Talking about being ‘insanely judgemental’ it’s best not to be ‘insanely judgemental’ @Onatreebyariver. I ‘shipped’ my DD off to Canada to stay with her ex SM as I’ve said along with her little half brother, neither of whom she would have seen otherwise again. So no, not for the free childcare and I’m pretty surprised that’s it’s not obvious why I might have thought this was a good idea for my DD to have a continuous relationship with close family. And yes, multiple clubs, including scouts which does include very regular weekend camp outs. So no, not looking to keep my precious little babies with me 24/7 - that’s also quite ridiculous.
Going back to what I actually have said, I have done a Mark Warner holiday, 22 years ago. OP, I appreciate that you aren’t utilising the on tap childcare everyday, all the time and hands up it was judgy to assume you might be based on wanting the potential of evening clubs every day - apologies. I do appreciate as well that not all parents stick their kids into the Mark Warner clubs every day, all day with the occasional hour or two with them. But my experience from my holiday was that quite a lot did. This is something completely different from using a kids club for a couple of hours @Onatreebyariver, something I’ve clearly said I’ve nothing against! I get that in the older age groups, there are the opportunities to do sailing and the like. For the younger children however other than a few walks out, they were doing nursery style activities, colouring in etc. I did genuinely see parents hiding from their children when they were walked past on a stroll, so that their kids wouldn’t call out to them and potentially be upset. One woman was gratuitously horrible to her 6 year old on the coach to the resort and was first in line as soon as the club opened virtually every single morning and couldn’t seem to wait to get rid of her between club times.
For those of you who’s kids do genuinely like the Mark Warner almost round the clock kids clubs style holiday, great. I did see children who quite clearly didn’t. Everyone has very different ideas obviously of how they want to spend their holiday, mine’s about exposing my DC to as much of the place they are going to as possible. And no, that’s not because I’m so damn morally superior, it’s what as an ex pat brat I was brought up to do, going out to see and experience where you are. I appreciate that my initial comment was judgemental (and even said so!), I don’t think many of you have actually read what I’ve actually said though and have just read this as an attack on anyone ever using a kids club, it wasn’t and isn’t!