Cruisers aged from newborn through to knocking on the doorstep of adulthood are well catered for on Carnival Cruise Line through the brand’s Camp Ocean Kids Club and its adolescent offshoots Circle C and Club O2.

An army of qualified and experienced youth workers are on hand in all three centres to oversee and coordinate a plethora of activities designed to keep minds of all ages busy and stimulated to ensure they have fun and maybe even learn some things while their parents take time to have a bit of a holiday themselves, knowing their kids are being well looked after, fed and entertained.

If you are travelling with kids, the first bit of helpful advice is that you should head straight to Camp Ocean as soon as you can upon embarking on your ship in order to register your child. The centres are limited in their capacity and depending on the time of the year you are taking your cruise – such as during school holidays – Camp Ocean and the other rooms can fill up very quickly. Early registrations will help your kids get into the appropriate program for their age bracket and ensure they don’t spend their cruise on the outside, looking in.

Each of the rooms publish a program of activities which can be picked up at the front door and which details the opening hours of each room, the times of each event and associated rules. In each room, there are different opening hours depending on whether the ship is in port or at sea, with different rules applying again for after dinner and late night care.

In this article, we’ll go through the program on Carnival Spirit, what each age bracket offers and provide some important information to help you plan.

Services for Under 2’s

According to Carnival, a full Kids Club program may not be suitable for children under the age of two, who likely may not be toilet trained.

On a sea day, the centre is open from 8am until 10pm however during scheduled activity times, Camp Ocean cannot accept those under two. During free play, little ones under two can be signed into the Camp Ocean room at a fee of $8.00 per child per hour for supervised play. If parents wish to make use of the play facilities with their children, there is no charge.

Camp Ocean welcomes kids under two through until 1am however the service can be cancelled if there are no children left in the room after 11pm. Depending on availability, the Kids Club may issue parents with a mobile phone so that they can reach them if needed. If some children are proving problematic, parents may be asked to collect them.

Camp Ocean Main Room

The main room for Camp Ocean caters to children from age 2-11, is broken down into three separate characters to ensure kids can interact with others their own age or close to it. According to a Youth Centre worker Cruise Advice spoke to, the crew makes a concerted effort to ensure kids keep to these age brackets, where possible.

Parents are advised to keep an eye on the time and the printed kids program for any children in a particular age bracket, to ensure they know when they need to collect their kids. The centre does close for short periods on a number of occasions each day in order to set up for a future activity, and these times are easy to locate in the program.