DCL carry-on alcohol policy changing Sept. 30 2015

[Maggie'sMom]

Will they allow you to bring your own cork? $25 seems an outrageous for someone to pull the cork out of a bottle I am going to have in my room.

The corkage fee only applies if you bring the bottle of wine to the MDR. There's no corkage fee for a bottle you have in your stateroom. Your stateroom host can supply glasses and a corkscrew.

 

[Ofinn]

Agreed. DF is a great source for a lot of good info; however there is another hugely frequent poster who always chimes in, usually with a guess about an answer just to get a post, sometimes telling us how she breaks the rules, then talking down to others about how they should follow the rules. I finally figured out how to ignore her, and reading posts here is much better now.

I have too much fun disagreeing with DF to ignore him.

 

[FLVacationGirl]

I cc'd Karl Holz on my 2nd email regarding the policy changes and received a call from DCL today. They are willing to refund my group on the non-refundable concierge portion of our deposit if we cancel our booking of 8 staterooms.

 

[MsMulan]

The corkage fee only applies if you bring the bottle of wine to the MDR. There's no corkage fee for a bottle you have in your stateroom. Your stateroom host can supply glasses and a corkscrew.

I"m happy to hear this. This will be a honeymoon cruise for me and DH (by then). I was beginning to feel as if I made a mistake booking this trip.

 

[SirDuff]

I cc'd Karl Holz on my 2nd email regarding the policy changes and received a call from DCL today. They are willing to refund my group on the non-refundable concierge portion of our deposit if we cancel our booking of 8 staterooms.

And will you? I assume that you are outside of the PIF date.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

As far as I know, the only way to buy a bottle of liquor onboard is at the duty free shop, and you can't drink that in your stateroom - it will be held until you disembark.

Not cancelling what I have but I am going to try other cruise lines (cheaper cruise lines)

 

[littleblackegg]

This is a classic example of "solving for X". While your explanation of the 45 days does make some sense, you completely overlooked the timing of the rollout of the new rules. They could have announced the new rules on September 1st at which point the 45 days would have been in the middle of October. They also could have announced the new rules in the beginning of July making the 45 days in the middle of August. You are overlooking the reasoning behind why September 30 is the operative date. And the financial explanation really does make the most sense. Your explanation more or less assumes that the mid August announcement date of the new rules was rather random, and that the 45-day period for the sending out of paperwork just happens to fall on September 30th. In reality they likely wanted the new policy to take effect after September 30, and then counted backwards 45 days to announce the new rule.

Could they have timed the announcement to correlate with the D23 Expo? I know Disney made lots of announcements right around that week, albeit mostly park developments.

 

[littleblackegg]

And will you? I assume that you are outside of the PIF date.

That's big news. There's another person with a group of rooms (outside PIF) who wants to cancel but feels she is locked into a vacation she can no longer afford. I wonder if she will be able to get the same courtesy.

 

[Maggie'sMom]

Could they have timed the announcement to correlate with the D23 Expo? I know Disney made lots of announcements right around that week, albeit mostly park developments.

I don't think it's a coincidence that they announced it the day after D23 ended rather than the week before D23, but other than that I don't think there is any correlation.

 

[littleblackegg]

Agreed. DF is a great source for a lot of good info; however there is another hugely frequent poster who always chimes in, usually with a guess about an answer just to get a post, sometimes telling us how she breaks the rules, then talking down to others about how they should follow the rules. I finally figured out how to ignore her, and reading posts here is much better now.

Maybe she's had a stroke.

 

[littleblackegg]

I don't think it's a coincidence that they announced it the day after D23 ended rather than the week before D23, but other than that I don't think there is any correlation.

Solid logic. Ruffles and sangria?

 

[littleblackegg]

Most major, and many not so major, companies keep a very close watch on social media. Especially companies involved in customer service. Really, anyone who thinks this is not the case is living in the dark ages. A company the size of Disney very likely has a social media department whose job is to monitor and post to the various social media sites. I do feel that they are one of the weakest companies in terms of direct response on social media, but that does not mean they aren't watching. Most other companies are very quick to offer a direct response to a client issue that is posted on fb or twitter. Especially twitter. For example, we had issues with Comcast Cable. My DH blew up their @comcastcares twitter to the point where we were given an executive CS number to call whenever we had a problem. Companies do not want to be blasted on social media in a day an age when brand name is so important.

