4 Night Disney Wish- Wish I chose another option

[randomguymike]

To start with I'm still not sure where expectations failed to meet reality, but it may be one (or a combination) of the following-

• This was our first cruise and there was a steeper than expected learning curve. Day 1 was craziness.
• The Wish may have been a poor choice for those without any status
• A summer Wish (June 5) trip was probably way more crowded than other options
• 4 Nights may be too short, as others have suggested
• 5 year olds may just be hard, even on a Disney Cruise

The Cruise wasn't bad, but definitely not worth the $9k all in (without flight) and I didn't come out feeling refreshed at all. If I could go back and just book a nice Aribnb in Turks and Caicos for a week, with a couple layover days in Orlando, I 100% would.

So, here's the summary from my point of view. We had mom/dad/5 year old son/9 year old daughter. We travelled and dined with another family of 4.

Starting with the positive:

• The theater shows were awesome.
  • The first night Goofy show set a perfect tone.
  • Little Mermaid was good, Aladdin was very enjoyable.
  • The stage was incredible. The projection technology added so much to the show.
• The food was very good.
  • Festival of Foods was solid all week. Tacos were especially good.
  • Mercaline was better than expected based on prior reviews. After breakfast Day 2, lines weren't bad and food was always solid.
  • Marvel, 1923, and Arandelle all provided good food. Show for Marvel was fun, even though Spiderman skipped out table, resulting in some tears.
• Castaway Cay had some highlights
  • Serenity Beach was amazing.
  • Oceaneer club on the island was very good and provided the kids active outdoor activities.
  • Ad hoc Character meetings were very cool. We met chip/dale & Pluto on the trail walking to the beach
  • Snorkeling area was really fun. Loved the sunken stuff and found enough fish for it to be fun.
  • Slide was very good before lines got out of control or the hour that it was reserved for Edge only.
  • Bike paths were very cute and fun.
• Cast Members were great. I had heard concerns about lack of quality staff, but our head server was great and provided magic tricks, etc. Room service was solid. Even for complaints, managers went above and beyond to make you feel heard and think they would remedy.
• Funnel Vision was super cool and had a great rotation of movies.
• Hero Zone was a nice facility.
• Adult area was not crowded and was very nice.
• The Dance Party was a very cool setup where kids got to interact with characters, and somehow wasn't overcrowded.
• Chocolate/Liquor Session was very enjoyable.
  • This was the only session I was able to book, but I'm glad it was. Great chocolates, interesting drinks and very informative presentation.

Now the reasons we'll likely never go on a Disney Cruise again.

• Most of our day felt like it was in lines or standing around waiting for an activity to start
  • Character Meet lines were longer than in the resorts. We tried a few times to see Minnie, Mickey, or Donald, but wait times were over 30 minutes each time. For comparison, we had a 4 person wait for Donald at Animal Kingdom.
  • Sail Away, Pirate Party, Fireworks, etc required showing up over 30 minutes early to get a spot on the rails on 12 or spot where you could see on the floor on 11. Even then, my kids got shoved out of the way by over-zealous adults a few times and couldn't see.
  • Lines for Dinners were crazy. We showed 15 minutes early and often had 30 minute waits before were were seated.
  • We showed up 20 minutes early for each theater show and had one show where half our party had obstructed view (front left), one where we were way back (row P) and one where we were way back and left.
  • Little Mermaid was showing all day at Neverland. We showed up 20 minutes early and it was already at capacity and kids got tuned away.
  • Aquamouse lines had a couple periods it was easy to get on, but was often over 45 minutes wait.
  • There were 16 total chairs with consistent shade on deck. We only got those once when I staked our spot out a 6:30am.
  • We got shut of of two trivia sessions that were full
  • Incredicourse was a 40 minute wait for the kids to run through once.
• Oceaneer Club was bad, overall. This was the biggest disappointment, as I had only heard positive reviews from folks we knew that had gone on on other DCL ships.
  • Many items were broken or so unintuitive that they seemed broken
  • Activities often "ran out of seats"
  • Group activities often resulted in older kids bulldozing over younger kids. For instance, instead of them doing cupcake making, they made full cakes as a group and littles got no ability to participate.
  • No outside time and WAY too much iPad/electronics focus. I talked to the manager about this and she said some kids prefer it. As parents, we don't.
• We got very very limited adult-only time
  • We'd been told by nearly everyone that if you had late seating, they'd come to get your kids during dinner to take them down to the club at some point. This never occurred.
  • Since the kids had so many issues with Oceaneer Club, they fought tooth and nail not to go and often requested pickup within an hour of being dropped off.
  • The waiting often resulted in us not having time to check kids in, have them in club and then get them in time before needing to get in a line.
• Castaway Cay (outside of highlights above) was a disappointment
  • I described the family beaches as "Chicago's North Avenue Beach on 4th of July, but in the Caribbean". Chairs six deep on the beach full of people and rarely enough space in the water to even put a raft out. People just crammed in every inch of space.
• We never met our Stateroom host and I feel like that led to some misses. Not sure when that was supposed to happen.
  • We didn't know about breakfast delivery until I went through the drawers to make sure they were empty as we were doing a final pack up. I'm glad I read about Room Service Coffee trick on this board, at least.
  • We didn't want the top bunk down for safety reasons. We never had a chance to tell her before the first night and had to wait 30 minutes where we were exhausted at the end of night 1 for them to come and put it up.
• We were only able to book the one activity, as EVERYTHING was sold out by the time our slot to reserve came. Even checking twice daily, I was only able to find things that opened up during our dinner slot.
• Hero Zone was all-ages. So my little guy who wanted to play basketball ended up very disappointed. I tried taking him on the court once, but he got knocked down by a teenager running to the basket about 5 minutes in and we had to walk away.
• Dinners were SLOW. Each night we didn't get desert until after 9:45. This meant a couple of adults had to skip out on desert to save spaces for night time deck shows.
• The yellow slide was effectively broken Days 1-3. Kids had to scoot themselves down as there wasn't enough water. That got fixed on Day at Sea, so I know it wasn't intentional.
• Bought the internet (fastest package) and it rarely worked anywhere on the boat.

