Some problems on the Magic...

[Canadiancruiser2]

I enjoyed our recent Eastern cruise, but I noticed that there were a few problems onboard. Maybe I'm nit-picking, but I guess I've grown accustomed to what DCL normally provides.

During Disney Dreams when the Lion King song was starting, I noticed that the main singer's audio malfunctioned. Did anyone else notice that? I guess the audience didn't mind listening to the background music and singers as they applauded anyways, but usually the lead singer has a great performance that brings it all together. She's one of the highlights of that show. I don't know what was going on, but who ever was working audio that cruise wasn't doing their job well! The actor that plays Peter Pan also needs to work on his singing voice. It was a bit on the weak side.

One thing that bugged me were the line ups for dining with the new staggered dining times. I had to laugh every time they reminded us on the PA to be on time as a courtesy to other guests. We showed up on time just to line up until they opened the dining rooms! The lines went into shutters and the Promenade Lounge area.

Our servers were just average to slightly below average this cruise. The assistant server was really slow getting drinks out and refilled plus the main server looked over tired and rushed. It didn't make for a relaxing atmosphere that's for sure. They were friendly and nice enough though.

We ran into a rude photographer named Zee doing pictures at the tree which was a first for us. Usually the photog's are a great bunch, so I don't know if she was just overworked or what. The guy on deck 4 was much nicer and patient as well. He was very professional.

At the gingerbread house activity, they ran out of icing bags so about 25% of the families sat around for 10-15 minutes while they made up more batches. I saw one family with 3 kids who did one house each as well as their own. I think that probably threw things off. They should have asked how many houses were needed per family when they gave out the reservation cards.

Our cabin sinks kept making bubbling sounds loud enough to wake us up throughout the cruise. Repeated calls to guest services and maintenance couldn't fix it.

sink

I'm not expecting DCL to provide problem free cruising, but sometimes things start to add up making for a less than magical cruise.

 

[missmulan]

During Disney Dreams when the Lion King song was starting, I noticed that the main singer's audio malfunctioned. Did anyone else notice that?

i was on the 12/10/05 Magic and did not noticed.

One thing that bugged me were the line ups for dining with the new staggered dining times. I had to laugh every time they reminded us on the PA to be on time as a courtesy to other guests. We showed up on time just to line up until they opened the dining rooms! The lines went into shutters and the Promenade Lounge area.

I agree! I don't like the staggered times

Our servers were just average to slightly below average this cruise. The assistant server was really slow getting drinks out and refilled plus the main server looked over tired and rushed. It didn't make for a relaxing atmosphere that's for sure. They were friendly and nice enough though.

We didn't have a good server either. She was hardly friendly and was annoyed when my DS5 couldn't make up his mind on what he wanted. When she did her spiel on the menu, she sounded like she was reading off a bad script. The Asst. Server forgot our drinks one night and slow to refill on most nights. Still, we tipped full amounts just because we allocated that money for tips.

At the gingerbread house activity, they ran out of icing bags so about 25% of the families sat around for 10-15 minutes while they made up more batches. I saw one family with 3 kids who did one house each as well as their own. I think that probably threw things off. They should have asked how many houses were needed per family when they gave out the reservation cards.

Argghhh! this happened to us....were you on the same cruise? Me and my family had to wait for the third batch of icing to come around....even when I did get one, it wasn't enough.

 

[Canadiancruiser2]

Yep, we were on the 12/10/05. You didn't notice that the Lion King singer was singing, but there was no sound coming from her mic at the beginning? Normally during the Circle of Life song, the lead singer does a stylized, very soulful rendition of Elton John. You definitely would have noticed if you've seen the show before because it really stands out.

In the show we saw, you could see her lips moving, but the sound was not in sync! I think they did try to do some sort of audio overlay or have someone off stage fill in the vocals since after a certain point you could hear the main lyrics. If you weren't paying attention directly at the lead singer's mouth or sat pretty far up, you easily could have missed it.

Ah, minor stuff I know, but for a professional award winning stage performance, they really need to make sure their equipment is working right or have better failsafe devices to switch to.

