MomOTwins
The Mommy Fairy
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2018
Well, punchline, it wasn't for us. Posting because after much deliberation I booked a cruise on Princess's newest ship, Discovery Princess, to Alaska and as much as I carefully researched and thought I had found something that would work for our family, it just didn't, and I'm thinking it might be useful to others making similar decisions of whether to venture out of the Disney bubble.
We're gold Disney cruisers, with three kids age 6, 10 and 10. At the time we were looking to book an Alaska cruise this summer, travel to Canada was looking complicated, and we were getting sticker shock from Disney Alaska prices. We were also traveling with an extended family group that were not keen on Disney and wanted a Casino, more live music/dancing etc. We also figured Alaska is about the destination, not the ship, so it wouldn't matter as much that we didn't have the Disney experience. This is why we discovered the hard way it just didn't work for us and we won't be sailing on a cruise line other than DCL again.
Staterooms
We booked two connecting mini-suites with balconies. On the plus side, the rooms were very nice. We had roughly same amount of space as two Disney verandah rooms, for the price of inside rooms on Disney. It was a new ship so furnishings were brand new and very pretty/modern, though the bed is not nearly as comfy as Disney, and we really missed having the split bathroom. Storage was also one thing we missed--suitcases do not fit under the bed so they filled up our closet, and there are no chests of drawers, just a closet with hangers and a few narrow shelves (width of the in-room safe).
Another key difference is that there is no lock on the verandah door like there is for DCL. The handle simply rotates and then the door opens, without any upper lock outside of the reach of kids to make it secure. Which became even a bigger safety issue because....
We had a massive shock when we arrived in our confirmed "connecting" rooms and hey were (you guessed it) not connecting. After being given the runaround by various staff we found a manager who confirmed this is a known problem and that some rooms were mislabeled on the Princess deck plans as having connecting doors between them but actually did not. Because there are so few connecting rooms on the ship, and it was a very full sailing, there were none we could be moved to, even if we were were willing to accept a downgrade. This also happened to others in our party who also had small kids, so it was not just a single room that was the problem, and not my mistaken reading of the deck plan or the written confirmation I got when I booked saying my rooms had an interior connecting door. Both we and the other family were given a small amount of compensation from the cruise line after complaining (or at least we were told we would be mailed a check--I don't have it yet so we will see), but that didn't do anything to fix what was a terrible situation--we had to split up so that our kids (one of whom is special needs) could have a parent. I kept thinking, if this happened on Disney and they realized they made such a big a mistake with their deck plans, they would have called us BEFORE the cruise and given us an option to cancel or move to a different sailing since we had booked directly through the cruise line. But I still resolved to make the best of it and enjoy the trip... until other things started going south.
Cleanliness
When we entered our room, we found toenails in the sheets and a woman's underwear in the nightstand. I will stop there before I gross you out further.
Food
One of the things we were most looking forward to was the greater flexibility of food options on the ship for dinner. In addition to the MDRs and pool deck quick service, there is an all-day buffet, included pizza/pasta restaurant, and four extra charge specialty restaurants, all of which we tried. The pool quick service and pizza place were both tasty--although the pizza place did not take reservations and regularly had waits of 1 hour plus (and you had to wait outside the restaurant with hour whole party including kids, no splitting up to do other things while you wait). But the buffet was terrible--no smoked salmon and eggs benedict like DCL has for breakfast, just very basic, and at lunch and dinner the food was just plain bad, and we saw some scary food safety issues (e.g., sharp pieces of plastic in food; raw-inside pork meatballs). The MDRs were just okay, not as good as DCL, and the real shocker was we ate at all four specialty upcharge restaurants and they were all no better or worse than the MDR. Again lots of obvious errors--broken shell in crab cakes, overcooked steak, drink orders forgotten. Perhaps most egregiously, we explained a serious food allergy up front at the start of each meal, and it was regularly ignored leaving the person unable to eat the dishes set in front of him. Oh, and also every dinner took 3 hours. With kids they were going out of their mind, especially because kids club was not an option because...