Man, Snuggles the Fabric Softener bear was totally livid about that Perez Hilton story with the toilet paper bears. It was a SCANDAL.

 

[bumbershoot]

--They outsourced much of their IT to another country recently, IIRC

Naw. That article was about things that happened almost a year ago, and only the end of it was about people with special Visas (which meant those employees were being paid to move HERE, and being paid bigtime b/c those Visas aren't cheap and are given to people who are seriously good at their jobs...but mentioning those Visas in the article wasn't as linked to the Disney situation as I would like, and felt a bit more like one of those articles written at a time when an article like that needed to be written for political reasons), and the article never proved that it was IT. It was in Orlando, first, which isn't where IT is from what I know of job situations in the Seattle area. And it was described as "monitoring computers". There were a few quotes from people who had been told in October that they needed to start getting new jobs, and hadn't by January, and, honestly, if someone has that much lead time and hasn't started looking for jobs yet...I'm not going to 100% trust what they say about their situation.

--Their websites (for WDW and DCL, for example) have been hilariously bad, seemingly forever

YES, always.

--They like to pretend that the internet doesn't exist and that people don't share information, such as acting surprised when everyone eventually expected to have a million random objects signed on board

So very much yes.

 

[over50visits]

The corkage fee only applies if you bring the bottle of wine to the MDR. There's no corkage fee for a bottle you have in your stateroom. Your stateroom host can supply glasses and a corkscrew.

You do need to supply your own cork

 

[jetskigrl]

Interesting...I just received my second "helpful hints for your upcoming cruise" email from DCL. The first ones were received on Aug 7th & 12th (B2B cruises). Now they just resent the one for the first leg of the B2B with all the exact same information, but now it includes:

"In addition, please be sure to review our recently revised alcohol policy" with a link to the new policy.

I'm guessing since we sail on October 11th, there may be a lot of issues at the port with people that haven't noticed the new policy yet. And it definitely doesn't look like they care about all the complaints either since they are making of point of getting the new policy out to those with cruises coming up.

 

[JimmyV]

Could they have timed the announcement to correlate with the D23 Expo? I know Disney made lots of announcements right around that week, albeit mostly park developments.

Not a chance. The D23 Expo is the place for Disney to make happy-happy, joy-joy announcements. Not the time to bring everyone down or create controversy. I think the fiscal quarter coupled with the 45 day paperwork explanation is sound.

 

[steves100]

I don't think it's a coincidence that they announced it the day after D23 ended rather than the week before D23, but other than that I don't think there is any correlation.

I agree with you D23 is supposed to be a HAPPY event, just ask Capt Jack

 

[steves100]

I agree with you D23 is supposed to be a HAPPY event, just ask Capt Jack

Kind of ironic, Johnny Dell said WE were his boss, but obviously Disney doesn't feel the same way, atleast with alcohol!

 

[steves100]

Kind of ironic, Johnny Dell said WE were his boss, but obviously Disney doesn't feel the same way, atleast with alcohol!

Depp. Stupid spell check!

 

[bumbershoot]

The D23 Expo is the place for Disney to make happy-happy, joy-joy announcements. Not the time to bring everyone down or create controversy.

Perfect timing. Everyone's focusing on all these things that normal people find joyful, then they spring things and hope some don't notice.


This whole thing just makes me so sad. Not for me, I really don't care *for me*. We brought a bunch of wine on simply because I was gifting a bunch of Oregon wine my aunt can't get, and we met up on the cruise. I brought some 22oz bottles of beer from the same microbrewery/winery/microdistillery for us, too. She and I got through ONE bottle of wine together, and maybe a bottle of beer. Took the rest right back off. I'm the only one in my little family that drinks, and 2 bottles for a cruise is perfectly enough for me. Only time my wine left the room was while walking directly to my aunt's room, while the rest of our families went and watched the shows. On that cruise I actually bought a glass of wine in the dining room, despite having like 6 bottles in my room. (the two families chose to not sit together at dinner, in hopes that it would allow the kids to eat and not play, so we didn't meet up that night for a drink, and since I was giving her the wine I didn't feel OK just drinking some before dinner)

But I just HATE that it's been changed for others who took advantage.