Name three things that did NOT live up the hype?

[Colorado DISers]

1. The food in the dining rooms (not bad, just didn't live up to the hype)

2. Cookies Bar-b-que

3. Cheese platter from room service

But then again, I didn't sail just for the food. It was a great cruise!

 

[tvguy]

See, now i disagree with the lack of system for disembarkation! I have traveled a couple other cruise lines and no one compares to Disney. It was so easy on Disney. We went to breakfast and walked off the ship. Every other cruise I've been on, I've had to sit around in a lounge watching the news for an hour or two until they call my colored tag (and I'm always one of the last!) I think Disney gets two thumbs up for their easy process!

Well......if we could have walked right off the ship I certainly would feel differently. We had to stand in line for 45 minutes, the line ran all the way back into Parrot Cay and circled around inside the restaurant around the poor folks trying to eat. Disembarkation started at 7:45, we had late seating so we had the 8 am breakfast. The line was that long when we came downstairs at 7:45, and was still that long when we got in line at 8:45 after breakfast. I would have much preferred to be SITTING down in a public room waiting to standing in line.

Now, the system in the cruise terminal with the luggage and immigration and customs, the airlines, the Disney buses was great. That entire process took 10 minutes from the time we stepped off the ship, until we were in the Disney bus on the way to the airport.

 

[Trixiezzz]

I have to agree with all the other people who have said that overall, our Disney cruise was great, we had a blast and can't wait till we can afford to book another one!

As for what didn't quite measure up to what we were expecting based on reading this board, here's our list:

1) Dining room waiters~ Ours were nice regular waiters like in any other restaurant, but certainly not "magical" or different in any other way. They greeted us by name and brought what we ordered and that was it. But we never received any kind of friendly interaction toward us or our children (we saw other kids with some kind of napkin hats, so I guess other waiters do stuff for kids). No one in my party was disappointed (except me) because they weren't expecting anything but someone to bring them their dinner, and the wait staff did that.

However, I can't imagine anyone in my group wanting to come greet our waiters on later cruises because there just wasn't any kind of personal interaction from them. They were polite waiters, nothing more.

2) Pirate party ~ For small kids it was just too loud, too crowded and too late at night. My family was relieved when we left and went back to the cabin.

3) Topsider desserts ~ They all *looked* so wonderful....but when you actually got down to eating them they were a whole lot of whipped cream and not much flavor. Even my kids never seemed to finish theirs. My kids said all the desserts "were full of foam" and when we saw that round ball-thing on the top of the ship, the littlest one said "that must be where they keep all that foam they put in the desserts"...

---
Things that were as good or better than I was expecting:

1) The cleanup service by the CMs in Topsiders. They kept all the tables cleaned up and cleared dishes from our table as soon as we finished with them.

2) The aft elevator We avoided so many crowds by using this elevator instead of the midship one.

3) Oceaneers Lab Both my kids loved it and made friends with the counselors.

 

[Laurabearz]

ITA ... I thought DCL had one of the worst disembarkation systems as well. I am more used to the disembarkation you describe where you get numbers that match your luggage tags and leave the ship any time after your number is called.

We walked right off the DCL ship. No lines no nothing and I thought that was so much better than sitting with a bunch of people waiting for our group to be called...

It's amazing how different people experience different things.

Ok my three things that did not live up to the hype....

1) the pools. Too small too crowded. (although I new they were small and crowded I opted not to beleive it lol)

2) size of the rooms... yeah yeah I know they are 25% larger than industry standards, but that is still really really SMALL!

3) The 'show' at AP. It isnt a SHOW. No SHOW... it's lights slowly turning on.

 

[Mickey_loves_Minnie]

These were the menus for the Pride Of America, for the regular restaurants. If you google "Pride Of America Menus' you'll get a number of sites including Cruise Critic that specificly mention this as a common complaint. Here's a link to the

menus.
http://www.orcatekweb.com/POA/menus.htm

Take a look, the First and Second courses NEVER changed the entire week.
HOWEVER, it may be unique to the this ship. We cruised twice with NCL before, both times on the Norway, and loved their service.

Well, I'd have to check the menus on cruiseclues.com to make sure, but I think that's only NCL America ships that do that, not the regular NCL ships.

 

[beachblanket]

These were the menus for the Pride Of America.

Apparently another NCL America quirk. That's why I avoid them!!!

