This review is mainly targeted for parents who are considering sending their child to the camp…read morehere.
I am 13 years old (and before you stop reading this because I told you I'm not an adult, I just want you to know that everything in this review is true and is a serious warning for you and your child) and I just finished spending a summer in the camp at the New Rochelle YMCA.
I would like to start by saying that the camp is terrible. It is completely dysfunctional and quite unsafe for the children. Firstly, for whatever reason they combine the 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 year olds. Parents out there, would you want your 9 year old kid to be in a small room with a bunch of tall, aggressive 13-15 year old boys? I wouldn't. Additionally, the vulgar things that the teens do and say is definitely not appropriate for small children. (I know that the language of the teenagers is not something that the camp can control, but they can at least separate them from the smaller kids.)
The breakfast at the camp is otherworldly. The only thing that is even remotely good is the bagels. Sometimes, they provided cold bagels with a small pint of whipped butter and a knife to spread it yourself. Other breakfasts were someone's failed attempt at trying to be nutritious. Everything was cold, they acted as if they didn't have a microwave. And don't even get me started on the lunch, we received a weekly rotation of whole grain buttered noodles, a bready meatball sandwich, a cold tortilla with cheese that had actual mold on it and two cold pieces of bread with pieces of shredded meat on it.
Swimming was actually quite enjoyable. Being IN the pool was fun but everything before and after wasn't. The changing process to get into our bathing suits was actually frightening. We changed in tents and had minimal time to change, all while we were holding our tents up because the little kids were trying to turn them over while we were in it. And no one stopped them. The changing process afterwards was also not easy. We walked through the halls in our swimsuits, soaking wet and cold, no privacy. We had to get changed in stalls or in a locker room in minimal time. For those who chose not to swim, we would have to stand against the wall and essentially stare ahead of us (because we weren't allowed to do anything else) until the kids who swam were done changing.
The kids fight a lot, physically and verbally. When I tell you, the counselors do absolutely nothing to try and stop these fights except an occasional "guys relax" or "let's be kind to one another". Which never works.
And for the longest time we are doing nothing. I'm going to write out a day in the life of me at camp to help you understand the full experience.
I get to camp and we all sit at a table outside under a tent. We are briefly yelled at to put our phones away. So what do we do if we can't use our phones? NOTHING. Nothing at all, because they have nothing for us to do. Watching paint dry would be more productive than spending a day at that camp. Then we head inside and go to our designated room. They hand out breakfast but OH, what do you know? They've only brought 4 pop tarts and there's 11 kids who need breakfast. So the counselor leaves the room to get more and returns a whopping 10 minutes later with 5 more breakfasts. Just as I raise my hand so I can get one (since we are not allowed to get up and ask for it) five 9 year old kids -2 of which have already finished their breakfast- go and take it from the counselor's hand. 8 minutes later, the counselor returns with more breakfast for the rest of us, and we eat it, well, as much as we can of it for the 1 minute that we have left to eat since it took so long to get in the first place. Then after breakfast time, we go to the park. Ah yes, the park for children ages 10 and under, what a perfect place for teenagers to be. After being there for about an hour and a half, we go back to our designated room. We sit there, wondering what we're going to do. We ask the counselors. "Nothing" they would say without looking up from their phones. Bored, I would briefly take my phone out of my bag. Immediately, the counselor shows up out of no where, holding a bucket, demanding my phone. I reluctantly place it in the bucket and sit there doing nothing. After about an hour, we are given small notebooks and told to use them as journals. After 15 minutes of that, its time to get changed for swimming. I already described the changing process of swimming earlier in this review so I'm going to skip it now.
That's basically everything about this YMCA camp that is not good. Everything here is factual and from my experience. I didn't use any type of artificial intelligence and this is all true, from my experience, nothing exaggerate. I hope this gives you a good understanding of what your child will actually experience while being there.
