Changes To Disney Cruise Ships After Restart

BadPinkTink

Republic of Ireland is not part of UK
Joined
Mar 13, 2015
Edit 23 July, these are the new changes to the Magic ship, expect the same changes on The Dream, Fantasy and Wonder

Theres been a lot of speculation as to what changes were made to The Magic during the dry dock during the Covid shut down.

This is new information from the first videos from the UK Test Cruise July 2021
  1. The lifts / elevator call buttons are now touchless. You just put your hand in front of the sensor to go up or down
  2. Cabanas is cafeteria style, where the cms serve the food
  3. Any doors to outside areas are now touchless, there is a sensor you place your hand in front of to open the door
 
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Me too..not booked on Disney until the Maiden of the Wish..scheduled to sail on the Celebrity Edge next Saturday..hopefully all goes well.
We are booked on the Magic Nov 13. First time sailing her. We wanted to complete the grand slam of the original ships prior to the Wish joining the fleet. Fingers crossed that can happen.

The Maiden voyage will be wonderful! We will sail on the Wish in Sept 2022.

I would really love to sail the Edge.....Post an update if you can.

I will keep looking for more videos of the Magic Staycation,

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread. 😉 Didn't mean to hijack it. :)
 
Loving the videos coming out from the test cruises. Ii have a feeling I'll be contacting my TA this weekend..I am liking the changes, I was already happy with hygiene etc preCovid, these extra changes are great to see..
 


bumping to the first page so that people can see what changes DCL have made to the ships after the restart
 
We watched some of a video, and it was great to see the Magic with cruisers enjoying a trip!

Looking forward to being on the Dream in, hopefully 71 days.
I just have to mention that we had to cancel the Dream cruise I referred to here for health reasons. Our next cruise is now Dream 3 night cruise on December 3, and we look forward to it!
 
Me too..not booked on Disney until the Maiden of the Wish..scheduled to sail on the Celebrity Edge next Saturday..hopefully all goes well.

I hope you enjoy the Edge. It is by far my favorite non-Disney ship!!
 
So how did it compare to DCL?
Right now it’s hard to compare…since there are no masks or social distancing on boards which is why we booked it…
This was our third Celebrity cruise after having sailed primarily Disney since ‘95 when my daughter was 5. I have been on 17 DCL cruises including longer itineraries in Europe, but now that my daughter is 21 and doesn’t really travel with us anymore we really love Celebrity. We are able to sail in a suite which we never did on DCL because we thought the prices were outrageous… we get the premium beverage package, WiFi, tips and a $600 OBC included with your suite( they call the retreat) there is also a suite only restaurant and a huge sun deck that has a bar and a pool at the front of the ship(at least on the Edge class currently) and a beautiful lounge. We had great weather so we spent a lot of time on the deck but there seemed to be a lot of activities available including trivia, lectures and tastings..no bingo though they have Deal or no deal instead. The decor on the Edge is modern but soothing…The production shows were not my cup of tea and the guest entertainers were mostly very good. The service was amazing. The food was outstanding. Overall we love Celebrity and think we have found our new line to sail. We have 5 sailings booked into 2023 and only the Maiden on the Wish. I’m glad we did all those Disney cruises and some were adults only but I think the value for us is with Celebrity…but who knows what the future will bring…that’s one thing the past 16 months has taught us…we were on the Wonder out of New Orleans on the 2/7/20 sailing …we certainly did not know what would be coming next.
 
So how did it compare to DCL?
There's a good comparison thread about DCL vs. Celebrity in general here: https://www.disboards.com/threads/dcl-vs-celebrity-comparison-greek-cruise.3840515/

I did the Edge's June 26th sailing and my tl;dr of the comparison is:

Pros:
- 100% normal on-board experience--no venue restrictions, no masks for guests, just normal. (Ports of call still had various masking requirements and other restrictions.)
- Newer ship, with very elegant design, and immaculately clean at all times
- Excellent food--better than DCL in pretty much every venue, but especially in the specialty restaurants
- Staff was top notch--as a baseline it was at least as good at DCL, but I had a few interactions which really impressed me beyond anything I had experienced on DCL.
- Drinks and WiFi included in the cruise fare.
- Far less expensive. We got a suite for less than we'd pay for a balcony cabin on DCL.