Kids Club
It drove me absolutely nuts that the kids club closed during lunch and dinner. WHY? That is the perfect time for parents to have some time alone to eat dinner after feeding the kids and taking them to the club, which is what we often do on DCL. As for the actual kids club programming, it was very focused on arts and crafts and movies, which would be find if it was optional, but they literally would not let my kids opt out and do their own thing (e.g., read a book; play on the foosball table; play a video game) any time an activity was happening. Our 10 year olds named the kids club the "torture club" after being forced to watch the Minions movie. Another thing: we were given a pager, but like much of the technology on the ship, it didn't work 90% of the time--after several missed pages, we ended up checking on the kids every 30 minutes in person because that was the only way we could find out when they wanted to leave the club, which was super annoying.
Ship activities
The majority of the activities on board were (a) shopping events/art auctions, or (b) weird wellness treatment pitches that all seemed to involve de-aging or weight loss. There were just a handful of trivia, bingo or game show type events each day, when we are used to multiple options an hour on DCL. They also talked a lot about movies under the stars, but they often showed movies that were not kid-appropriate so we only did that once, and also they did not have blankets like they do on DCL so in Alaska it was wayyy too cold to stay out long. There were two production shows over the 7 day cruise--but after going to the first one and watching an extensive dance number in which a woman danced suggestively in a thong bikini, I was too nervous to try the other one or the variety acts. There was plenty of live music, which we enjoyed, even though we felt the DCL music acts were better quality-wise. The fact is, we were only in port 3 days out of 7, so we felt the loss of family-friendly activities at lot more than we expected would--the cruise ship really does matter, not just the destination.
Now before you say "of course Princess isn't good for kids, what are you thinking," I'll admit I probably should have taken this more seriously, but Princess is definitely marketing more to families and we had seen a lot of anecdotal good reviews of Princess with kids. Also, there were over 500 kids on our sailing, so 1 in 7 of the 3500 guests on the ship, so you'd think there would be more for them. We also considered Royal and NCL, but were wary of the "booze cruise" vibes and heard bad things about the food, service and staterooms (upgrading to Haven would have cost us over $20K, double what we paid for Princess, so that was not an option).
At the end of the day, we made a mistake. If you are like me, don't make the same one.
We're gold Disney cruisers, with three kids age 6, 10 and 10. At the time we were looking to book an Alaska cruise this summer, travel to Canada was looking complicated, and we were getting sticker shock from Disney Alaska prices. We were also traveling with an extended family group that were not keen on Disney and wanted a Casino, more live music/dancing etc. We also figured Alaska is about the destination, not the ship, so it wouldn't matter as much that we didn't have the Disney experience. This is why we discovered the hard way it just didn't work for us and we won't be sailing on a cruise line other than DCL again.
Staterooms
We booked two connecting mini-suites with balconies. On the plus side, the rooms were very nice. We had roughly same amount of space as two Disney verandah rooms, for the price of inside rooms on Disney. It was a new ship so furnishings were brand new and very pretty/modern, though the bed is not nearly as comfy as Disney, and we really missed having the split bathroom. Storage was also one thing we missed--suitcases do not fit under the bed so they filled up our closet, and there are no chests of drawers, just a closet with hangers and a few narrow shelves (width of the in-room safe).
Another key difference is that there is no lock on the verandah door like there is for DCL. The handle simply rotates and then the door opens, without any upper lock outside of the reach of kids to make it secure. Which became even a bigger safety issue because....
We had a massive shock when we arrived in our confirmed "connecting" rooms and hey were (you guessed it) not connecting. After being given the runaround by various staff we found a manager who confirmed this is a known problem and that some rooms were mislabeled on the Princess deck plans as having connecting doors between them but actually did not. Because there are so few connecting rooms on the ship, and it was a very full sailing, there were none we could be moved to, even if we were were willing to accept a downgrade. This also happened to others in our party who also had small kids, so it was not just a single room that was the problem, and not my mistaken reading of the deck plan or the written confirmation I got when I booked saying my rooms had an interior connecting door. Both we and the other family were given a small amount of compensation from the cruise line after complaining (or at least we were told we would be mailed a check--I don't have it yet so we will see), but that didn't do anything to fix what was a terrible situation--we had to split up so that our kids (one of whom is special needs) could have a parent. I kept thinking, if this happened on Disney and they realized they made such a big a mistake with their deck plans, they would have called us BEFORE the cruise and given us an option to cancel or move to a different sailing since we had booked directly through the cruise line. But I still resolved to make the best of it and enjoy the trip... until other things started going south.
