Oasis in Central Park Day Camp

I wish I could rate 0 star. Oasis let the kids, who don’t want to take nap, watch TV. I also attended a tour in the middle of the camp, and saw some of the teachers were not physically competent to keep up the pace with those kids. Apparently they were exhausted themselves even in front of the parents, I wonder how they would act without the parents there. Huge disappointment! Will NEVER go back.

I sent my son to the Brooklyn Bridge park camp and five months later I’m still hearing about their nonsense. Completely disorganized staff who takes them to play baseball but forgets to bring the bats and balls. Has the children watch inappropriate movies like Transformers at 7 years old. My boy got to see that one two days in a row. A counselor told my son there was no Santa Clause. Makes the kids watch endless hours of their own corporate sales tapes. This place is a joke and the guy who runs it should be ashamed.

The summer camp was using Mandel school for the main venue which arrangement ended immediately few hours after the children left. But not only the central venue «left» the camp, the leaders were also immediately left. So, if you depended on oasis bus for transport (not dropping/​picking up directly yourself) & oasis forgot to return your child’s favourite belonging as planned (for the small ones), you cannot pick it up from this place or depend on the leader to liaise you out. You have to go all the way to Brooklyn instead. In addition to that, you have to go there during working hour which is an issue if you are working.
The instructor for the little ones were much friendlier than the older ones.

My daughter’s experience was the complete opposite. It was her first camp experience (she turned five the August 2010) and she absolutely adored it. The counselors were young, and some clearly had more experience than others with kids. But they were all patient and enthusiastic and energetic, and kept up with the kids, which is a real feat! My daughter still sings the songs and chants she learned almost a year ago and is counting down the days until she goes back. Admittedly, the camp isn’t going to work for every kid. It’s very intense (those park rallies are LOUD) and there’s not a lot of downtime. They just keep going, all day, and I think it’s probably better for more extroverted children (quiet kids or loners would hate it). But if you’ve got a kid who never seems to get tired, send them to Oasis. They’ll come back dirty and exhausted!

My daughter attended this camp last summer, when she was 5. She cried every day on the way to camp – and this from a child who makes friends easily, and who eagerly ran away from me at the door of her preschool just weeks before.
Walking to camp, we met several other families whose children also disliked it. To me, the problem was with some of the counselors. Of course there were some terrific counselors, but also some in my daughter’s group who were inexperienced and didn’t know how to create the safe, nurturing, predictable, fun environment she and many of the other kids needed.
The first day of camp set a bad tone – there was lots of milling around and waiting, very disorganized – and worse still, after promising there would be plenty of water for kids to drink on a hot summer’s day, my daughter came home saying there was no water, and she was hot and thirsty.
I took her out after the first two weeks and she still talks about it.