Disney does a wonderful job of keeping you hooked, interested, and involved prior to your trip, making the cruising experience as long as two years of anticipation and planning.
Reservation Management
I give Disney moderately high marks here.
--The Pros: The website is informative and interesting. In addition, its intuitive and easy to use for even my 83-year old mom, who openly admits having difficulties with a lot of web sites. I like the new interface for your cruise calendar where you can see all your excursions and reservations for dining and spa in one place. Nice improvement over last years wordy interface, IMHO. Descriptions of the excursions are extensive and largely accurate.
--The Cons: too many hoops to jump through to log into your reservation every time. Disney has tech wizards at work for them, but they cant find a way to recognize your log in computer and allow a single password entry? In addition, if you are working with two reservations, you have to fully log out of the website to get into the second reservation or the website pops back in the most recent one viewed. Not the end of the world, but for a company that uses facial recognition to categorize and sort your onboard pictures, Id think they could manage this in a more streamlined manner.
--A Wash: the system of not releasing all the spots in Palo, Remy, and early dining is a bit frustrating if you are ready to book at midnight on the first night and dont get a space, but it also seems to work out nicely as it mixes things up later in the cruise, and, lets face it, its nice that folks that book later might have a shot at these ressies. Im of two minds on this, clearly, but the how and why of when they free up new openings is a mystery.
DCL Guest Services 800 Number
I used this number to confirm that our familys reservations were linked, to sort out seating times for the different reservations, to order Bon Voyage wine and flower arrangements for two cabins, and champagne on embarkment for us. All of the experiences were seamless, pleasant, and effective. With one exception, they delivered the champagne on the wrong cruise (I ordered it for our first embarkation, but the gifts were for family who joined us on our second cruise, so probably easy to confuse). Onboard, I checked with guest services to ensure that we were not billed for the champagne that didnt arrive, explaining that it wasnt a major problem, and the next night they sent us a bottle gratis! Very nice touch.
The Boards
From our first cruise we found the DISboards through the Disney Moms panel and got on a Fish Extender list right away. (Fish Extenders are a secret santa group; you can find more info on the boards by searching on the term) The boards are so much more than just Fish Extenders, though, and I have personally been a part of three groups, all of which have been informative, supportive and fun, and one of which has just been extraordinary in terms of great people and real interactivity.
Cruise Docs
I dont understand the fascination with these. As far as I can tell, they are primarily useful for people who are not as comfortable with the internet side of things, because all the information is already in your account. They provide you with baggage tags, yes. And a duplicate of the legal language provided in your online contract (which you still have to print out and bring). Finally, they are a nice marker when they arrive in the mail that your cruise is almost there, but beyond that I dont see whats so exciting about them. A few people have stated real consternation when they dont arrive early on, and Im not sure Im not missing something, so maybe someone can chime in and add here.
Rant
Cabanas on
Castaway Cay. Seriously impossible to get. Twenty one cabanas for 4,000 guests? No wonder its a rip-roaring brawl to reserve them, even at the exorbitant cost. If they can add more without seriously impacting the environment of the island, I sure hope they start building soon. Castaway Cay is logistically well run, Disney does an amazing job with sanitation, food, tidiness, and guest services, but 4,000 people is a lot to descend on a small space. On our first cruise we disembarked at 10:00 and got two shaded seats at the back of the beach. On our second cruise we had a 90-year old and a 4-year old with us. We called them the bookends. Both took frequent naps...and vehemently denied it. We anticipated we would need plenty of shade (the naps happened in both cases), so my DH and DFiL disembarked when the ship doors opened and literally RAN to find a place where we could both watch the kids in the water and be close to the toilet. It worked, but it was a crap shoot...anyone elses spouse could have been smarter or faster or had a faster dad (of course, impossible!!!
).