I think one of the problems that the servers face is that there sounds like there are windows of time where they must get their food orders into the kitchen's computer system. I don't know the details, but I caught on about something where if you want the children's meal served right away during the appetizer phase, they must bring out all the adult meals at the same time or something like that.

They can bring out the kid's meal if it's ordered right at the start or if they know you want it brought out right away with the appetizers. I think the servers might be under the gun to get things working under the system? I don't know, but there seems to be some pressure going on behind the scenes to make some of the servers seem rushed. Maybe it's just being overworked with their 10-12 hour shifts. It's hard to say. Some seem to be able to handle it better than others since our previous two cruises were a lot better.

 

[CRSNDSNY]

LOL - No offense because that is not how this comment is intended, but I cannot believe you streamed the sink making bubbling noises! LOL

So sorry you had these slight mishaps. We've seen some similar thing on our cruise such as Ursulas tentacles getting stuck in the stage and now coming out over the stage, as well as audio issues.
And from our experiences, there are always lines outside dining at the dining hour.

 

[lillygator]

We were on the 12/10/05 as well...can't comment on the shows...never made it to any.

The staggered dining times....were horrible in my opinion....one night we stood outside PC for about 15 minutes waiting for them to open.....and when I say we - I mean our entire restaurant!

 

[pppiglet]

I agree that the sink bubbling like that would have kept me from sleeping. That is funny that you taped that! What room were you in so I don't book it?!

 

[weirdguy]

I did notice the lead singer seemed a little off, however, I thought it was a great show anyway and enjoyed the whole effort, I guess I see it as there are problems that will pop up occassionally that no one can expect and they deal with it as they can, and I guess you have to look at the show on the whole.

The lines for dinner were nuts though, however, I think it would have been worse if they had had every restuarant lining up at the same time, I could just imaging PC's line and Lumiere's meeting up at the Promenade We started heading up for dinner about 8:18, we had the late seating starting at 8:15 and normally the line had started moving by this point.

I hope you did enjoy the cruise on the whole though.

 

[DVC Jen]

I agree that the sink bubbling like that would have kept me from sleeping. That is funny that you taped that! What room were you in so I don't book it?!

I think it is pretty funny too.. but validates your complaint. AND it would have also really bothered me. I am a fairly light sleeper and wouldn't have been able to sleep through that.

 

[Tarabra]

There always seems to be a line to get in the restaurants. I guess they don't bother us because we never get there early. I'm a 'just on time' kind of person. We're supposed to be there at 8:15, we get there at 8:14, and walk right in! I hate to wait. We have a picture of our toilet off the wall in our room. It wouldn't fill back up after flushing. They fixed it pretty quickly. Although the sink would've kept me awake too.

 

[mruhaak]

I've experience long lines waiting for meals on both Carnival and RCCL.

On our last cruise with RCCL we just learned to go slightly late dinner and you get right in. No reason to stand around. We never missed anything by waiting.

I don't plan on going early for meals on my Disney cruise either.

 

[Canadiancruiser2]

I agree that the sink bubbling like that would have kept me from sleeping. That is funny that you taped that! What room were you in so I don't book it?!

This is CC's wife. We were in SPR 5522.

 

[TiggerKing]

I think it is pretty funny too.. but validates your complaint. AND it would have also really bothered me. I am a fairly light sleeper and wouldn't have been able to sleep through that.

From what I have read on another post, the problem is that this "bubbling" issue is not something that maintenance can normally "fix" and stop. I have been searching like crazy, but can't find the post. Anyway, I think it has something to do with the plumbing system being a closed system and when there is movement in the ship, the water in the holding tanks move and create air fluctuations in some of the drain lines. Don't quote me on this, but that is what I remember reading in a post last year.

 

[jjbescher]

We were in 2150 and had the same bubbling noises. We also complained and nothing was ever done about it.

I do remember my DW telling me that they were saying something about air in the lines.

jon

 

[Canadiancruiser2]

Hehe, don't get me wrong, I still loved the cruise even with these minor setbacks. Our house keeping attendant was so friendly, it was really nice to bump into her in the hallways. The only problem with her was that whenever she knocked at the door, I was always half naked in my undies or getting dressed while thinking it was someone from our family in the other cabin at the door.