 

[PatricenPete]

I have been on two previous Disney cruises and aside from wishing that I could take DS in the pools, I have always had the BEST time.

I can't believe all the people that said that they don't like AP - I LOVED AP both times that I went. I thought that it was awesome! Maybe things are different on the Wonder and the Magic. I have only been on the Wonder.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

We walked right off the DCL ship. No lines no nothing and I thought that was so much better than sitting with a bunch of people waiting for our group to be called...

ITA! this was our experience too. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

2) size of the rooms... yeah yeah I know they are 25% larger than industry standards, but that is still really really SMALL!

And they're not even 25% larger anymore. The newer Carnival ships are 6 sq.ft. larger than DCL's. This is comparing same cats: oceanview with oceanview. I hope they keep this in mind when building the new ships!

 

[eva]

Well, I can't comment on some areas of the ship, like the kids clubs, because we have always been with adults only. I know that a lot of people will ask us why we keep sailing on DCL and I think we just have Disneyitis. But there are a few areas that I feel are a bit hyped.

1. I definitely agree with the show at AP. We have sailed on both the Wonder and the Magic and have found the "show" not to live up to all the hype. I actually do not think that this board is the one hyping the show. It is more the DCL literature and DVD. We did enjoy watching the colors change, seeing the characters, and hearing the music. But I thought it would be more impressive.

2. The shows themselves. Their not bad, but I enjoy some of the shows at WDW much more. After sailing a couple times there are only a couple of shows that we will go see again. I've seen enough of the Golden Mickeys. I think they should be doing shows based on Disney movies, like they do for Broadway. Let's see Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, etc.

3. The wait staff is definitely hit and miss. All over the ship we have met wonderful CMs. But at dinner time it seems you will either get below average or fabulous. We haven't seen anything in between. On our first cruise the wait staff was terrible. You could tell that our waiter was not happy to be there. On our last cruise we had the best wait staff I have ever seen. They told jokes, did magic at the table, and brought us a free wine flight to test wines when we couldn't decide what to order. They made every dinner a special treat. We were even sad on the night we went to Palo that they would not be our servers.

Well, that is all I can think of. Must mean that DCL isn't so bad after all.

 

[ariesmom]

1. Animator Show was disappointing. I'm not sure what I expected but kept telling the kids (when we'd hear a swell of music or see a few lines of color appear on a pic), "something's happening". It seems like they could've done significantly better when considering it's "Disney". Too much hype on this one FOR SURE!

2. The pools for the kids were very small and crowded. I was afraid a child might go under and get trampled in the Mickey pool.

3. The "beach break" at Cozumel was a reserved zone for DCL of chair after chair (and umbrellas) crammed together in rows. The water in front of the chairs wasn't for swimming (boat docking area) so our kids had to go down the beach a bit to the swimming area. The food was fine, drinks were free and tasted good but it wasn't a great beach experience in my family's opinion.

4. Character breakfast was run by several handlers who were snapping fingers and actually saying, "chop, chop" to speed things up! They approached the table ahead of the characters in an urgent way to tell us to "get ready".

Ok, so four out of ??? endless wonderful things are hyped in my opinion. That's not too bad!

 

[tvguy]

Well, I'd have to check the menus on cruiseclues.com to make sure, but I think that's only NCL America ships that do that, not the regular NCL ships.

That may be. I'm not complaining, there are enough on the menu to have 2 a night and not repeat a soup or appetizers. Just click on the link I provided in the other post, there are photos of the menus for each night.

 

[teach22180]

I'm answering you without reading all 7 pages, just so my answer is honest!
1. Serenity Bay was no fun. It was about 8 inches deep for a LONG way out, but I think it has to do with being low tide or something. We wanted to swim, and it was disappointing until we went back to the family beach which was wonderful!
2. I don't know what I was expecting in the "show" at Animator's Palatte, but it wasn't what happened! Definitely a bit of a disappointment...
3. We never once in 4 days just RAN into a character in the hallways, and if you read some of the reports, it sounds like they are just wandering around all the time. I'm sure it's just being in the right place at the right time, but we definitely weren't! My 19 year old was character crazy, so that would have been so special. Oh well, next time we'll probably see them more than we ever wanted. And, when they were on the PALS line to be somewhere, we always had somewhere else we were supposed to be. We finally did see Mickey and Stitch on the last day, so all was okay.

That being said, we had great fun and hope to go again to celebrate her graduation!

