By Donald H. Harrison
ABOARD SEA PRINCESS – Up on Deck 12, aft section, (that’s the back of the ship) there are three domains for youngsters who are cruising with their parents or grandparents. One spot in the “Fun Zone”is for “Pelicans,” aged 3-7; another spot is for “Shockwaves,” the program for 8-to-12-year olds; and finally there is the “Remix” area for teens, ages 13-17.
Eleven counselors, most of them school teachers earning summer money while they travel, staff the three separate areas. On our cruise, to oversee the activities there were three counselors assigned to each area, a floating helper, and the director, Natalia Guzman-Silva of Mexico City, a six-year veteran of Princess Cruises youth programs.
On this 10-day roundtrip San Francisco to Alaska cruise there were 327 youngsters 17 years old and younger – 57 in the Pelican category, 130 in Shockwaves and 140 teens. Of these about 50 percent participated in some of the activities offered by the Youth Program, according to Guzman.
She described the ‘Fun Zone’ as a “space for the kids away from the adults because, although it is a family vacation, they need ‘kid time’ — they want to be with other kids. We are happy when they come here and get together with other kids. This is a meeting point where kids can come without adults telling them ‘Oh, you need to stop yelling’ or ‘Don’t run’ or ‘don’t do this’ or ‘don’t do that!’”
In other words, it’s a place where kids can realize Princess Cruises’ advertising slogan “escape completely.”
The three centers—as well as a video arcade and areas on a higher deck for basketball and dodge ball – are open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day for youngsters and to 1 a.m. for the teens. Parents are required to sign in and out the “Pelicans”; have the choice to sign in/ sign out children of “Shockwaves age,” while the teens set their own schedules at Remix.
Guzman said that the busiest time for all three centers are the evenings when parents and children typically go their separate ways on the ship — parents to the stageshows, casino, or perhaps to a piano bar, and kids to the “Fun Zone,” where organized activities await them.
My grandson, Shor, 10, a fifth-grader, served as San Diego Jewish World’s special embedded reporter at Shockwaves, spending most of his awake time there while we were on the ship (as opposed to those times when he was with us on shore excursions).
“The first time I went to Shockwaves I was nervous that I wouldn’t make friends, that the counselors would be mean,” he related. “I was thinking the exact opposite of what it really was. I made friends pretty quickly and the counselors were super nice. They had, like, a thousand types of video games, and air hockey, foozeball—any 8-to-12 year old’s dream basically….”
Although there were “ice-breaking” activities to help shy kids meet each other, Shor said they weren’t necessary for him and the group of boys who became his ship-buddies. They started talking while waiting in line for their turns to play air hockey against Aaron, the reigning champion. “Twenty-five games in a row he won; he is really good!” Shor reported admiringly of the sixth grader.
While playing against Aaron (and losing), Shor learned that the champ came from Sunnyvale, near San Jose, and that, like Shor, he was traveling in a threesome with his grandparents. After Shor reported this to us, we and Aaron’s grandparents (Marie and Russ) arranged with Jean François Ferat, the most accommodating maitre d’hotel, to be seated together in the Traviata Dining Room at the first-seating dinner. In such manner, the two boys were able to share with us their adventures, or, if the adult conversation got too boring for them, could quietly talk to each other. (We tended to go to buffets elsewhere on the ship for breakfasts and lunches.)
Among the scheduled activities at Shockwaves that won Shor’s approval were coloring T-shirts, playing Play Station 2 games, participating in a karaoke night (Shor sang “We will rock you” and “We are the champions”) and ‘Survivors Night.’”
“What’s Survivor’s Night?” I inquired.
In a boys-versus-girls game called “Landmine” participants had “to stand on the right color on a color mat—you have to step on the right pattern,” Shor explained. “If you stepped on the wrong one, the landmine would ‘explode’ and you would have to go to the end of the line and try again. The boys (working as a team) figured out their pattern to win, and then about five rounds later the girls figured out their pattern.”
Another game was “fact or fiction,” Shor reported. “They would tell you something and you had to say whether it was fact or fiction like – I will just make this up—‘Juipiter is the smallest planet. True or false?’” (False) The categories were astronomy and Disney; one imagines that “Pluto” could be an answer for either one.
There was another boys-versus-girls contest the following night, including a “crazy relay” in which participants had to use a hula hoop, and then hold a ping pong ball between their legs, and drop it into a bucket. As you can imagine, that prompted some scatological jokes from the boys, who are of the age when bathroom humor seems hilarious.
The following night, the Shockwavers went to the Razzmatazz, the disco aboard Sea Princess, with prizes won for various dance moves. “I didn’t win anything,” Shor admitted.
Another night, another activity: During “Casino night,” the kids played blackjack – “that’s real simple” and poker –“I kind of know poker,” Shor said. They also played a card game called “Spoons,” in which the first person to draw four-of-a-kind gets to remove a spoon from a group of spoons, and all the other players try to grab one. Whoever comes up empty handed is eliminated from the game, similar to the concept in “Musical Chairs.”
There were also arts and crafts, such as coloring plastic animals that can be placed by a window so that the light shines through them. Shor colored a tiger for himself (because there was no wolf, his favorite animal) and an elephant for his 4-year-old brother, Sky, who had remained at home with his parents. Elephants are Sky’s favorite animals. On another day Shor did get to fashion a wolf from a kind of clay that takes on the color of the magic marker applied to it.
Although Shor didn’t mention it, another popular youth activity is fashioning from foam pipes a roller coaster, which starts at the ceiling and loops down to tables and chairs and eventually to the floor, according to Guzman, the youth director. In this activity, children “learn about physics because they need speed and centrifugal force,” she said.
That exercise might have occurred on the day that Shor lost a tooth and remained for much of the day in the top bunk of our cabin, reading and playing electronic games on his DSI.
On one of the concluding evenings, the Shockwaves group played a game, “Mafia,” in which some youngsers pretended to be murderous gangsters, others were detectives and others were doctors, and the audience got to vote the various players out of the game. “I was the last of three doctors,” said Shor, “and when the townspeople voted me off, I said, ‘People, I’m sorry, that was the last doctor, and now there is no one to save anyone.’ ”
So, overall, what grade would Shor give the program out of 100?
“A 98,” he said. He said he took off 2 percent because it wasn’t an activity he’d do for the rest of his life, just for the 10 days of a cruise.
“Anything else I should know?” I asked.
“I want to cruise again!” Shor responded.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
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