I totally agree with what you are saying about other entertainment when cruising. Being a former business owner, I just can't stand to see people or organizations not fulfill their duties, and get by with it.
On the other hand, didn't this young lady have 3 other friends with her?? That's practically a "team" for any of the activities on board! These kids should not have been bored by any means! There is plenty to do on the ship! I think not having a chapperone for these young people was an issue here.
Momofteens...please don't take me wrong, you were promised a activity director, and should have had one. But I do agree with Cruise Fanatic Moderator...don't condemn the whole Carnival Cruise Line when it comes to teens. There was obviously a problem with the staff on your ship, that certainly needs to be corrected. Good Luck doing so!
Also notice the original poster did not respond or thank us for our help. Humms?
Just venting on here prolly, and they have the right to do so. But would be nice if they would take the time and come back to see the advice given as per their complaint.
Sadly, this OP is not just venting. She has been on every cruise forum I am on with this same "Carnival does nothing for Teens message" as a first time poster and has not come back to any of the boards.
On the first board she posted on, I thought she was genuinely looking for a solution to a problem. So I advised her to write a letter to Guest Relations starting with all the good points of the cruise and then conclude by saying "however the reason for my letter is..."
I advised her to relate the problem in such a way as the reader could put themselves in that position. No exaggerations, no judgments, just the facts. And I gave her the address where to send it to. I also told her to expect it to take 4 -6 weeks for a reply, but that I felt confident that Carnival would address this problem and yes that should include a proper discount on a future cruise.
However, she never has come back on any of the boards...including that one.
So now this leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that she may just been someone with a starfish up her fanny.
As posted earlier, the passenger does have some responsibility to get the problem resolved while on board. I cruise for karaoke. If the karaoke host just did not show up one night...I can assure you I would not be waiting around to see if they were going to show up the rest of the week.
This kind of "hit and run" also makes me question the validity of the complaint. I would like to hear from some other cruisers on that specific cruise however cross referencing is impossible because the OP (conveniently) left out the exact sail date.
It could have been something as simple as Olga being late the first 2 days by 15 minutes and their teens not waiting around. (Which is still wrong for Olga to do...but certainly not as bad as not showing up for an entire cruise)
Some of us who run forums call them "drive by posters". I think most of the time these are people who sit around waiting for the next opportunity to be offended. I refuse to let one crew member - or several for that matter - impact my ability to enjoy a cruise. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that many teens don't want to participate in the organized youth activities. They consider them childish or lame, or whatever the current word for uncool is.
I can tell you that when we went on the last cruise I took my then 18 and 15 year old kids and they had a blast and no, they did not participate in club 02. They went and did things on their own. They were not "unsupervised" but they went with us to the shows and stuff like that. They also went and did stuff on their own (not with each other). They had the best time. They did not go on the cruise with the anticipation that someone would find something for them to do either. The moment we got on the ship they went looking for what the ship had to offer them. Teens are sometimes difficult to entertain but only if they want to be difficult. There were many teens on our cruise and as they were walking around I noticed that many of them had a smile on their face. And what is wrong with kids going to one of the shows with their parents. Maybe it isn't something they would normally go see but a cruise isn't an every day occurence either.
I had responded to the original post that same happened to us, but as you said our teen just did his thing or hung out with us. We did check back a couple of other times for some activity that he was interested in doing, and again no one was there ... it did not by any means ruin his or our trip. I would not even think about asking for any kind of discount as he had a most enjoyable time.
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