Disney Dream 9/18 - first cruise after shutdown

["Got Disney"]

ooops

 

[JM23457]

I think if you see TV advertising in July for Disney you’ll be going.

I think if you see TV advertising in July for Disney cruises you'll be hallucinating.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

I think if you see TV advertising in July for Disney cruises you'll be hallucinating.

Eh, maybe not. ABC sometimes run some of their Disney spots throughout the owned networks in house spots, and I don't know that the people who do inserts always think it through. They had some GE spots running on GMA in April.

 

[Snowwhyt]

I think if you see TV advertising in July for Disney cruises you'll be hallucinating.

From a marketing perspective, you don’t start advertising Christmas toys on December 24th. I think 2 months before they start to sail would be about right though.
although I don’t believe they will start to sale until after the vaccine is out or spring 2021. But I still think two months before is a good sign stuff is header in the right direction.

 

[mevelandry]

Yes, all true - but I am sensing that Disney is very unwilling to take a chance here, unless they'd be 100% certain that things will be safe... they'd rather have Carnival and RCCL be the "guinea pigs" and have them get any bad press for resuming activities potentially too quick. I did attend some training provided by Disney very recently and to say that safety is the business value that trumps everything else would be an understatement... and bad PR would not be that far behind...

Disney is in a much better position than other cruise lines. They do not count exclusively on sailings to make their brand survive. They only have 4 ships to care for which makes it much easier to just dock them than having to take care of 20+ ships.

 

[yowcruiser]

Disney is in a much better position than other cruise lines. They do not count exclusively on sailings to make their brand survive. They only have 4 ships to care for which makes it much easier to just dock them than having to take care of 20+ ships.

Agreed and as such they can "afford" to be more patient...

 

[SolitaryPhoenix]

didnt think of this! Kind of bummed because we are on the 10/2 dream. But how long was the scheduled dry dock? I wonder if that could get postponed. Wishful thinking

My family is booked on this cruise as well. Crossing fingers it doesn't get cancelled, but not optimistic.

 

[monkeydawn]

Although not likely, I'm clinging to that hope as well for ours. I know realistically the odds are against it but it's the only hope we have. The sorry part is we cannot even move it to next October because they won't release late 2021 itinerary. We normally do 7 nighters but the October dry dock this year really messed up the available 7 nighters for this October, so would really rather go next October when the 7 nighters are back to normal but nothing is available to book yet.

From the cancellation notices I read that people posted on here, they give you a few days until they automatically move your PIF cruise to an FFC "account". During those few days prior to the auto FFC, you can move your whole cancelled PIF cruise plus the extra 25% to a future cruise. If you don't do anything within the first few days, they auto move your cancelled cruise to an FFC "account", they then refund back your taxes and fees. I'd rather move the whole PIF amount plus FFC to a future cruise and not mess with the refunded taxes/fees portion but if they don't have late 2021 out, might have to go that route. Just want to avoid digging through hundreds of gift cards to find out which ones they credited the taxes and fees back to.

I dont like your odds for sailing (very sorry). I dont think any DCL will be up by then but I really dont see them paying for training and quarantine for a ship's crew for just five weeks of run time before dry dock. Especially for a ship that wont be full. The only chance I maybe see of this happening is if the other three ships are sailing then and they figure they are going to need a decent number of replacement crew for those that get sick on the other three ships, then maybe its worth paying for that quarantine and training time just to have subs at the ready.

But why I quoted you was to say that I'd probably just tell them I no longer have the gift cards and ask for new ones to be issued. There have been a few reported instances of them just mailing out new GCs if requested.

 

[robomeister]

I'm wondering why DCL still has the 2020 Mexican Riviera and EBPC cruises still available to book. Are they planning on sending the Wonder back to the west coast to do those? That is an expensive move just to do a few cruises. There are lots of staterooms available on those cruises.

 

[T & R]

I dont like your odds for sailing (very sorry). I dont think any DCL will be up by then but I really dont see them paying for training and quarantine for a ship's crew for just five weeks of run time before dry dock. Especially for a ship that wont be full. The only chance I maybe see of this happening is if the other three ships are sailing then and they figure they are going to need a decent number of replacement crew for those that get sick on the other three ships, then maybe its worth paying for that quarantine and training time just to have subs at the ready.

But why I quoted you was to say that I'd probably just tell them I no longer have the gift cards and ask for new ones to be issued. There have been a few reported instances of them just mailing out new GCs if requested.

I go back and forth with that rationale. Sometimes I feel like why would DCL bother with those 5 or 8 cruises. But then I think that's approx $20 million in revenue for the company for those few cruises. They don't stay in business because they see a $20 million dollar bill laying on the ground and just walk by and leave it. So they could either do them for the revenue or do them because they would have those crews trained up and available to use on the other ships just like they had planned already to do with them when they scheduled the dry dock last year. They didn't plan on the Wonder and Magic being out of action, so they could use the crew from the Dream when it goes to dry dock to start back up one of the classic ships with an instantly available crew.

As far as my Disney gift cards, no exaggeration, I literally have several hundred gift cards just thrown in a box. I do not throw them away but also don't really categorize which were spent on what. They're kind of pain to use rather than just using a credit card but we use them for both the cruise and the onboard spending. So I'm estimating we've saved approximately $4k just in the last couple of years when I learned of the discounted gift cards thing. Plus I use my American Airlines credit card to buy the discounted giftcards to I'm getting my air miles anyway. A few more years and using the gift cards will have essentially paid for one of our cruises. We got that part down, now if we can just get the cruises to start back up again.

 

[monkeydawn]

I go back and forth with that rationale. Sometimes I feel like why would DCL bother with those 5 or 8 cruises. But then I think that's approx $20 million in revenue for the company for those few cruises. They don't stay in business because they see a $20 million dollar bill laying on the ground and just walk by and leave it. So they could either do them for the revenue or do them because they would have those crews trained up and available to use on the other ships just like they had planned already to do with them when they scheduled the dry dock last year. They didn't plan on the Wonder and Magic being out of action, so they could use the crew from the Dream when it goes to dry dock to start back up one of the classic ships with an instantly available crew.

As far as my Disney gift cards, no exaggeration, I literally have several hundred gift cards just thrown in a box. I do not throw them away but also don't really categorize which were spent on what. They're kind of pain to use rather than just using a credit card but we use them for both the cruise and the onboard spending. So I'm estimating we've saved approximately $4k just in the last couple of years when I learned of the discounted gift cards thing. Plus I use my American Airlines credit card to buy the discounted giftcards to I'm getting my air miles anyway. A few more years and using the gift cards will have essentially paid for one of our cruises. We got that part down, now if we can just get the cruises to start back up again.

I understood that you still had the GCs but that you had a bunch of them. That's why I would fib and say I no longer have them (if you are getting only a small refund due to port fees, etc.). Others have reported getting fresh cards when they no longer have the originals. I wouldnt let them know you have options but at least you arent SOL if they say no, you will just have a lot of digging to do.