Policy change Oceaneer Club and Lab

[Bibbidi_Boo]

Yeah. Disney let the Genie out of the bottle when they caved in the first place by merging the Club and Lab and allowing ages 3-12.

The lines that do have strict age groupings are not hurting for business - and in fact I've seen on other forums that there are families intentionally choosing those lines because they get that there are reasons for age separation and don't demand that their 11 year old be able to stay with their 3 year old (and insist that the 11 year old willingly plays with the 3 year old).

I love Disney, but they created this issue when they caved originally.

(As an aside, I don't get the "11 is too young for Edge". Isn't 11 the age a lot of kids are when they start Middle School?? Middle Schools tend to be 6th-8th grade which would be 11-13/14.)

11 yo are 5th and 6th but many also have 6th grade as elementary like my county.

 

[Kwami]

11 yo are 5th and 6th but many also have 6th grade as elementary like my county.

On the other hand, my hometown has moved 5th to middle school so that now elementary is 1-4, middle is 5-8, and high is 9-12.

Anyway, my 12-year-old niece and her almost 3-year-old brother play together all the time. I don't know why you all don't seem to believe that it happens.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

On the other hand, my hometown has moved 5th to middle school so that now elementary is 1-4, middle is 5-8, and high is 9-12.

Anyway, my 12-year-old niece and her almost 3-year-old brother play together all the time. I don't know why you all don't seem to believe that it happens.

It's not that we don't believe that it doesn't happen, but that it's one thing under parental supervision and another under supervision of strangers in a setting with a lot of different sensory inputs.

 

[Alicatt]

When my kids were younger, i didn't mind that there were older kids in the club. My dd went last year at 12 and made friends with 10 and 11 year olds. No issues. I would understand breaking the kids up into more group activities by age though. In my neighborhood all age groups play together. No real supervision. Now the kids aren't 3 but there are some as young as 6 or 7 up to 15 year olds. Mostly they play games or sports. It's never been an issue.

 

[Lesverts]

Yeah. Disney let the Genie out of the bottle when they caved in the first place by merging the Club and Lab and allowing ages 3-12.

The lines that do have strict age groupings are not hurting for business - and in fact I've seen on other forums that there are families intentionally choosing those lines because they get that there are reasons for age separation and don't demand that their 11 year old be able to stay with their 3 year old (and insist that the 11 year old willingly plays with the 3 year old).

I love Disney, but they created this issue when they caved originally.

(As an aside, I don't get the "11 is too young for Edge". Isn't 11 the age a lot of kids are when they start Middle School?? Middle Schools tend to be 6th-8th grade which would be 11-13/14.)

I don't have skin in the game on this one. But I always thought the age range was a bit perplexing. Back in my day at school (K-8) you were not allowed to associate with kids outside of our cohort. So K, 1-3, 4-6, 7-8 unless in supervised activities like buddy reading and those kind of things.

 

[dreamer17555]

3-12 has always been an odd age range but I'm not sure separating just the 11 and 12s is much better. I could see 3-9 (actual Disney child age) and 10-12... but that's just me.

 

[Cfabar1]

I wish they'd bring back club and lab. Way better. Huge mistake to have caved.

 

[AZMermaid]

I think of the Edge as middle school (6-8 here) and the Vibe as high school. My son has a Sept birthday and will be 14 on our Treasure cruise over winter break of 8th grade. I’ll encourage him to stick with the Edge but I’m also not dying on that hill if he wants the Vibe. It’s tough because that first night is so important and he’s gotta choose which way to hedge his bets. My daughter will be 12 and a 7th grader so I’m sure she’ll not even consider the Club.

 

[soniam]

Yeah. Disney let the Genie out of the bottle when they caved in the first place by merging the Club and Lab and allowing ages 3-12.