I'm glad we bookended the cruise with park days, as the park days at Animal Kingdom and Epcot were amazing. While the kids said they enjoyed the cruise, the park days were ironically the easiest for the adults as we didn't have to constantly be looking at our watches and worrying about getting places in time or staring at our phone for a Navigator Message saying we have to run down and pickup a kid who wanted to be out of kids club.


Edit to add one more positive and negative:
Positive: Room was fantastic. I was in 10118 and had no deck noise and it was great to be able to use stairs to get to up and down to 11.
Negative: Elevators are a well discussed joke. I thought it was a crazy thing to complain about prior to the cruise, but at least twice a day the whole bank of buttons got accidentally pushed by someone walking in or leaning back, lines were very long to get elevators, and when you wanted to push a button it often took 3 or 4 tries or even became a group effort.

 

[ssedlac1]

Wow! We have been on all 4 of the other ships. Just got off the Wonder to Alaska. And we were contemplating the Wish next. Safe to say I am good skipping out on the Wish for a long while till maybe some of this is better. I don’t blame you on never wanting to go on one again. Eeek! A lot of people like the Wonder and Magic better because even when full, it just feels less crowded. Our ship was full a couple of weeks ago. Character lines were closer to 30 min. And we did arrive at the theater 30 min prior to get good seats. Though we showed up 10 min prior to one show and still got pretty decent spots. But the theater did really fill up. With a full ship, those will always be issues. Same with the deck shows. It does help that they have a kids zone. Was so thankful when they added that for the deck shows. I will say the last year…I have never seen the ships so full. We used to book cruises 3-4 days out sometimes. Definitely not an option anymore. Everyone is catching up on delayed travel still so they are filling up their sailings. As far as price, we have booked GTY the last two cruises. If you can be a bit flexible and be okay with planning a couple of months out…you can save a lot. We booked our 7 night to Alaska for $5k for the 4 of us for the first week of June. When we did the Norway one we got a week long for $4,200 for the 4 of us. The other ships are much more reasonably priced. The Wish is $$$$ right now. To me it sounds like the kids clubs are better on the other ships. However, they all have iPads and video game systems. And no, that is not normal with the steward. On our cruise a couple of weeks ago we saw our steward probably 6-7 times at least. And he made sure to introduce himself the first day. That is more the norm. A lot of times…the quickness of the service at dinner depends on your servers.

Also, for people that have sailed before on the other ships…I have heard that they have in general been disappointed with the Wish.

 

[Remysister28]

Wow! Kudos to you for trying the Wish. I would not try it either and I have no parents and kids to worry about. I think the smaller ships give a better chance to enjoy the cruise.

 

[lilmc]

Lines for Dinners were crazy. We showed 15 minutes early and often had 30 minute waits before were were seated.

We routinely show up 5 minutes late on purpose or sit in the lobby and wait until just moments after it becomes a walk up. We take the time to get family pictures in the lobby. Some of our best!