Cleanliness
When we entered our room, we found toenails in the sheets and a woman's underwear in the nightstand. I will stop there before I gross you out further.
Food
One of the things we were most looking forward to was the greater flexibility of food options on the ship for dinner. In addition to the MDRs and pool deck quick service, there is an all-day buffet, included pizza/pasta restaurant, and four extra charge specialty restaurants, all of which we tried. The pool quick service and pizza place were both tasty--although the pizza place did not take reservations and regularly had waits of 1 hour plus (and you had to wait outside the restaurant with hour whole party including kids, no splitting up to do other things while you wait). But the buffet was terrible--no smoked salmon and eggs benedict like DCL has for breakfast, just very basic, and at lunch and dinner the food was just plain bad, and we saw some scary food safety issues (e.g., sharp pieces of plastic in food; raw-inside pork meatballs). The MDRs were just okay, not as good as DCL, and the real shocker was we ate at all four specialty upcharge restaurants and they were all no better or worse than the MDR. Again lots of obvious errors--broken shell in crab cakes, overcooked steak, drink orders forgotten. Perhaps most egregiously, we explained a serious food allergy up front at the start of each meal, and it was regularly ignored leaving the person unable to eat the dishes set in front of him. Oh, and also every dinner took 3 hours. With kids they were going out of their mind, especially because kids club was not an option because...
Kids Club
It drove me absolutely nuts that the kids club closed during lunch and dinner. WHY? That is the perfect time for parents to have some time alone to eat dinner after feeding the kids and taking them to the club, which is what we often do on DCL. As for the actual kids club programming, it was very focused on arts and crafts and movies, which would be find if it was optional, but they literally would not let my kids opt out and do their own thing (e.g., read a book; play on the foosball table; play a video game) any time an activity was happening. Our 10 year olds named the kids club the "torture club" after being forced to watch the Minions movie. Another thing: we were given a pager, but like much of the technology on the ship, it didn't work 90% of the time--after several missed pages, we ended up checking on the kids every 30 minutes in person because that was the only way we could find out when they wanted to leave the club, which was super annoying.
Ship activities
The majority of the activities on board were (a) shopping events/art auctions, or (b) weird wellness treatment pitches that all seemed to involve de-aging or weight loss. There were just a handful of trivia, bingo or game show type events each day, when we are used to multiple options an hour on DCL. They also talked a lot about movies under the stars, but they often showed movies that were not kid-appropriate so we only did that once, and also they did not have blankets like they do on DCL so in Alaska it was wayyy too cold to stay out long. There were two production shows over the 7 day cruise--but after going to the first one and watching an extensive dance number in which a woman danced suggestively in a thong bikini, I was too nervous to try the other one or the variety acts. There was plenty of live music, which we enjoyed, even though we felt the DCL music acts were better quality-wise. The fact is, we were only in port 3 days out of 7, so we felt the loss of family-friendly activities at lot more than we expected would--the cruise ship really does matter, not just the destination.
Now before you say "of course Princess isn't good for kids, what are you thinking," I'll admit I probably should have taken this more seriously, but Princess is definitely marketing more to families and we had seen a lot of anecdotal good reviews of Princess with kids. Also, there were over 500 kids on our sailing, so 1 in 7 of the 3500 guests on the ship, so you'd think there would be more for them. We also considered Royal and NCL, but were wary of the "booze cruise" vibes and heard bad things about the food, service and staterooms (upgrading to Haven would have cost us over $20K, double what we paid for Princess, so that was not an option).
At the end of the day, we made a mistake. If you are like me, don't make the same one.