S-Trip nightmare, anyone there? | Debbie's Caribbean Resort Reviews Forums

Why is this company allowed to throw these children into such circumstances?

Because some parents think their little angels will not be going on a wild drinking binge at an all-inclusive. Especially when there are chaperones.

It’s really "Out of sight, out of mind", and I think the parents of these kids are glad to be rid of them for a week. It gives the parents a break from their holy terrors.

Because some parents think their little angels will not be going on a wild drinking binge at an all-inclusive. Especially when there are chaperones.

It’s really "Out of sight, out of mind", and I think the parents of these kids are glad to be rid of them for a week. It gives the parents a break from their holy terrors.

So true!There seem to be a lot of parents with more money than brains these days.

Lord knows I encountered my fair share of parents like this when my kids were teens.

	dejenning As I have said in an early response to this.The Strip is organized by the kids and is NOT supported by the schools or the school boards I know because my daughter is returning today from a S trip to Montreal. And we have raised her to show respect .Please don,t bunch all kids together .Some kids are actually good.

Just to be clear… I started this thread not to bash the kids..but out of concern..some of these parents may have believed they were sending their children on a responsible trip. Just want parents to be aware of what S-trip represented this trip. We hear to many horror stories about kids going missing, falling off balcony’s etc..I think it was irresponsible of the parents to put their kids into this situation…good kids or bad.. I want the parents of this particular trip to get the info about how they kids were behaving as well as the chaperons. I believe they return today actually.

Ok, well this explains a lot. We just returned from Varadero last week – Sirenis La Salina – and the same thing happened. The last 2 or 3 days of our stay we encountered numerous teenagers (maybe as many as 50) in various states of inebration (and with SERIOUS sunburns), seemingly unsupervised. I couldn’t figured out where the parents were!

And these kids were hammered, I mean really!

Oh and as I understand it, the drinking age in Cuba is 18 not 16. But I gather the resort staff generally aren’t interested in carding people. Actually come to think of it, we did see a family in the lobby area of the SLS with a couple of young kids (maybe 12ish) and the parents sent one of the kids up to the bar to place the drink order! And it wasn’t just virgin colodas either, because I saw this girl carry a couple of cervezas over to her parents.

Hope the parents of these teens wise up. Never heard of S-Trip, don’t recall there being anything like that when I was in high school. And even if there was, I would never have gotten away with it!

hnd, re: "dejenningAs I have said in an early response to this.The Strip is organized by the kids and is NOT supported by the schools or the school boards I know because my daughter is returning today from a S trip to Montreal. And we have raised her to show respect .Please don,t bunch all kids together .Some kids are actually good"Hnd, this may or may not be a school/school board trip. S-trip does BOTH types. It doesn’t really matter either way. S-trip organizes school trips and IF their chaperones don’t do their job, or actually encourage the behavior then there is a problem that goes beyond the kids who misbehaved!I have no doubt there are well behaved kids on the trip. THAT is the problem. The few tarnish the image of S-trip (the company), the school (how do you suppose the poster knew it was Notre Dame, whether sponsored or not), the board and everyone affiliated with it. There should be repercussions from the behaviour, whether we all did it at one time or not.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying as I never said all the kids are bad. We are sending our kid on a school sponsored trip with Impact. We took the time to attend their info session (S-trip may have had one if it is school sponsored or not to inform parents), and the issue of chaperones, safety etc all come up.

There seems to be a real disconnect from responsibility. Both the parents, tour operator and the kids. It is too bad that the resort did not have the authorities make them clean up their mess. I do not want to think what the poor chambermaids, grounds keepers and wait staff have to do for these "delinquents". Just a sad state all around. I am sure there might be some responsible kids in the lot that get lost in the stupidity of a few – but these are kids what in the world were their parent’s thinking? "good someone else can take care of them????"

