Camp Shi’ini

Absolutely fantastic. My boys, 4 and 6, had a great time and looked forward to camp everyday. Initially I was concerned that they were too young but definitely not an issue. Extremely well organized summer camp and wonderful experience. We will be back!

Camp Shi’ ini is truly an amazing summer place for all kids. My daughter had the most incredible experience going there this summer. All the stuff and counsellors were energetic and nice to the kids. The camp activities included archery, bear hunting, swimming, horse riding and making an impressive almost 4-​foot tall totem pole for each camper. Everything was well organized, fun, and exciting. My daughter is already talking about going back next year, and we most certainly will.

Shi’ini is a wonderful camp and I am so glad we found it 3 years ago. We’ve attended ever since and their supervision and activities offered are so robust. There aren’t any other camps in the Pasadena area that have actual canoes and canoeing pond, or that offer the remarkable one of a kind interactive treasure hunt that Camp Shi’ini has. My son talks about his counselor John all the time and my daughter is in love with Rah-​Boom-​Shish, which is one of the treasure hunt heroes that swoops in and saves the campers from peril whenever the villains come around. Our family has been patrons for a long time and we’ll be back for as long as my youngest can attend. Strong recommendation for Shi’ini.

I just dropped off by deposit for my twins to attend camp this year. We’ve attended Camp Shi’ini since 2012 and my twins absolutely love it. The supervision at this camp is top tier. They have a great counselor to camper ratio and they have always taken great care of my twins. The activities are amazing as well. My kids love their archery program and painting gigantic totem poles that they get to bring home each summer. The two owners, Noah and Peter, do a remarkable job! We’ll be customers of Camp Shi’ini format years to come!

My 9 year old son loves Camp Shi’ini and the story that goes with it! This year was his second year of fun. Each day he comes home he has numerous tales to tell that I couldn’t drag out of him after being in school. The camp is organized and the counselors enjoy being with the kids. One of the best parts is being in the van with the «mixed cd» that the counselors make that the kids learn and sing along to. I highly recommend this camp and am not surprised that it sells out so quickly every year.

For everyone out there with kids, I highly recommend Camp Shi’ini. Our girls went there for years and loved each year. They are now in high school and still talk about how much fun they had and all the other kids and counselors they met. The owners, Noah & Peter are there each day joining in all the activities and fun. Camp Shi’ini is unlike all the other camps. Your child will take away a lifetime of awesome memories. I just can’t say enough good things, we were blessed to have experienced the time with Camp Shi’ini. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions about our experience at Camp Shi’ini.
Sincerely,
Julie Ramirez

Camp Shi’ini is the BEST that Pasadena has to offer!!! Our three children started going to Camp Shi-​ini as soon as they were old enough to go at age 4 and went every summer! When they became too old to be campers, they became junior counselors. We’ve been a Shi’ini family for over 20 years! The campers have the best time and are so well taken care of by the staff. The counselors love the campers and have so much fun with them. The activities are amazing every year, and the camp owners put so much energy into keeping the story new and exciting. Everyone has fun everyday at Camp Shi’ini, and the kids are very well supervised. They have a wonderful adventure every day and will have wonderful memories of their summers at Camp Shi’ini!

In a day and age where most businesses only care about how much money they can bring in vs the quality of service they provide, it’s refreshing to know that Camp Shi’ini is one of the few establishments still around that puts passion into their work. They truly care about the campers and it shows. After having tried two other nearby day camps, and seeing how they were more of a basic day care than anything else, I decided to give Camp Shi’ini a try. These guys really do stand apart from the others, not only in the quality of service, but the fact that they really seem to care. Truly a unique experience.
Highly recommended!

My daughter is 5 years old. She’s been to gymnastics camp, art camp, and pre-​school camp, all of which she enjoyed. She’d never been to an outdoor camp and was a bit nervous about it. On day one of the camp, the campers assembled in one area and it was a hectic scene. The counselor for my Daughter’s group was late and this, the youngest group of kids, were herded into their area with no leader to welcome them or make them feel comfortable. My Daughter kept looking at me, lost and wondering how to feel. Then a kid sat on her and she started to cry. I knew that if I let her come to me that would be that, good luck ever trying to get her to separate. I got another counselor’s attention and asked her to help, which she did, but she had to attend to her own group and could not stay with the youngest ones. I had to go to work, I couldn’t hang around any longer. My Daughter seemed reassured and I had to go, so I left thinking, or at least hoping, I was leaving her in good hands. I was wrong.
The camp includes a running «adventure» or skit, in which an evil character harasses the campers on a daily basis. What the leaders of this camp don’t seem to understand is that, developmentally, young children have difficulty separating make believe from reality and can be easily frightened by things like this. To quote a professional source: «The preschool child cannot reason through each new experience and decide what’s okay and what’s threatening.» My Daughter became increasingly distressed by this running story line and the antics of this «bad guy» as she described him. I don’t know what level of involvement the heads of the camp have with these presentations or the young counselors that are acting them out, but they were entirely inappropriate for my child’s age group. My daughter became increasingly distressed by these skits, one in particular that depicted a group of counselors being burned by fire. She started getting more and more upset when dropped off and was waking up with nightmares.
Again, to quote a child psychologist: «The ability to imagine monsters without the ability to reason them away as imaginary creatures results in a developmental stage where little persons are likely to have big fears. Fears vary from child to child. One child’s fear is another’s fascination.» So while some of the older kids may have enjoyed this, and maybe some of the younger kids too, it was decidedly not age appropriate for the youngest groups. On one day, at pick up time, I personally saw the tail end of one of these skits in which the «bad guys» appeared and all of the counselors started screaming «run, run!» sending the children scattering and running across the park. While the older kids enjoyed it, because they could separate this from reality, many of the younger children were clearly distressed and some were in tears. When my Wife called the head of the camp to express her concerns, he was dismissive and rude and made it clear that this aspect of the camp would not change and that no special accommodation would be made for our child. I don’t know why we left her in the camp after that… It just hadn’t gotten that scary for her but as the days went on and she kept talking about the «bad guys’ and waking with bad dreams, we’d had enough.
I wrote a very fair and respectful letter to the camp leader, careful not to judge the camp in any way, stating simply that it was clearly not a «fit» for my child and respectfully requesting a pro-​rated refund for the days we would miss (this is about $ 90 a day). I explained that my family was on a tight budget and that we would now need to make other arrangements for our child. The camp leader called me and stated that they never do refunds for any reason, but that he would talk it over with his partner and call me back. He never did. I do not recommend Camp Shi’ini to anyone who has a child sensitive to dramatic content and, frankly, I don’t recommend it for anyone with young kids period. The camp wants to reap the financial benefit of having pre-​school and kindergarten aged kids there, but they don’t want to cater to their age specific needs. They treat the camp as a whole, kids from 10 or 12 down, no separation, no inconsideration for the feelings of the younger kids. Our Daughter did not enjoy the camp and, based on the rudeness and inconsideration we experienced in dealing with them, I don’t much care for it either. We sent her to art camp for a week and she had a blast. Next year we’ll do a different outdoor camp, one without the needless «adventure», just outdoor fun.