The lines that do have strict age groupings are not hurting for business - and in fact I've seen on other forums that there are families intentionally choosing those lines because they get that there are reasons for age separation and don't demand that their 11 year old be able to stay with their 3 year old (and insist that the 11 year old willingly plays with the 3 year old).

I love Disney, but they created this issue when they caved originally.

(As an aside, I don't get the "11 is too young for Edge". Isn't 11 the age a lot of kids are when they start Middle School?? Middle Schools tend to be 6th-8th grade which would be 11-13/14.)

Honestly, 6th-8th grade is not really very appropriate from a cognitive/physical point of view. There isn't really a consensus anymore though on what schools do. Most districts have middle schools only due to schools being full and needing to pull some grades out to a different location. Once it starts, it then continues for all new schools built. It's sort of arbitrary though. No good solution really, but he 3-12 was definitely not it.

 

[tvguy]

Honestly, 6th-8th grade is not really very appropriate from a cognitive/physical point of view. There isn't really a consensus anymore though on what schools do. Most districts have middle schools only due to schools being full and needing to pull some grades out to a different location. Once it starts, it then continues for all new schools built. It's sort of arbitrary though. No good solution really, but he 3-12 was definitely not it.

I agree about 6th-8th not being very appropriate. It is in flux here too, but for completely different reasons. We are riding a 30 year wave of declining enrollment so they are consolidating grades as they close schools. And at least with youth sports here, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14 tend to be individual levels for a whole lot of reasons.

 

[Kerr84]

I am a middle school librarian (5th and 6th grade here). There is a huge maturity difference that happens over the summer between those ages! We still have some immature 6th graders, but the majority act so different from when they were in 5th grade.

 

[otten]

When we were on the Wish on October they gave our 11 year old a special wristband that identified her as an 11-12 year old. They did not say anything about her not being able to participate in the regular activities but that it was because they were trying to have targeted activities for that age group.

I can’t speak to how this is actually playing out though because we found the youth clubs on the Wish to be an absolute joke (love them on other ships) with very few actual organized activities and our kids didn’t end up wanting to spend much time in any of them.

Given there’s been no announcement from Disney though I think the post is quite likely a case of misunderstanding/miscommunication.

 

[RedHead0186]

Given there’s been no announcement from Disney though I think the post is quite likely a case of misunderstanding/miscommunication.

Someone who's a current CM on one of the cruise ships said a few posts back that DCL was piloting this. That makes sense, and would also explain why there's no announcement, because it's not an official policy change (yet-if the pilot is successful and they do decide to make this change permanent). So no, I don't think it's a misunderstanding/miscommunication, sounds like it is happening, just not at a fleet-wide level (yet).

 

[otten]

Someone who's a current CM on one of the cruise ships said a few posts back that DCL was piloting this. That makes sense, and would also explain why there's no announcement, because it's not an official policy change (yet-if the pilot is successful and they do decide to make this change permanent). So no, I don't think it's a misunderstanding/miscommunication, sounds like it is happening, just not at a fleet-wide level (yet).

It’s misunderstanding/miscommunication in that it was presented to the poster of the original screenshotted post that it was non optional and that 11-12 year olds were going to be forced into only doing the specific 11-12 things in I guess a specific area which based on both our personal experience and the post above from a youth cm does not appear to be the case. There is a very big difference between having targeted activities to engage the age group more and limiting that age group to only those activities. They have frequently had specific activities for the 3-5 set but they don’t tell that age group that they can only participate in those things.

Rather than whatever they are doing here I personally think they should work on improving Edge. It was a mess on the Wish in October. Scheduled activities that didn’t happen without any communication, the space would be closed at random times (again without explanation) and counsellors that were completely unengaged. That’s not going to make 11-12 year olds want to go. That was a completely different experience from our previous cruises.