If you thought it was funny about me posting a video of our sink , you should have seen me trying to capture it! Whenever it would go off, I'd grab my camera and the instant I was ready to start recording, it would stop. My wife thought I was nuts. BUT I DID GET IT FINALLY!!!

I thought the video would help people see what the problem exactly was rather than trying to explain it. Just imagine your kid blowing bubbles into their chocolate milk every 4 minutes for about 15 seconds... throughout the night... every day for 7 days... and you'll understand why it was annoying.

Although the sound was disruptive, especially when it woke us up at 4:00 am, it was not knowing what exactly was bubbling up that was more disturbing. Sewer gas really isn't what you want coming up into your cabin or your home. Most houses have sewer gas pipes that lead to the roof to allow vapours to exit. On our two previous cruises, I've never seen this problem so I thought it must have been a plugged exhaust line. I can't picture the ship using a closed system since bacteria create lots of gases that must be vented.

We were at the late sitting so our theatre shows were at 6:15 pm. Maybe the later show didn't have any glitches? The gingerbread house icing problem was minor. We just sat around chatting it up a bit while watching others have all the fun.

One other peeve I had during the cruise was that they didn't seem to have the AC cooling the atrium when it needed it the most (eg. formal pictures, Till we meet again gathering). It's not much fun wearing a suit while sweating buckets and getting pictures taken. The atrium was so crowded and hot during the Till we meet again photo op, I could stay only for a few minutes.

 

[lbgraves]

We had early seating & were in the second row center for Dreams & I did notice that her voice was lower than we had heard in the past. Since we were up front we did hear her though. I thought that the performer handled it great & did what she could until it was adjusted.

 

[ShannonRT]

While we're nit-picking...

I got off the Wonder today after having previously sailed on the Magic Western in May 2004. Some notable differences in dining service. Our assistant server was very new, her first contract, first month. But she was very slow and very hard to understand. She was from Singapore and talked very quietly. Even when she was standing right next to me I had a hard time hearing her. We even mentioned it to the head server I think on the second night when he came over to check on us. He said he would "turn her up" but I never did really notice a difference.

The server was very good, but seemed rushed. He was from India and had a heavy accent and also talked very fast, so we had a hard time understanding him too. It seemed like the background noise in the restaurants was overwhelming at times and contributed to the communcation issues we had. We thought maybe things seemed so rushed this time because we had first seating as last time we had second and it seemed more laid back. The server did bring out an extra appetizer, main course and dessert at every meal for everyone at the table to try which was nice. Overall, they did an outstanding job and were tipped appropriately, but it was hard not to compare them to our servers on the Magic. The assistant server on the Magic did magic tricks with DD and folded her menu into little animals every night. He also cut up her food whether she wanted him to or not. He was right there with the ketchup for her fries. There were a couple of times this cruise she didn't even get ketchup at all!

These people work so very hard! Enough about that.

We had "creaking" noises in our stateroom when we were sailing coming from at least 2 different places. Didn't notice it at all when we were sitting still in port. It was very annoying and kept me awake at night even though we had a white noise machine to try and drown it out. I didn't report it though because I figured they couldn't do anything about it. One of the bathroom doors also really needed some WD-40 because it would squeak if the waves were especially high. This wasn't such a big deal because we just shut the door, but if someone went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it would wake the other person. Probably should've reported that because it should be easy to fix. But the waves were only high enough for it to bother us the first night.

The toilet malfunctioned on the last night. I did report that and it was fixed by the time we got back from dinner and the show.

Just my $0.02 worth......

 

[nzdisneymom]

One thing that bugged me were the line ups for dining with the new staggered dining times. I had to laugh every time they reminded us on the PA to be on time as a courtesy to other guests.

