Olaf said:
Do tell Scratch. I had ressies for this cruise and had to cancel. I've been avoiding the member cruise thread, because I've been so down about it. Was it really that bad?
We're FL residents and I can normally get a really good cruise rate. Did you not think the Member Cruise was worth the extra bucks/points?
We sailed both SSMC05 & SSMC06 and the two could not compare to each other. While SSMC05 was fantastic, I have to whole heartedly agree with Janet in that it wasn't
DVC that made this cruise, it was the people we sailed with. If it hadn't been for our DIS friends, the cruise would have been a bust.
The planning team did not have the warm and fuzzy feeling to it at all. On SSMC05, they went out of their way to talk to the members who were sailing with them. This cruise, they didn't. Even Jim Lewis' presentation didn't reflect how DVC changed his vacations personally with his family which he talked about during SSMC05. Jim's presentation introducted his DVC Team, which while nice to know, didn't do much for me as a member.
The SSMC05 themes were smooth and the gifts went along with the theme of the day. While we received nice gifts this cruise, they didn't come close to comparing what we received last cruise. We received golden Mickey ears, which seems to us to be left overs from last year. We did receive pins each night which were nice.
The first day, we entered our stateroom to find huge Mickey boxes filled with items. Unfortunately, when DVC told us to bring an extra suitcase for the goods, none of us had any idea that we were going to receive items which didn't pack well. One family ended up throwing their boxes out as they had no way to get them back home.
It would have been better if the gifts could have stacked together or collapsed some how.
The underlining feel, to me, was that it was a soft sell on DVC. They talked about how WE as members should add on. There was a presentation done at the end of On the Nose, which I personally missed, that was a very hard sell for DVC. A totally unexpected approach as that has never been DVC's position before. Sadly, I hear that's the new trend.
Was it worth the premium we paid --- not to us.
Will be sail again on a DVC Member cruise in the future? Probably not.
I personally had the feel as if DVC did not want return cruisers on their future cruises. With 100,000 plus members and as quickly the cruises have sold out in the past, they certainly don't need our repeat business in order to sell out. And, my personal opinion was that they didn't strive to have us return next time.
The other thing that didn't sit right with me was the total lack of information regarding DVC at AKL. If it wasn't for these boards, I wouldn't know that was even a future option. I'm sure the overall purpose of that lack of announcement was to have people still continue to add on at SSR. While we LOVE SSR, it would have been nice to be an educated consumer if we were in the market to do an add on.
There was also a fiasco of a treasure hunt done on our second CC day. There were 70 rocks placed on the island to be found (which I heard were left in very obvious places). Most of them were gone with in minutes. When we arrived on CC during SSMC05, there were DVC Beach Balls laying all over the beach. I truly expected this treasure hunt to be the same type of event but it didn't even come close. I never would have mentioned it to my DS6 if I didn't think that he would be able to find a special rock as a keepsake to take home. Good for him, he found one he liked anyway that satisfied his hunt.
The other thing that I really have a gripe about is the lack of information we received from DVC during the planning stages of this cruise. Emails were not very timely and some of them included information which was after the fact. Excursions were cancelled for some members very close to our sailing, because we didn't get into CC until 10:30 on our first CC day.
DCL went ahead an cancelled the excurisons which were in conflict of this arrival time, with no other options for those impacted.
We were also informed the night before our second visit to CC, that if we booked mulitple days for items such as snorkel rental, tube rent, bike rental, that they would discount these items for us. To me, these little issues should have been worked out long before the night before -- way back on excurison booking day.
The highlight of this cruise was the presentation by Roy Disney. That I will give the DVC planning team a big thumbs up for arranging.
I sincerely had a lot of regard for Jim Lewis and the planning team from last year that they considered their members to be of value to them. I can't say that I feel that same way today.
Again, just my honest opinion.
