Carnival Horizon’s Camp Ocean is a mostly positive experience for kids, with plenty of fun activities and an awesome library to peruse at your leisure.

View other posts in this series:

• Trip Introduction: The New Pirates of the Caribbean
• Review: Hyatt Regency Miami
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 1 – Booking and Room
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 2 – Main Dining
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 3 – Lido Marketplace
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 4 – Quick Service Restaurants
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 5 – Specialty Restaurants
• Review: Carnival Horizon Western Caribbean Cruise – Part 6 – Ship Programming
• The Ship Features on the Carnival Horizon
• Camp Ocean on Carnival Horizon: A Good Kids Club (Mostly) (this post)
• Excellent Internet with Carnival Wi-Fi
• A Lackluster Experience with AT&T Cruise Package
• Spin to Win: The Carnival Cruises Casino
• Carnival Drink Packages Are Not Worth The Money
• Is Carnival’s Faster to the Fun Worth Your Money?
• Ocho Rios: Entryway to the Heart of Jamaica
• Cozumel: A Potentially Fun and Festive Mexican Port
• Calm and Relaxing: A Review of the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables
• First Friday Feast: Excellent Cuban Dining at Versailles

Where Camp Ocean is located

Carnival Horizon’s Camp Ocean is on Deck 11, right above the Lido Marketplace. It’s hard to miss. If you’re on the side with Dr. Seuss Waterworks, you’re on the wrong side of the ship.

The age groupings

The age groups available at Camp Ocean are the following:

• Turtles (6 months to under 2 years old)
• Penguins (ages 2-5)
• Stingrays (ages 6-8)
• Sharks (ages 9-11)

And then there are the activities for older kids, which are outside the scope of this post:

• Circle “C” (ages 12-14), which is next to The Warehouse on Deck 6
• Club O2 (ages 15-17), which is behind the Casino on Deck 4

What if you have siblings that span different groups? That’s what happened in our case with two kids ages 8 and 5. They work better together, so staff was comfortable with moving our 5 year old up into the Stingrays group. Five-year-old Char also agreed after the tour that she would prefer to be with Stingrays, so it’s great to have that flexibility. I believe flexibility was given since she is close to being a Stingray herself. I imagine if she were 2, they would hesitate to group them together.

Pre-registering saved some time

When you check in online for the cruise, if you have eligible children in your party, you’ll find a Youth Programs Enrollment screen. Here, you can pre-register your children before showing up on the cruise.

If you want to spend more time relaxing on the cruise, your best option is to pre-register during the check-in process. It won’t completely save all time, as there is just a little bit of work to do on the cruise. But that’s better than starting the process completely from scratch.

The information asked is standard stuff, including who is eligible to pick up and drop off the kids, and any relevant medical details.

Some hours cost money

Camp Ocean is by and large a free activity, designed to entertain the kids while parents spend time (and money?) elsewhere. That said, most hours on the ship are free.

That includes meal times! Both lunch (12PM-12:50PM) and dinner (6:00PM-6:50PM) are offered in the Lido Marketplace for free. While we didn’t do it, having the option available for free is awesome.

So what might incur a fee?

• Camp Ocean’s Night Owls program is one that has a nominal fee attached. For $8.85/hour (plus 18% mandatory gratuity), kids can hang out between the hours of 10PM and 1AM. Hopefully your kids are good with sleeping in this environment or it might be a rough time for them. But there are activities available for them if they can’t sleep (which might mean overly tired kids coming back to you).
• Owl Jams are special themed parties at certain nights of the cruise. To attend, there is a fee of $20.06/party (plus 18% mandatory gratuity). While the party is going on, the regular Camp Ocean is closed. So you’ll have to pay if you otherwise need the kids to be off your hands during this time.
• Toddlers participating in the Turtles program will need to pay a fee of $8.85/hour (plus 18% mandatory gratuity).

On top of this, there are times when Camp Ocean is closed during normal hours of operation. This coincides with when there is kids programming elsewhere on the ship (like a scavenger hunt). There is no capacity for Camp Ocean staff to watch your children during this time.