Some of us who were not able to have children wonder why the ones that don’t seem to care have them. ……

hnd, my nephew wanted to go on the S-Trip to Montreal 2 years ago and his mom checked into it and saw that the chaperones were young 20 somethings and decided against it. Several good friends of his did go, including his girlfriend (they broke up after the trip because of an incident with the girl and another boy at the hotel)and his best friend who stays at my sister`s for the school year.He had alot of stories to tell:0 This trip is geared for education and fun but I can assure you that alot of partying went on there as well.My first clue was when my nephew wanted to go and said he`d be sharing a room with his girlfriend and another couple. These kids are to young to be shacking up together! Yes, I know that many of them are sleeping together but we don`t need to make it easy for them.From what I was told it was pretty much a free for all as far as that type of thing …I know that not all the kids act like this, I certainly hope that mine would be one that would not if he was ever put in the situation…however they are certainly put in a situation where they can pretty much do as they want. The boy I know that went before, also went again this year…I think he gets back today or maybe it was yesterday.I`m sure he`ll have some pretty wild stories to tell again…

I’ve traveled to Cuba with hundreds of students, and only had a problem on one occasion with a few students over-indulging. With all due respect to the ‘good kids’ and parents, a trip to an AI resort for 15, 16 & 17 year olds, with 20-year-old chaperones is absolutely inappropriate (imo). I have been called to ‘come to the rescue’ on more than one occasion when a student-trip has gotten out of hand. I’m referring to 15, 16 & 17 year olds who lack judgment … these are good kids but without the experience required to make sound responsible decisions – especially when set free at an AI and they are in party mode. Heck, when I was their age my judgment wasn’t always the best either! While many of these trips may be outside the school’s responsibility, many of the travel companies do advertise in schools. However, it is the parent’s responsibility to grant permission for their son / daughter to go. It may be a very difficult position for a parent to be in to not allow their child to go to Cuba with their friends … but (again, imho) someone has to be the adult in the family.

	Just a question on the insurance these kids have through this travel agency. If the accident or injury was caused by too much alcohol does that not make the insurance void?

	Not sure how their insurance works, but that is how a lot of them do. A young man fell from a balcony a couple of years ago and his insurance flat out refused to pay because he was drinking. His family had to come up with the money to get him home. All the hospital did was basically keep him comfortable. No surgery, nada.

I was also at Hotel Puntarena when the S-trip students from Notre Dame High School arrived. The most disturbing thing to me was that there were only 2 very young chaperones in charge of 55 kids. It would be impossible to keep track of all the students. These kids were left to fend for themselves in a foriegn country. They were allowed to run wild without any supervision!! Its not the Cubans I would be worried about its all the other drunk Candians that were there that were of age to drink. My roommate & I(2 females) could hear a brutal beating in our hallway at 3:00 a.m., we were absolutely terrified. When we spoke to management about the incident we were told that 3 Canadians beat up on another Canadian. Ended up he suffered broken ribs and had to have stitches in his head. Police were called in and they were given a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately this is what goes on in an all inclusive resort when the alchol in limitless. Anything can happen to these inexperienced kids in another country, as we have seen happen over and over again. Where were these parents heads when they ok’d there kids to go on a trip like this???

Please don,t bunch all kids together .Some kids are actually good.

Yes, most teens are good, but peer pressure or group mentality often cause teens to make bad decisions. My kids are in their early 30s now and will admit openly to some questionable decisions they made in their teens. Yes, we were all young once upon a time , and some of us are still very much young at heart

During their senior high school years, my kids also had the opportunity to travel during spring break through school sponsored educational ventures. Their high school supported an orphanage in Guatemala where the kids went to help build homes for the poor and they fund raised to bring a couple of the orphans to Canada to complete their education. To my way of thinking, this was a true educational experience which I was thankful they got to participate in through their school. Personally, I don’t see these all-inclusive trips through STrip as having much educational merit

At a minimum, at least we know from the link to the STrip website which resorts are included in the roster so we can avoid them in the future. I sure hope none of the many teens who participated are injured and that we won’t hear of any teen pregnancies.