 

[randomguymike]

We routinely show up 5 minutes late on purpose or sit in the lobby and wait until just moments after it becomes a walk up. We take the time to get family pictures in the lobby. Some of our best!

That's a great idea. We also ended up with very few photos since we couldn't find time to get to the photo stations. This would have killed two birds with one stone.

 

[Duke07]

I was on the same sailing and it almost seems like I was on a different ship based on my experience. We (family of 4 with a 2 and 5 year old) absolutely loved it and would certainly sail on The Wish again.

I'll likely post an extended review, but the ship never felt crowded to us (with the obvious exceptions of shows and dinners letting out) and we were able to accomplish everything we desired to. I was actually shocked how easy it was to reserve activities once logging on to the ship's wifi at the port. Palo brunch, Royal Gathering, BBB, etc. were all part of our itinerary and we do not have status with DCL.

I'm not attempting to question your experience, but The Oceaneer's club and The Nursery were particularly amazing. My 5 year old would repeatedly ask us to go there and the staff at both consistently impressed us and provided ample adult-only time.

Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it, but I'm already looking forward to another sailing on The Wish. The ship is awesome.

 

[Calantha]

We'd been told by nearly everyone that if you had late seating, they'd come to get your kids during dinner to take them down to the club at some point. This never occurred.

Unfortunately, that never restarted after covid, so someone misled you there.

 

[cruisehopeful]

Bummer! My first Disney cruise was on the Dream on either the second or third sailing. It was fun as it was my first cruise ever, but I definitely felt like there was a learning curve for sure that we didn't know about. Everything was crazy crowded, but I had nothing to compare it to as it was my first cruise and all my Disneyland visits are super crowded.

My next several cruises were on the Wonder. Night and day difference from the Dream. It was like staying in a nice resort. Very personalized service everywhere we went. Full ship, but never felt crowded or like we had to wait for anything. I definitely prefer the small ships! You may find that you like those better, but I haven't cruised since COVID and don't know if they are still the same.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

To start with I'm still not sure where expectations failed to meet reality, but it may be one (or a combination) of the following-

• This was our first cruise and there was a steeper than expected learning curve. Day 1 was craziness.
• The Wish may have been a poor choice for those without any status
• A summer Wish (June 5) trip was probably way more crowded than other options
• 4 Nights may be too short, as others have suggested
• 5 year olds may just be hard, even on a Disney Cruise

The Cruise wasn't bad, but definitely not worth the $9k all in (without flight) and I didn't come out feeling refreshed at all. If I could go back and just book a nice Aribnb in Turks and Caicos for a week, with a couple layover days in Orlando, I 100% would.

So, here's the summary from my point of view. We had mom/dad/5 year old son/9 year old daughter. We travelled and dined with another family of 4.

Starting with the positive:

• The theater shows were awesome.
  • The first night Goofy show set a perfect tone.
  • Little Mermaid was good, Aladdin was very enjoyable.
  • The stage was incredible. The projection technology added so much to the show.
• The food was very good.
  • Festival of Foods was solid all week. Tacos were especially good.
  • Mercaline was better than expected based on prior reviews. After breakfast Day 2, lines weren't bad and food was always solid.
  • Marvel, 1923, and Arandelle all provided good food. Show for Marvel was fun, even though Spiderman skipped out table, resulting in some tears.
• Castaway Cay had some highlights
  • Serenity Beach was amazing.
  • Oceaneer club on the island was very good and provided the kids active outdoor activities.
  • Ad hoc Character meetings were very cool. We met chip/dale & Pluto on the trail walking to the beach
  • Snorkeling area was really fun. Loved the sunken stuff and found enough fish for it to be fun.
  • Slide was very good before lines got out of control or the hour that it was reserved for Edge only.
  • Bike paths were very cute and fun.
• Cast Members were great. I had heard concerns about lack of quality staff, but our head server was great and provided magic tricks, etc. Room service was solid. Even for complaints, managers went above and beyond to make you feel heard and think they would remedy.
• Funnel Vision was super cool and had a great rotation of movies.
• Hero Zone was a nice facility.
• Adult area was not crowded and was very nice.
• The Dance Party was a very cool setup where kids got to interact with characters, and somehow wasn't overcrowded.
• Chocolate/Liquor Session was very enjoyable.
  • This was the only session I was able to book, but I'm glad it was. Great chocolates, interesting drinks and very informative presentation.

Now the reasons we'll likely never go on a Disney Cruise again.

