Women are shelling out thousands for ladies-only summer camps, swapping juice boxes for wine: ‘It’s absolute magic’

Forget the Hamptons or St. Barts — all the cool girls are going to camp this summer.

Shira Blumenthal, 35, can’t wait to arrive at Camp Social — a women-only adult summer camp in the Poconos costing $600 for a two-day, three-night stay — later in August.

“I’m super excited about it. Everyone in my family knows,” she told The Post with a laugh.

The self-proclaimed city girl hasn’t been to a summer camp since she was a middle schooler and is a little nervous about being outdoors but can’t wait to relive her childhood, disconnect and make new friends along the way.

But these aren’t your stereotypical sleepaways with sloppy joes and rickety cabins.

At adult summer camps, unlimited wine replaces juice boxes, French châteaus sub in for old wooden cabins in the middle of nowhere, and community swaps in for competition — although the hair-braiding and friendship bracelet-making remain.

And these excursions have waitlists longer than the pool at Dumbo House.

Camp Social has a roster of about 40,000 eager-beaver wannabe campers, and Camp Château — a women-only adult adventure in the South of France costing $2,300 for a six-day, five-night stay — has over 2,500.

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Adult sleepaway events aren’t a new concept, but demand even at Camp No Counselors — a co-ed adult gathering that started in 2013 and now has several locations — has never been higher, a representative told The Post.

It comes as both the loneliness epidemic and interest in travel continue to spike.

Both Camp Social and Camp Château welcomed their first sessions of visitors last year and were pleasantly overwhelmed by the reception.

They’re sold out for the next two years already.

Sue Jacobs, 59, of Huntington, can’t wait to return to Château next month.

“It’s magic, absolute magic, from the first second until the last, when you’re just sobbing that you have to leave,” she told The Post. “I am going back because there’s absolutely no way I can stay away.”

She attended the French outpost in Béduer, France for its first year last summer with her daughter Shelby, 30, and relished every moment, whether it be horseback riding, picking plums off the fruit trees to eat by the pool or playing games with strangers.

“It’s whatever you want it to be. It can be everything. It can be nothing. The whole point of camp is the exploration of not just things you’ve never done before, but you just have time with yourself. And how often do you get that?” she said.

“You didn’t have to be, like, the executive, and you didn’t have to be the mom, and you didn’t have to be the planner or the caretaker. You could just be a person and absorb everything.”

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Her daughter Shelby couldn’t fit camp into her summer schedule this year but encourages anyone to jump in if the opportunity arises — if you can get in.

“It was one of the best things that I’ve ever done,” she told The Post.

“There’s this sense of community that you experience the minute you step in,” she said, describing how everyone was “coming in and letting their guard down.”

The Brooklynite has explored Paris and relaxed in the Bahamas — but this was a fresh kind of getaway.

“People are just looking for something really different and new that makes them feel alive in a way,” she said.

Camp Château was created by Philippa Girling, 59, who hoped it would be a safe space for women to slow down and reconnect with themselves.

“Women and minorities spend most of their working life putting on masks and trying to behave in a way in which they can be heard and respected and they can advance,” she told The Post. “[It] is frankly exhausting.”

But inside the guarded walls of Camp Château, there is “no agenda, no competition” and no need to change or advance yourself.

“We have no goal. There is nothing you’re supposed to achieve while you’re here,” she said.

“The whole philosophy for the camp is you’re already wonderful. You don’t need to work on yourself. You need a break,” Girling said. “It’s a really fun, joyful, childlike, relaxing experience.”

Camp Social skews a bit younger and offers a bit more of a classic summer camp experience — like wooden cabins and tug-of-war games — but with the intention of creating a fun, freeing space for women to let loose.

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Founder Liv Schreiber, 27, told The Post she started Camp Social last summer to allow women “to connect to their childhood selves again” and spend a weekend enjoying themselves however they please.

“No two girls’ experience is the same. Some girls are going to have a high-intensity, high-energy, wild, do everything, play pickleball, play tennis, climb the rock wall kind of weekend, and some girls are going to choose to do yoga, meditation or acupuncture,” Schreiber said.

She explained that the weekend-long experience allows women to make deep connections quickly.

“It’s not a one-hour activity where you walk into a building and then you walk out and you have to face the stresses of life. You get to put your phone down and be around other people who have the same intentions as you for three days. So you get to really be with yourself and with them.

“The activities aren’t what makes it special. Of course, we have s’mores and all the good camp things. But what makes it special are those moments that are unplanned in between these activities. It’s those moments of connection.”

Maddie Martino, 27, can barely remember what activities she signed up for but hasn’t forgotten the friends she made. In fact, they’ve become some of her best.

Martino and the women she met at camp have traveled the country visiting each other and rented a lake house in Alabama together this summer.

“Everyone was there to make friends, so we had the same goal,” she told The Post of Camp Social.

The women bonded over what books they were reading, their favorite hobbies and “running around like absolute maniacs.”

What they did for work didn’t even come up until the bus ride home.

“Everyone was just laughing, having fun and not worrying about our actual real lives in that moment,” she said.

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