We were on the Magic last week (12/17 sailing) and never heard a PA announcement about dinner. In fact there weren't many PA announcements at all - I was expecting more from reading other trip reports / posts. We were lucky in that while we had 1st seating, we were at the 6:00 time rather than the 5:30 or 5:45 time. We only waited if we went down before 6 p.m., and on our subsequent nights in the restaurants, we were able to go directly to our tables without having anyone show us the way or seat us. If our server or asst. server were there, they would hold the chair for me, but if they weren't I would just seat myself. We were glad, too, to have 6 p.m. dining because that meant a 7 a.m. breakfast on Saturday rather than the 6:30 or 6:45 seating time that the earlier groups had. Shoot, we didn't even get up til 6:15 on Saturday.

 

[lsfla]

I also never heard a PA announcement about dinner on the 12/17 Magic. We had a line the first night (8:30 pm seating and we arrived a bit early) but that was easily avoided future nights by arriving just on time and not early.

Our server team (Inyo and Naif) was spectacular. They really made the meals enjoyable. Couldn't have asked for better service...

And we thought the photographer, Zee, was one of the highlights of the trip! I'm sorry you had a problem. She was so kind and helpful. We even wrote a special comment card for her. And she managed to get some wonderful photos of our family. And I'm very picky! We never take good photos and I never buy them but this trip we got crushed LOL. Thanks to Zee we finally have a good family photo for DH to frame and put on his desk at work. She was very creative with the poses as well.

Hey Cindy.. should I tell you that we slept in until 7am on Saturday? And I was still tired LOL. Couldn't get Leia out of the kids club early the night before, she was having too much fun playing with your son, Zachary.

 

[Canadiancruiser2]

And we thought the photographer, Zee, was one of the highlights of the trip! I'm sorry you had a problem. She was so kind and helpful. We even wrote a special comment card for her. And she managed to get some wonderful photos of our family. And I'm very picky!

Maybe it was an isolated thing that day or something (?). We all have our less than stellar days at work, that's for sure. Oh well, the rest of the photography staff were great. We probably just caught her on a bad day.

I also noticed that the ship is starting to show it's age and wear. I would have thought after the dry dock that things would be brand new again, but I guess I had some misconceptions about what they did during that time. The upholstery on our sofa bed was looking a bit coke stained and grimey which made me wonder how clean the bed covers were. Do they wash those between cruises? I found some dried crud on it at one point.

Some of the carpets did look new in some areas. I guess for a ship that's as popular as the Magic and almost 8 years old, there's going to be some wear and tear. I liked the new robotic thing in the Lab, but too bad it wasn't working for some reason. I only saw some kids using it during the first day. The rest of the cruise they had yellow construction off limits tape around it.

I think part of the problem we found with our servers is that if you have a couple of really excellent ones, you tend to get used to that "standard." If the next servers don't live up to that previous level, you're disappointed. On our first cruise, our server even fed our kiddo since she noticed that I was busy trying to eat and feed her at the same time. The other tables she had were off at Palo, so she wasn't as busy so she knelt down and help feed our kid! That was our "Wow" experience that cruise.

 

[budwmn]

Maybe it was an isolated thing that day or something (?). We all have our less than stellar days at work, that's for sure. Oh well, the rest of the photography staff were great. We probably just caught her on a bad day.

I also noticed that the ship is starting to show it's age and wear. I would have thought after the dry dock that things would be brand new again, but I guess I had some misconceptions abour what they did during that time. The upholstery on our sofa bed was looking a bit coke stained and grimey which made me wonder how clean the bed covers were. Do they wash those between cruises? I found some dried crud on it on night.

Some of the carpets did look new in some areas. I guess for a ship that's as popular as the Magic and almost 8 years old, there's going to be some wear and tear. I liked the new robotic thing in the Lab, but too bad it wasn't working for some reason. I only saw some kids using it during the first day. The rest of the cruise they had yellow construction off limits tape around it.

They don't wash bed spreads between each cruise -- I wish they would use duvet covers so that they could at least wash the shell).

During dry dock they paint, replace carpet, spruce up public areas, do major construction work, and fix major wear and tear. Unfortunately, they don't have time or money to replace all soft furnishings like sofas/sofa covers and the like.

One thing to remember as well, all it takes is one passenger to ruin a sofa or stain a carpet. Even if all fabrics were cleaned or replaced during dry dock, damage could be done on the very next cruise. (Reminds me of when my DH spilled coffee on our brand new carpeting ).