• Most of our day felt like it was in lines or standing around waiting for an activity to start
  • Character Meet lines were longer than in the resorts. We tried a few times to see Minnie, Mickey, or Donald, but wait times were over 30 minutes each time. For comparison, we had a 4 person wait for Donald at Animal Kingdom.
  • Sail Away, Pirate Party, Fireworks, etc required showing up over 30 minutes early to get a spot on the rails on 12 or spot where you could see on the floor on 11. Even then, my kids got shoved out of the way by over-zealous adults a few times and couldn't see.
  • Lines for Dinners were crazy. We showed 15 minutes early and often had 30 minute waits before were were seated.
  • We showed up 20 minutes early for each theater show and had one show where half our party had obstructed view (front left), one where we were way back (row P) and one where we were way back and left.
  • Little Mermaid was showing all day at Neverland. We showed up 20 minutes early and it was already at capacity and kids got tuned away.
  • Aquamouse lines had a couple periods it was easy to get on, but was often over 45 minutes wait.
  • There were 16 total chairs with consistent shade on deck. We only got those once when I staked our spot out a 6:30am.
  • We got shut of of two trivia sessions that were full
  • Incredicourse was a 40 minute wait for the kids to run through once.
• Oceaneer Club was bad, overall. This was the biggest disappointment, as I had only heard positive reviews from folks we knew that had gone on on other DCL ships.
  • Many items were broken or so unintuitive that they seemed broken
  • Activities often "ran out of seats"
  • Group activities often resulted in older kids bulldozing over younger kids. For instance, instead of them doing cupcake making, they made full cakes as a group and littles got no ability to participate.
  • No outside time and WAY too much iPad/electronics focus. I talked to the manager about this and she said some kids prefer it. As parents, we don't.
• We got very very limited adult-only time
  • We'd been told by nearly everyone that if you had late seating, they'd come to get your kids during dinner to take them down to the club at some point. This never occurred.
  • Since the kids had so many issues with Oceaneer Club, they fought tooth and nail not to go and often requested pickup within an hour of being dropped off.
  • The waiting often resulted in us not having time to check kids in, have them in club and then get them in time before needing to get in a line.
• Castaway Cay (outside of highlights above) was a disappointment
  • I described the family beaches as "Chicago's North Avenue Beach on 4th of July, but in the Caribbean". Chairs six deep on the beach full of people and rarely enough space in the water to even put a raft out. People just crammed in every inch of space.
• We never met our Stateroom host and I feel like that led to some misses. Not sure when that was supposed to happen.
  • We didn't know about breakfast delivery until I went through the drawers to make sure they were empty as we were doing a final pack up. I'm glad I read about Room Service Coffee trick on this board, at least.
  • We didn't want the top bunk down for safety reasons. We never had a chance to tell her before the first night and had to wait 30 minutes where we were exhausted at the end of night 1 for them to come and put it up.
• We were only able to book the one activity, as EVERYTHING was sold out by the time our slot to reserve came. Even checking twice daily, I was only able to find things that opened up during our dinner slot.
• Hero Zone was all-ages. So my little guy who wanted to play basketball ended up very disappointed. I tried taking him on the court once, but he got knocked down by a teenager running to the basket about 5 minutes in and we had to walk away.
• Dinners were SLOW. Each night we didn't get desert until after 9:45. This meant a couple of adults had to skip out on desert to save spaces for night time deck shows.
• The yellow slide was effectively broken Days 1-3. Kids had to scoot themselves down as there wasn't enough water. That got fixed on Day at Sea, so I know it wasn't intentional.
• Bought the internet (fastest package) and it rarely worked anywhere on the boat.

I'm glad we bookended the cruise with park days, as the park days at Animal Kingdom and Epcot were amazing. While the kids said they enjoyed the cruise, the park days were ironically the easiest for the adults as we didn't have to constantly be looking at our watches and worrying about getting places in time or staring at our phone for a Navigator Message saying we have to run down and pickup a kid who wanted to be out of kids club.


Edit to add one more positive and negative:
Positive: Room was fantastic. I was in 10118 and had no deck noise and it was great to be able to use stairs to get to up and down to 11.
Negative: Elevators are a well discussed joke. I thought it was a crazy thing to complain about prior to the cruise, but at least twice a day the whole bank of buttons got accidentally pushed by someone walking in or leaning back, lines were very long to get elevators, and when you wanted to push a button it often took 3 or 4 tries or even became a group effort.