Check-in and check-out process at Camp Ocean

When you arrive to Camp Ocean, kids are directed to go pick up their name tags and wear them for the duration of their stay. The parents then verify their identity and confirm who is getting dropped off. It’s a straightforward process, but there can be a wait if many are checking in or out at the same time.

Some age groups are able to sign in/out themselves without a parent around.

On check-out, a similar process holds. The parent confirms who is being requested and then the kids will show up. The kids will then leave behind their name tags so they don’t get lost. At least this time we always got our own kids returned to us, unlike our experience on the Celebrity Solstice.

The Carnival HUB app will tell you when your kids are checked in (and if they have left–relevant if they can check themselves out). It also conveniently tells you when fees start applying in case you want to avoid paying.

The other thing that’s nice about the app is that you can easily see all the scheduled activities. That’s good if you’re looking for a specific activity.

A tour of Camp Ocean

On Embarkation Day, staff at Camp Ocean let us take a peek of the facilities before they went into use. That gave us an opportunity to get a view into what kids might be doing but also help our kids familiarize with what’s here.

What we saw was a wide area that had plenty of potential activities for the kids to enjoy. Plenty of games, places for arts and crafts, and some TV screens. It left an overall positive view on the kids. Best of all, if they didn’t want to participate in a group activity, they didn’t have to. It was up to each kid on what they felt comfortable doing.

We also saw where the Penguins (ages 2-5) play. It’s a nice, open area that has some playhouses and age-appropriate toys. While five-year-old Char might have been entertained here, she does better when she is with her older brother.

Dr. Seuss Bookville

One more neat thing you’ll find inside Camp Ocean is Dr. Seuss Bookville. Anyone is allowed in here–not just kids!–so it’s a nice time to spend time if you want to read. Our kids love to read, so we made good use of the facility.

There are bright and beautiful depictions of many classic Dr. Seuss characters. There’s plenty of seating and comfortable, clean carpet. There can also be some soft building blocks in this room if books don’t fully entertain.

Within the room, you’ll also find two tall bookcases full of Dr. Seuss books. There are many copies of the same books, just to make sure there are enough for all. You’ll also find books in different languages (like Spanish) to make it more approachable. Personally, I like reading a book I already know in a different language as it helps me immensely with learning that language.

The top shelf of each bookcase shows off some of the gear you can buy if you’re interested. No prices are listed, so check with staff if you want to buy anything. We didn’t ask about pricing–we knew that once we did, the kids would want a souvenir.

You can rent books!

One great feature of Dr. Seuss Bookville is the ability to check out books. Just choose the book you want and head over to a staff member. In this case, we were apparently the first guests to check out books on this cruise. They have a rather basic tracking system (paper and pen) and you don’t get a receipt confirming what you checked out.

You’ll need to return your books before Debarkation Day or you pay $15/book. Unlike other fees on the ship, this one felt the most reasonable.

The two complaints we have

There are two main issues we have with Camp Ocean:

• There is no coordination on programming with other ship activities. I’ll give an example to best illustrate this. On the last Sea Day, Jenn and I signed up to join the brewery tour. Since it’s a paid activity, we wanted to not bring the kids. Dropping the kids off at the kids club, we learned they were going to close in the middle of the brewery tour. I wish the Camp Ocean hours were coordinated with when adults-only activities occurred, but it felt like each team set its own hours.
• Camp Ocean is right by the smoker’s section on Deck 11. Wander around on the starboard side of Deck 11 and you’ll quickly notice the heavy amount of cigarette smoke. Wouldn’t you know that one of the outdoor playgrounds at Camp Ocean is right by the smoker’s section? I’m not sure why that ship design flaw exists. Hopefully kids instead exclusively use the playground on the port side, but I have my doubts.

Bottom line

Overall, I think the kids mostly enjoyed Camp Ocean on Carnival Horizon. They openly enjoyed going there and sometimes specifically asked to be dropped off. That’s a far better experience than they had on the Celebrity Solstice, where they actively avoided it. From a cost standpoint, it’s also awesome that meal time is covered for free, making it possible for the adults to go to a specialty restaurant for a fun date night.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we’ll dive into Wi-Fi on the Carnival Horizon.