Enough for kids w/o the clubs?

[MamaMermaid]

Hi friends!
We are Disney platinum cruisers making our first jump to Royal and booked the Symphony of the Seas; I'm nervous!! My son will be 6 when we sail - he doesn't do the kids clubs on Disney (only child and I think is a little hesitant to go by himself) so I anticipate he won't want to try Royal's kids clubs either... is there a lot to do on board for kids (that we can attend too) if he doesn't go to the clubs? He loves to swim so I know ultimately he could just pool all day but curious about the other activities and programming. Disney's so good about family programming. Thank you!

 

[sam_gordon]

I've never been on Symphony, but doing a quick look at deck plans...
* Flowrider
* Waterslides
* Zipline
* Pool (naturally)
* Mini golf
* Sports court (I think they have some dedicated "youth" time for the various sports)
* Rockwall

Pretty sure all of the above are free.

If you really get desperate, there's also an arcade ($$).

 

[gregorykicks]

Went on Symphony back in July and had 6 kids from 2-10 in our group. They had a blast and most of them never went to the kid's club. The splashpad is excellent, there's also a great little indoor play area in the adventure ocean area that is open to play in whenever with rocking chairs for the adults. You can't leave them there, but we enjoyed letting them get some energy out. We also rode the carousel every night after dinner multiple times and there's a little climbing area just past the carousel and Johnny Rocket's that they loved. We did mini-golf a couple times and the bigger kids (6+) did the ultimate abyss slide too. On the last sea day they had a carnival in the boardwalk area with little games for the kids and face painting and balloon animals. They charged for cotton candy and popcorn I believe, but the rest was free. They had a giant cake and were walking around with little cups of sorbet too.

 

[danceintherain]

I found that most of the "family friendly" programming was actually during the kids club times.
It was actually kind of frustrating, because my kids would go to the kids clubs, but trying to coordinate that with the other things we wanted to do with them was difficult.
For example, they did kind of an escape room type mystery solving thing, but the kids club wasn't open, so I ended up bringing them with me and trying to entertain them while trying to solve the puzzle. Then the bumper cars were during kids club, so they skipped it, while we did that.

My 2 yo was the most complicated though, because we had to "schedule" his nursery time, and work around his naps. I'll probably wait to go on another cruise until he's around 6, because then he'll be more independent.