Disney Cruises Competition Comparison

[eeyoremommy]

Oh geeze.....I so so so so soooooo want to try the Allure!
I haven't ever considered taking my kids on that though, since DCL just seems to be perfect for them. I might just look into it now though since you speak highly about the kids club. Plus, my son LOVES Shrek. Would a 4 year old boy and 2 year old girl enjoy it? They can't do the ice skating, rock climbing, flow riding etc....so I'm wondering what CAN they do.

When we sailed on the Allure, we had an Oceanview room (i.e. a porthole) that is comparable to DCL. Our DS was 7 at the time, and he loved that. He is small for his age and was not able to do the flow rider. He chose not to do the rock climbing wall. That was my fault. He saw how badly I was shaking after I did the zipline (he was too small for that too) and freaked out (I have a slight fear of heights. There is a carrousel on board your children could do. Even if they don't ice skate, they have two different ice shows. The parades with the characters are awesome. Adventure Ocean (the kids' club) does a pirate parade through the promenade which is so cute. There are Dreamworks movies on board. They have a diving show with the characters too. DS really enjoyed the Penguins and the other Madagascar characters. Even Po from Kung Fu Panda was there. The food was good, including Johnny Rockets for breakfast. My DS seems to think there would be enough for them. Depending on when you can travel and/or how far out you can book, I have seen some really good deals lately on it. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[justmestace]

I have to disagree with this. I did a side by side comparison on a 7 night cruise RT to Alaska out of Seattle. NCL came in $5k(as in Thousand) cheaper for a 2 bedroom balcony suite with butler and concierge vs DCL 1 bedroom suite with concierge. Almost identical itinerary. Ship size the same. As for beverages, a drink card on NCL is about $60 a week per person. Since I am the only one in the family that drinks soda, that's a no brainer. I do my own excursions with private companies vs ship's desk, so that's a wash. I could take the family to the most expensive restaurant on the NCL boat ($25 pp) every night and not eat up $5k. If I gamble it will be at most $100 and we'll spend about $300 on alcohol regardless of the ship. We never buy the overpriced pictures so there's no charge there. So you definitely can see that there is a significant difference regarding the bottom line.

This is exactly what we did. Sailed the NCL Pearl to Alaska in a Courtyard Villa, private concierge swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, viewing deck, hot and cold food all day, private dining room for lunch and breakfast.....DCL has NOTHING to compare.

But i have done a weekend on NCL and was soooo very disapointed and knewi would never want to do a longer cruise on them. So again what is fine to one person is sooooo not fineto another.

If you look around at trip reports, a weekend cruise on ANY cruiseline is going to be lacking in numerous ways. Shorter cruises, even the Disney 3 Night cruises, are more of a "party" cruise, a quick getaway, and I've basically discovered that no one really cares much about their behavior and attitude on those cruises. It's just not ideal to use a short cruise to judge something by.

We've done 3 NCL cruises, and had an AWESOME time on each of them, even though each ship was vastly different. The first was onboard a ship that's no longer in commission...very small....but the crew was like "instant family" from the moment we got onboard. Even the Captain was everywhere....friendly and outgoing.....
The others were larger ships, one mid-size and one huge....but they each had their plusses....and maybe even some minuses, but for us, there are also some minuses on Disney, too.

I've now done four Carnival cruises (two of them this summer already) and the newer Carnival ship, the Magic, was so beyond awesome in EVERY single way.....except for the lack of Mickey Mouse, this ship is already beyond even Disney's Fantasy.

I'm not surprised that this whole debate keeps going on and on and on......different threads, all saying the same thing.....this IS a Disney Board, afterall...it's obviously going to be biased.
Cruise Critic just listed their Top Ten favorite ships (Editor's Choice) and the only Disney ship on there is the Dream, and it's either number 8 or 9...I didn't memorize it.
So, from an unbiased standpoint, Disney still rates fairly high, which tells you that it is a good product. But there are others that are either just as good, or better.