter loved it there. All the staff was very friendly to me and to her. They only paged me when she insisted on it. They kept her busy while we were at brunch at Palo so we wouldn't have to leave to get her. She said she wanted to leave but then they talked her into just giving mommy a little adult time and she agreed so I did not find that they paged for every little thing. The paged me once with a message on it saying "Kasey would like her blankie" I hadn't realized she went without it so I just ran up to the room and got it for her. They labeled everything she brought in so it wouldn't get lost.

 

[CM_Mom]

Just my 2 cents but I sometimes get the feeling that parents set the tone of their kids time in the club. I've heard some parents tell their kids "I hope you have a good time but remember you can page me if you don't" in a tone of voice that I would interpret as expecting the child to NOT have a good time. I think others build the clubs up so much that the kids expect to be the center of attention all the time and are disappointed. I actually heard someone on our cruise say they had to agree to buy their child a toy so he would stay in the club while they went to Palo! Excuse me ... but who's in charge here?

One of the best ideas I've read was by a fellow poster, Kcashner, who said when their family cruises, the kids are REQUIRED to attend at least ONE activity a day in the club/lab so the parents can have some adult time. Their family looks over the Navigators and selects the time when the kids want to go but the requirement is that they go to SOMETHING. I believe the comment was that they usually chose to stay longer but that way the parents can have a couple of hours to themselves each day. This sounds very reasonable to me. It's the PARENT's vacation also.

Even if the kids activities aren't their favorite (which I doubt) it won't ruin their trip to participate in them for a couple of hours a day.

 

[Joel110]

We just got off the Magic 1/22 sailing and were overall disappointed with our Oceaneers Club experience. We have two daughters (ages 4 and 6) and my sister also cruised with her sons (ages 3 & 6). On Sunday, our first full day, the older children asked to go to the club to check it out, but paged us shortly later when they didn't like it. Our best guess was that it was too structured in terms of when it's craft time, then you have to do the craft. If it's game time, you have to do the game. If it's movie time, then you have to watch the movie. I don't know that they offered just a time to just play on the computers or the play area.

We tried to adjust for the kids and be more selective on the time frames when we would take them. I guess our thought was to pick events that we knew they'd enjoy once they got there and to go back and pick them up before they needed to page us to help make them comfortable that the club was suppose to be a fun place, not a "school", "babysit" or "punishment" type place. Also, I should mention that my kids aren't shy and definately don't cling to us, so it's not a "we need our mommy and daddy around" situation.

Anyway, it really bothered us that they didn't want anything to do with the club, so we had to try and get them in the club only when there was either a character or interesting event going on, such as the "Finding Nemo Puppet Show", "Goofy PJ Party", "Who Wants To Be A Pirate Party", "Who Wants To Be A Mouseketeer". This required some balancing, as we had late dinner assignment, which added to the whole dilema as I felt some of the better Oceaneer events were timed to correspond with early dinner seating. Of course, I got to expect a page when those events ended and the new activity was gluing colored paper to popsicle sticks.

I guess it just left a bad taste when our younger daughter screamed the whole way there on Wednesday evening when we had Palo reservations and I had people opening their staterooms checking to see how mean a dad she had because he was putting her in the Oceaneer's Club. I even received a "you are a very patient dad" comment from one of the counseler's. Fortunately, that was the night of the Goofy PJ party, so my daughter settled in alright and we did get our Palo dinner in. We only took her back one more time on Thursday during the "Finding Nemo" puppet play for one hour while my wife and I dressed for semi-formal. She fussed the whole way there, but afterwards, she was singing "just keep swimming" during our 8:30 dinner. As far as I know, my sister only took her boys on Wednesday to dine with us at Palos and that was all for them.

To sum it up, if I were to do it over, I'd start out exposing the girls to the Oceaneers Club only when the characters or other popular events are occuring. Then, depending on their preference, allow them to stay for the "time filler" type activities like popsicle stick gluing. If the crafts were optional and the kids could play instead, our kids might have liked it better, but I understand that with a large number of kids, the counselers are trying to keep some order. I think it set a bad tone when we just expected to drop off the kids in the club and we didn't check to see the activity. It must have been some type of craft and I think our kids figured "hey, we can do this at school" let's page mom & dad and go swimming. Our expectation must have just been too high based on other comments on disboards and book reviews. From what we read, we figured the kids would be begging to go to the club and it turned out to be the opposite.

 

[aprilgail2]

. Our best guess was that it was too structured in terms of when it's craft time, then you have to do the craft. If it's game time, you have to do the game. If it's movie time, then you have to watch the movie. I don't know that they offered just a time to just play on the computers or the play area.