Responding to your comments about the kids club:

We agree. We have cruised a fair amount over the last ten years. 3kids. Youngest kid started cruising at age 3, now he’s 13. Oldest kid 20 at this point. So we’ve been through the kids clubs. When we first started cruising with dcl the kids clubs were fabulous. Games, sports, crafts. We could not get our kids out. They even wanted to stay on board when we got off at ports . We actually missed them. Lol. About three years into our cruising adventures, there was a shift at dcl kids clubs-- many more devices. iPads took over. Counselors became less engaged for some reason. Our Kids not as interested in the clubs. We started to feel like the clubs were only cool looking on the outside. They are beautiful. So dh and I looked at each no other and said let’s try other lines. Do you know who has the best kids club? Surprise, it’s Carnival. Their kids clubs are awesome. Limited electronics. Sports, games, crafts, amazing counselors. Lots of nice kids. Princess and Royal kids club also good but second to carnival for us. NCL was closed a lot and maxed out a lot. Not a huge fan of NCL period.

We still like dcl, but the kids are more interested in the clubs on other lines.

One more thing. We don’t do Facebook. And I find on dcl, on some cruises, facebook parents have often already “pre-screened” kids for their kids to play with on the cruise. So there are more cliques on dcl/friendships not as natural. This is a bit of a turnoff for us too on dcl. If you are a Facebook person and like organizing your child’s social calendar, I’m sure this is a big draw! To each his own. But for us— no thanks. We are hands off and more spontaneous. So our kids generally find more “friends” on other lines.

 

[randomguymike]

Unfortunately, that never restarted after covid, so someone misled you there.

That helps with the context, for sure. I didn't realize that much had changed pre/post covid and I'm not sure any of the folks we know had gone post covid.

 

[Cheburashka]

We routinely show up 5 minutes late on purpose or sit in the lobby and wait until just moments after it becomes a walk up. We take the time to get family pictures in the lobby. Some of our best!

I was going to say this. There is absolutely no need to show up early for dinner. Your table isn't going anywhere. I almost never wait in any kind of line for dinner in the MDR.

 

[Deb Stoltman]

We were on the Wish one week prior to you. The lines for dinner were crazy and we had never seen that before. We almost always run late and for this cruise that worked out in our favor! Dinners did take longer than ever. Our servers, including the head server who I have never seen do anything other than take the lobster out of the lobster tail, was running his butt off getting drinks, etc. I am assuming they are short handed. Our kids are 19 and 20 and took part in the 1820 Society Club, which is kind of a hidden gem for 18-20 year olds. Where we differed was our room steward. She was the absolute BEST! We all fell in love with her (it was all girls traveling sister, niece daughter and me, mom) and she was truly interested in our days and nights and oh my, just the absolute sweetest thing ever. Other than long waits, we had a fabulous vacation and the Wish is absolutely stunning, but nothing beats our favorite, the Fantasy.

 

[minniebeth]

I just sailed on the Wish for the third time this past weekend, am platinum, and still find it a learning curve. I'm sorry you didn't love it, and would encourage you to try again maybe on another ship or at a more off-peak time if you enjoyed the cruising aspect of it and love Disney! I do think your review/assessment of it is pretty fair and spot on in many ways! I totally hear you and validate your experience.

Our dining experiences on the Wish have been incredibly slow~ I'm sure there are various reasons why it is that way, but it makes for a long dinner all the same.
On our 2nd Wish cruise we used the strategy of not waiting in line and getting there more towards 8:30 (which is how long it took to have no line) but noticed we were always attended to/served last which made an even later night in the dining room. This cruise we decided to wait on line, get seated earlier, and it did make a difference. We were finished with dinner and dessert before some people were getting their entrees ( larger tables~).

It's interesting that you mentioned your stateroom host. Typically, they are so wonderful! They introduce themselves, ask for preferences, sleeping arrangements, etc. They get to know your routines and work their magic around you.
I met our host once, and my DD did not meet him at all. We are pretty low maintenance so we didn't need much from him, so it was fine but SOOO unusual.

It does feel like the staff overall is stretched way too thin on the Wish~ we've witnessed a few CMs with tears on several occasions with being overwhelmed in certain situations.

My DD is all princess, so she loves the Wish and the Disney entertainment, which is why we've sailed a few times. It is a unique experience compared to the other ships for sure.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences so that others can have your perspective!

 

[Setsail71]

I will agree with you that a packed Disney cruise is all about crowds and waiting.

 

[ten822]

Wow shocked that things would be broken on a new ship. I always found the quality and service on DCL impeccable. I was looking forward to trying the WISH!

 

[tvguy]

Why was there a line for dinner? Other than the first night when they show you where you table is, we always walked right in to our table.
I guess length of dinner is subjective, we were rarely out of the dinning room before 10:30 pm by choice. 9:45 would have meant wolfing down our dinner.