 

[Lolabear_la]

It’s misunderstanding/miscommunication in that it was presented to the poster of the original screenshotted post that it was non optional and that 11-12 year olds were going to be forced

While it may have been the case that it was optional for your sailing and for most of the pilot. It does seem that on the most recent Wish sailing there were at least 1 account (perhaps 2?) of it not being optional and siblings who were just on the other side of the spilt were not at first to be in the Oceaneer Club at the same time. Eventually the Wish cruise director did concede to allowing 11-12's to opt in & not forcing them to do separate activities but if it had been a simple misunderstanding then I don't believe they would have needed escalated intervention for siblings just on the other side of the newly decided split to be able to do activities together.

I'm all for separating the very wide age ranges, but I think it's very poor policy to spring it as non-optional for guests who've planned these sailings so far in advance and locked in so much money. We're going with a 10 and 12 year old in Feb on the Wish and if we were to just just 3 weeks later, they would be 11 & 12. We're past our PIF otherwise I would be looking at adjusting our dates to when they could be assured to be together without this potential new policy looming. This trip is specifically for our 12 yr old (who has loved Oceaneer Club the 2 times we've been able to get him on a Cruise since Covid) to get one last hurrah at Oceaneer. He tried Edge on the 2nd cruise and it just seemed pretty lame/a lot less than Oceaneer.

 

[Mags2002]

It’s definitely not being forced on anyone (I was told it never was-or at least on my ship) and they have not forced siblings to split up if they don’t want to.
DCL does not want 11-12 year olds out of Oceaneers, they are trying to find a solution to many of them either not wanting to go at all or saying they are bored with minimal programming geared to them.
No one is sure how long this will be in place for or if/when policy will actually change. I am sure that DCL will not change this without doing due dilligance and asking for feedback from kids, parents, CMs and Managers

 

[_auroraborealis_]

I don't see how they'd announce this 18 months out to account for "guests who've planned these sailings so far in advance and locked in so much money." Especially if it is being piloted in response to risk assessment.

 

[Bibbidi_Boo]

I don't see how they'd announce this 18 months out to account for "guests who've planned these sailings so far in advance and locked in so much money." Especially if it is being piloted in response to risk assessment.

But you can still cancel 18 months out, it’s sucks for those past full refund period .

 

[Lolabear_la]

But you can still cancel 18 months out, it’s sucks for those past full refund period .

Right this is exactly what I meant by planning out in advance and locked in so much money. The risk has always been there and I am still absolutely on board with them making changes. As a consumer who spends a lot of time planning in advance for making of the most of hard-earned vacation dollars, though, if something like this is going to change, I would hope it would be communicated in advance of a paid in full date and with full understanding of the expectations of how the ages work for doing activities.

I'm glad it seems that for now it does seem to be an opt-in & hope that once we go it's not any surprises like this. The initial report that it wasn't optional & that only once it was escalated it to the ship's cruise director, were that specific family's 10 and 12 year olds able to stay together in Oceaneer had me worried. As we also have a 10 and 12 year old and had booked the dates we did for a sailing that worked best for our 12 year old to have one last hurrah i Oceaneer club, I've been following anywhere I can for updates.

 

[sadiecatie]

Honestly, 6th-8th grade is not really very appropriate from a cognitive/physical point of view. There isn't really a consensus anymore though on what schools do. Most districts have middle schools only due to schools being full and needing to pull some grades out to a different location. Once it starts, it then continues for all new schools built. It's sort of arbitrary though. No good solution really, but he 3-12 was definitely not it.

This is actually why I really like what our district does. Primary center is pre-k through 1st, elementary is 2-5, 6th grade is in its own building, middle is 7-8, high is 9-12. I think it makes WAY more sense developmentally.

I honestly wouldn’t be mad if they separated out the ages a bit. I agree that the 3-12 range is weird and way too big. I actually wondered if originally club and lab were separated for smaller age ranges, and it sounds from comments here that it was the case. I understand the frustration from families with kids across that age range, but on the other hand they can’t stay together at school either, and presumably they aren’t spending their entire vacation in the kids clubs (there are plenty of opportunities for family time all together).