We had a totally different experience! My daughter said most of the time they were allowed to do what they wanted. If they didn't care to watch the movie they had a whole bunch of quiet type activities set up that they could do. If she didn't want to do some dance thing they were doing they always had something else for her to do. They never had to do just one thing. There was plenty of time for just free type play on the big pirate ship or just running around type things.
I think for her even more structured would have been fine since she is used to it with school and camp etc...even her summer camp is run by periods of the day...first period swimming, 2nd computers, 3rd roller hockey etc....so she is used to structured day.

 

[LuvThatMouse]

We just got off the Magic 1/22 sailing and were overall disappointed with our Oceaneers Club experience...

...We tried to adjust for the kids and be more selective on the time frames when we would take them. I guess our thought was to pick events that we knew they'd enjoy once they got there...

...in the club only when there was either a character or interesting event going on, such as the "Finding Nemo Puppet Show", "Goofy PJ Party", "Who Wants To Be A Pirate Party", "Who Wants To Be A Mouseketeer". This required some balancing, as we had late dinner assignment, which added to the whole dilema as I felt some of the better Oceaneer events were timed to correspond with early dinner seating.

Joe,
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. We too are scheduled for the late seating. I've seen mostly positive comments from people but its good to be aware of some of the possible problems. I think I will also pick and choose which activities we take our DD to and I may stay at the beginning to see how she adjusts before I leave her there without me. I may pop by occasionally to see how she's doing a couple of times too. I'm a firm believer that if my DD is having a good time, we can then relax and enjoy ourselves too.
Thanks!

 

[LuvThatMouse]

One of the best ideas I've read was by a fellow poster, Kcashner, who said when their family cruises, the kids are REQUIRED to attend at least ONE activity a day in the club/lab so the parents can have some adult time. Their family looks over the Navigators and selects the time when the kids want to go but the requirement is that they go to SOMETHING. I believe the comment was that they usually chose to stay longer but that way the parents can have a couple of hours to themselves each day. This sounds very reasonable to me. It's the PARENT's vacation also.QUOTE]

I agree, this is a good idea, but I am not sure how my daughter would respond if I used "required" because it sets it up as a negative thing. However, I do think selecting a couple of activities that she will definitely attend is a good idea. Knowing my DD, she'll probably want to stay longer because she's a very social little girl but if she doesn't, we take it in small chunks so she doesn't get tired of the OC before the end of the cruise.
Thanks!

 

[lbgraves]

If there is something that your child would like to do in the club in the evening you can ask your server to bring their food out ASAP. We had early seating & there were many times that DS wanted to be at the club by 7. We told our servers & they brought his food with our drinks and he had his desert by the time we had our appetizers or salads. I took him to the club before our entree was brought out & was in no rush.

 

[Joel110]

We had a totally different experience! My daughter said most of the time they were allowed to do what they wanted. If they didn't care to watch the movie they had a whole bunch of quiet type activities set up that they could do. If she didn't want to do some dance thing they were doing they always had something else for her to do. They never had to do just one thing. There was plenty of time for just free type play on the big pirate ship or just running around type things.
I think for her even more structured would have been fine since she is used to it with school and camp etc...even her summer camp is run by periods of the day...first period swimming, 2nd computers, 3rd roller hockey etc....so she is used to structured day.

I think it was a combination of structure with activities my DDs found boring. One of the activities they did was printing off pictures of princesses and then coloring them. My DDs do this at home on our computer w/disney software, so I guess it wasn't interesting to them. While dropping off my DDs, I more than once heard counselor's redirecting the children back to the activity and it certainly didn't appear that they were being allowed to explore too much on their own. Again, I can understand that it's probably necessary to have the kids in one place to better manage them.

Also, they often weren't in the Oceaneer's Club. One time, I dropped my DD4 off at the Aft Overlook (aka Secret Verandah) for storytime, another time they were dropped off at the movie theater and another time the 5-7s were up on the basketball courts.

The "transitional" period also caused some headaches. My sister dropped her DS off during the transitional period at Lumiere's for the 5-7 lunch and he evidently never got fed.

I'm not down on the counselors, I just think that the high reviews on disboards for Oceaneer's Club and Disney's reputation with children had our expectations high. My expectations after reading experiences like your own were that we'd just drop the kids off and they'd have so much fun they'd be "begging" to stay. My simple recommendation would be that you know what your children enjoy and I'd recommend easing them in with activities you know they'll enjoy. We didn't do this, our kids were bored with the first few activities and I guess decided they weren't interested in going back.

