[thx1138]

Both of those camps are owned and operated as part of Pali adventures. Watched the video and looked around online I find it curious just how little information their website actually gives. Couple things to take note of;

-They have a very high turnover rate for their kids only keeping them there for a week. The two and four week sessions are really just keeping kids there for multiple one week sessions.

-It is coed, not neccessarily a plus or a minus but it is coed.

-Both camps you looked at are really the same camp. The way Pali works is that campers (about 280 of them) get up, from their cabins, go eat, then go to their special activity. The special activity being the secret agent camp, stunt man camp, or whatever. After that they go to lunch and from there on they do activities that are not actually divided by whatever specialty camp they are in. Good example of this is both camps videos show kids on the same ropes courses.

-There is no real mention of how the organize the kids by age. This means there is a possibility that your sons might actually be in the same classes, if you put them both in the same morning activity they will almost certainly be seeing alot of each other.

-For all I can tell they don't even break the cabins down by age though I suspect they do. You might want to confirm this because having older kids and younger kids together isn't a good idea in my oppinion.

-They are associated with the ACA. The ACA despite what it tries to put out is merely a company, they aren't any sort of governing body for all camps. Not good or bad just something.

-There wasn't a single reference on their site that I could find as to the medical staff. They just said all counselors are CPR and first aid certified which is actually required by law.

Now my actual concerns regard the camps are that the stuntman camp appears overly dangerous. Keep in mind I am extremely active, I am a high ropes and rock wall facilitator, and overall have participated in alot of activities that most people would consider pretty extreme so this isn't coming from the faint of heart. Doing one of the falls they show can easily result in whiplash or worse if a kid lands wrong. They showed kids standing on top of and jumping from moving vehicles with 0 safety equipment. Also all of the fake fighting stuff could result in somebody getting kneed in the face on accident, and could result in trouble outside of camp (I am a blackbelt and actually competed nationally in full contact tournaments I know what I'm talking about). In my book that is reckless. The spy camp on the other hand actually had very little of the camp shown, most of the video was paintball which any kid going to any of their camps can take, so I wonder about just how much substance their curriculum has. Even then though It is more than a little irresponsible to be having kids playing paintball in short sleaves.

The camp is pretty pricey for it's duration. One other thing that was a little off was the counselor hiring page, there was no listed salary. I called and it was 250 a week which is about average, and they have about a sixty percent return rate for counselors which is low. About half of their campers come back each year, and they are only ten minutes from a hospital. What really concerns me is that only half of their campers come back each year, that tells me that something is wrong. Kids should want to come back to camp. That is probably the biggest red flag to me. I would look elsewhere, because this place seems a little more like a puppy mill than a quality enviroment.