Edited to Add: On the last night, I highly recommend swimming in the adult pool! It was peaceful, relaxing and very calm. Okay, it was the first chance I had to get into the pool, but I still enjoyed swimming in the dark. I never noticed everything else was closed.

 

[NHdisneylover]

Overall we LOVE DCL and have found them to be consistently better than otehr lines (though Princess is also very good). However things that don't live up to hype:

1. Show at AP. I totally agree with others on this. Back in 1998 it was better. The dessert for the kids came on an artisit's pallete and was vanilla ice cream and sugar cookies with "paint" (colored gels with flavour) for the kdis to paint their own--and some other themeing which escapes me now but added to the experience. Now it is really a very minor thing to us. Even the kids don't much care and it is my first choice of a night to miss for Palo, etc.

2. Cookies BBQ. I heard so many great things about this and think it is just average.

3. The Golden Mickeys. I don't know why, but this show did not grab any of us. Even the kids (who adore shows) did not want to see it again on the next trip. On the other hand, we all adore Twice Charmed.

 

[steelercrazy]

1. Time went to fast

2. Would love to stay on Castaway for longer time!

3. I was so tired I fell asleep by 11 every night!!!

 

[disneyfan551]

3. The "beach break" at Cozumel was a reserved zone for DCL of chair after chair (and umbrellas) crammed together in rows. The water in front of the chairs wasn't for swimming (boat docking area) so our kids had to go down the beach a bit to the swimming area. The food was fine, drinks were free and tasted good but it wasn't a great beach experience in my family's opinion.

Was this booked through DCL? I'm still trying to decide which excursions to do, and this is very informative! Thanks!

 

[Stogrove]

Totally agree with this one.....please DCL, enough with the line dancing!!!! Time for a change.

DITTO on the dancing. We just went up to the front of deck 10, listened to the music and watched a couple of stray dolphins jump around the harbor as we were pulling out. The sun was beginning to set, so for us, that was a nice touch.

 

[Lindy Loo]

Shutters was a MAJOR disappointment... WHY no PHOTOPASS????

 

[Talking Hands]

Desserts. There weren't any for me because of my diabetes and allergy to nutrasweet.
Drinks. Only could have iced tea, hot tea or coffee. Same reason as above.
Castaway Cay. Wasn't very accessible for someone using a wheelchair

 

[FutureSailor]

On our last cruise we had the best wait staff I have ever seen. They told jokes, did magic at the table, and brought us a free wine flight to test wines when we couldn't decide what to order. They made every dinner a special treat. We were even sad on the night we went to Palo that they would not be our servers.

Eva: Do you remember the names of your servers? We have never had magical servers, so our next cruise I'd like to know someone to request. Thanks!

 

[Ocean Breeze]

You should read it and understand it won't be perfect. That's the point. It is a ship and it is run by people. People are not perfect. The ship is not perfect. The weather is not always perfect. Instead, go with the attitude that you are going to have fun. DO NOT go with the attitude that this is going to be the incredible vacation you always dreamed of and nothing will ever compare too - if you do, you leave a lot of room for disappointment.

I couldn't agree more.

What are the things that make a good vacation? Think back on the "great" vacations you've had... Were they great because you ate the best food ever? Were they great because you slept in the most comfortable bed you've ever experienced? Were they great because the dining rooms were quiet, dimly lit, with food beyond compare? I doubt it.

I'll bet they were because you laughed until your side ached at something funny said or done by your husband/wife/son/daughter, etc. Or because you spent that special time, doing xyz with your special someone(s).

Disney Cruise Line is no different. They put on a good cruise--Disney quality. But they can't make you have a great cruise experience--that is up to you and you alone.

That being said, there were some things I found disappointing. Why? Probably because I expected (or hoped for) too much.

• Dining room noise
• Limited merchandise
• Pirate party - the fireworks were nice, but the party was a lot of standing around and watching ...
• Other cruisers taking pictures during the shows. My husband actually got up and left after we repeatedly asked a fellow cruiser ahead of us to use his viewfinder and not his LED screen on his digital camera. He was taking a picture a minute and each time he did, it lit up the screen which shone right in our face, nearly blinding us (in the dark of the theatre around us), making it very difficult to watch the show.

Would any of these things ever keep me from doing another Disney cruise? No way! (Though it will be hard to get my husband to another show in the Disney theatre!!)