 

[Mickeyhugger]

Joel110, I could've written your post. I might get flamed for this, but I think the Oceaneer's club/lab are over-rated. It's great that so many peoples children 'love the clubs, and don't want to leave.' However, our 10 year-old DD is definitely not one of them. What's right for some children is not always right for others. She wanted to go to the lab when they were 'making flubber', and wanted to go whenever a certain friend of hers would be there, but other times she was content to stay in the stateroom and watch the movies. She spent most of the time with DH and I, but for two of the three nights we went to the nightclubs, she was in the stateroom. (Yes, she knew not to open the door for anyone, and understood she was not to leave. She was very responsible.)

 

[Laurabearz]

I plan to pitch the kids clubs as Camp on the Boat to our kids. Our kids have a couple of years of preschool/K under their belts so I think we will be fine.

 

[flexsmom]

I guess we're one of the lucky ones. My DD has enjoyed the Club both at age 3 and age 5 - we were paged one time when she was three because she was being a bit difficult but a threat to not get to come back (from me) was all it took. She didn't seem to mind the activities that "she could just do at school" because often she doesn't get to do those at home very often, or even if she does, she likes to do them in a different setting. I let her know each day what the schedule was - you're here for 3 hours, then we'll pick you up for lunch and we'll hit the pool - and that was that. Again, I guess we were lucky.

 

[ratfam]

We also have had only positive experiences with the Club and the Lab. Two Magic cruises, one three years ago when ds was 3.5 and dd was 6, and one a few weeks ago when ds was 6.5 and dd was 9. Our approach was both times that the kids could go whenever they wanted, but the only time they had to go was the night we had Palo reservations, which we planned for an evening there were events they wanted to participate in anyway. We never had a problem with unnecessary pages--in fact, on our first cruise, my ds participated in some kind of a "hunt for Tinkerbell" activity one evening and the sound that they made for Tinkerbell evidently scared him. Instead of paging us, which is what I think I would have been inclined to do if I were a counselor, one of the counselors carried him out of the room whenever the noise was coming, and then back in to the group whenever it stopped so that he could participate in the rest of the activity. She obviously went above and beyond, but that has been our experience. While neither of my kids bonded as much with any counselor on our second cruise, even though they aren't kids that "lived at the clubs" they always enjoyed their time and I always saw the counselors treating kids kindly. I think that the kids were offered more alternatives to the programming this cruise than on the last (like the Captain's Closet was open for free play and computers during the evening movie, which I don't recall being the case on our last cruise), and I think that is a good thing.

 

[Realityfreakaholic]

I am going to agee that the club is definitely structured and when it's time for one activity that is what they do. My son did page me a couple times the first few days because he's not into arts and crafts or karaoke. Thankfully he's 8 and I felt ok after the 3rd day to allow him to sign himself out when he wasn't enjoying certain things. So, I can definitely see why some kids would not enjoy it. Thankfully there was so many things that he did enjoy especially in the evenings that it was hard to pull him out.

My DD is 4 and after the first night when she didn't enjoy what they were doing I also carefully went over what was being held at what time and then put her in. That worked out fine and she enjoyed it but she did not spend all the time there that I thought she would but enough to give my DH and I alone and quiet time.

Just like everything else, kids are different and what one kids loves another hates. I would just recommend looking at the navigator and the activities and discussing with your kids what they think they would enjoy.

As far as the counselors they all seemed nice, patient and professional and I the only time I would get paged is when my kids insisted on it.

 

[Karel]

We just got off the Magic 1/22 sailing and were overall disappointed with our Oceaneers Club experience. We have two daughters (ages 4 and 6) and my sister also cruised with her sons (ages 3 & 6). On Sunday, our first full day, the older children asked to go to the club to check it out, but paged us shortly later when they didn't like it. Our best guess was that it was too structured in terms of when it's craft time, then you have to do the craft. If it's game time, you have to do the game. If it's movie time, then you have to watch the movie. I don't know that they offered just a time to just play on the computers or the play area.
.

I was just wondering if you talked with your children about the club before the cruise? Show them pictures of what it looked like and what activities were there?

My kids were older than yours but I pretty much had them whipped up about going to the clubs. They knew what to expect. And while we didn't 'require' them to go, it was said there would be times they would be expected to go, at least for an hour.

My kids loved it so much the younger two opted to stay in the club and lab while we took our oldest to St. John's. That's how comfortable we all felt.

No, not everyone loves the club/lab but as someone said, it's all about parental attitude too.

OTH, my kids didn't want to go to any of the evening shows and family activities. I had to beg them to do those things.