Cons:
- Activity schedule isn't nearly as full as DCL, but we were never bored
- Stage shows were good but not fantastic
- Very few kids, with relatively few kid-oriented activities (was a Pro for us, but I'm putting it here since it's a DCL audience here heh). I think older teenagers would have a good time (there were a fair number on our sailing).
- No characters and less overall personality on the ship. The spaces are elegant and very well designed, but the theming is very light.
- No good venue for movies, and the movie selection was pretty poor.

I really have nothing bad at all to say. If you want a great sailing experience and Disney-specific magic isn't that important then Celebrity is an excellent choice (maybe do a WDW visit before or after to make up for it).
 
There's a good comparison thread about DCL vs. Celebrity in general here: https://www.disboards.com/threads/dcl-vs-celebrity-comparison-greek-cruise.3840515/

I did the Edge's June 26th sailing and my tl;dr of the comparison is:

Pros:
- 100% normal on-board experience--no venue restrictions, no masks for guests, just normal. (Ports of call still had various masking requirements and other restrictions.)
- Newer ship, with very elegant design, and immaculately clean at all times
- Excellent food--better than DCL in pretty much every venue, but especially in the specialty restaurants
- Staff was top notch--as a baseline it was at least as good at DCL, but I had a few interactions which really impressed me beyond anything I had experienced on DCL.
- Drinks and WiFi included in the cruise fare.
- Far less expensive. We got a suite for less than we'd pay for a balcony cabin on DCL.

Cons:
- Activity schedule isn't nearly as full as DCL, but we were never bored
- Stage shows were good but not fantastic
- Very few kids, with relatively few kid-oriented activities (was a Pro for us, but I'm putting it here since it's a DCL audience here heh). I think older teenagers would have a good time (there were a fair number on our sailing).
- No characters and less overall personality on the ship. The spaces are elegant and very well designed, but the theming is very light.
- No good venue for movies, and the movie selection was pretty poor.

I really have nothing bad at all to say. If you want a great sailing experience and Disney-specific magic isn't that important then Celebrity is an excellent choice (maybe do a WDW visit before or after to make up for it).
This was excellent reporting. I just want to verify this was June /2021?
 
This was excellent reporting. I just want to verify this was June /2021?
Yes. (It was the first post-shutdown sailing from the US, although I've heard similar reviews from subsequent sailings as well.)
 
All of the ships went into dry dock in 2020, since they are starting back up changes are being revealed,
For the Dream we have seen,
Handwashing station now installed.
Booths removed from enchanted Gardens, guess it maybe the same for the Fantasy
Tiffany & Co. now removed will be replace with something else in the future. Same with the fantasy.

Share any updates that I may of missed on the Dream and include all the other ships once they restart. Anyone here is the vibration issues being fixed finally?
 
There's a good comparison thread about DCL vs. Celebrity in general here: https://www.disboards.com/threads/dcl-vs-celebrity-comparison-greek-cruise.3840515/

I did the Edge's June 26th sailing and my tl;dr of the comparison is:

Pros:
- 100% normal on-board experience--no venue restrictions, no masks for guests, just normal. (Ports of call still had various masking requirements and other restrictions.)
- Newer ship, with very elegant design, and immaculately clean at all times
- Excellent food--better than DCL in pretty much every venue, but especially in the specialty restaurants
- Staff was top notch--as a baseline it was at least as good at DCL, but I had a few interactions which really impressed me beyond anything I had experienced on DCL.
- Drinks and WiFi included in the cruise fare.
- Far less expensive. We got a suite for less than we'd pay for a balcony cabin on DCL.

Cons:
- Activity schedule isn't nearly as full as DCL, but we were never bored
- Stage shows were good but not fantastic
- Very few kids, with relatively few kid-oriented activities (was a Pro for us, but I'm putting it here since it's a DCL audience here heh). I think older teenagers would have a good time (there were a fair number on our sailing).
- No characters and less overall personality on the ship. The spaces are elegant and very well designed, but the theming is very light.
- No good venue for movies, and the movie selection was pretty poor.

I really have nothing bad at all to say. If you want a great sailing experience and Disney-specific magic isn't that important then Celebrity is an excellent choice (maybe do a WDW visit before or after to make up for it).
Does Celebrity have a dinner dress code? or cruise casual like DCL?
 

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