Ive been reading this thread for a couple of days now and have decided to add my 2 cents… I am still fairly young(24) and while I was in high school we were offered these trips.. The one in particular I wanted to go on was the march break Montreal "cultural" trip… However after much begging my mother refused to let me go… I did have some friends go (whose parents considered them mature and responsible and who all received excellent marks in school)… Words can not even express how glad I am that I didn’t go on that trip… Every single one of them got into trouble had an accident ect… I don’t care how responsible you think your kid is… When they are 18 and going on a trip without parents they are going to party till they drop (as admittedly I would have done too)..Thats what these trips are all about.. I don’t care what your kids tell you…95% of them are NOT going on these trips where they are getting a "cultural" experience…The fact that they only go where the drinking age is 18 or under should be your first sign of something is wrong…..So all in all I don’t mean to offend anyone but this is exactly what happens…

After all Teenagers will always test their limits!!! I sure did ;D

	I do agree that an all inclusive sunshine resort would be to much temptation for any teenager. I can manage my alcohol usually very good but I always drink more in Cuba than normal.

	Thank you Torah for your honest response…this would be my point exactly… why put the kids in that situation to start from? ps. while talking to chaperons we did discover they didn’t even have assigned rooms. They bunked where ever they wanted to. S-Trip needs to be more accountable and i hope they do respond to this thread soon.

	I went on one years ago to Montreal for new years, we went with a smaller group tagging along with a large group. Thinking back (now that I’m older and wiser). All the tour operator did was arrange for us to find a bar hopping schedule or places that had all you could drink. It was a free for all for everyone to do whatever they wanted.

i personally have sent two kids to 3 trips with s-trips. 2 grad trips to cuba and 1 bus trip to quebec city. i trusted my kids won’t make any stupid choices on these trips and both have not failed my trust. what is the legal drinking age in canada? 19. is it hard for our kids today to go out and party on a fridaynight? nope, they do it anyways. the only thing we can do it guide them on their path to independence and make sure they are safe. after lots of consideration i let my kids go on a 1 week grad trip with s-trip because once they grad they would have been legally able to do whatever they wanted anyways, i think its a lot safer that they are heading down WITH chaperones and not just a few friends together. s trip required that these kids signed in 3 times a day and had strict 1 am in room polices

i have never had any trouble with any of my kids on s-trip and they LOVED IT. 3 years later they are still talking about their trips with there friends. i think its a memorable high school experience and s-trip is a very well run company.

I cannot wrap my head around these S-trips. I think the above poster had a rare s-trip company involved. 16-17 and even 18 year olds that are given this "freedom" lose all sense of sensibility when put in this situation. On the flip side a few years back at Cameleon, Jibacoa there were several teens but with their mothers. Well, they were out of hand – loud, obnoxious and drunk continually! One was on the verge of alcohol poisoning and when an entertainer stopped to help him out, the mother told him to back off and mind his own business. Oh the mothers were just oblivious to their darlings behaviour. Anyways, they did alot of damage and at the end of the week, the resort made them pay for damages !!! Every guest was unhappy with their behavious and the mothers just ignored it all. You can’t fix stupid.

S trips are known for what they are. Sorry, thats the way it is. When thousands of Canadians know NOT to go south during these trips, there is a good reason why.I am glad to hear that there were some who were well behaved and did nothing wrong or embarassing(or at least not that their parent posting here found out about..lol)

But I am sorry..it is what it is. When I was 16 or 17 I would have done the same thing. SO while I don’t blame the kids. I think we are pretty ignorant if we think sending kids to an all inclusive is not going to lead to those temptations and activites.

	I’m confused why a 4-year old thread about S-Trips is re-opened. Condolences to the parents & friends of the student from NS that fell off a balcony on an S-Trip last spring. Reports were that she was a really wonderful daughter and student.

Please do not bump up 4 years old threads. If you wish to start your own than please feel free.

	Not picking on anyone! But as a new member, she probably looked at old threads to see if she could contribute. I know the post is extremely old but maybe she is just trying to find her way around things and her kids did have good trips. And maybe she doesn’t know how to start a thread?

I think sometimes someone is reading through threads, maybe used the search function, and isn’t even aware of how old they are. Happens all the time on that "other" forum. And once someone brings the thread forward, others post as if it is a new thread. On one of the other forums I notice someone has posted an answer to a question someone asked a couple of years ago, and will likely be disappointed when they get no response.

Is there a way to include a note that the thread is old, but leave it available for people who want the information? I notice Trip Advisor sometimes closes threads without removing them (an inconsistent policy), and something like that might be useful, i.e. lock the thread to new posts, but don’t remove it.

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