LollieFollie
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2011
- Messages
- 132
This was our second cruise with Disney. Last year we got a surprise trip from the Grandparents to go on a 4 night to the Bahamas on the Wonder. I had hardly any time to prepare and had no idea what to expect. It was the BEST trip we have ever taken!!! Before we were off the boat last summer we knew that we absolutely wanted to go on another Disney Cruise as soon as possible.
As soon as we booked our 5 night double dip on the Dream I started looking around on the internet for tips to get the most out of our cruise and quickly found the Dis boards. These boards have been an amazing resouce and wealth of information!!
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I joined our Cruise Meet threat and decided to participate in the FE Exchange. For those of you that have never done it, DO IT! My kids had so much fun checking to see what was in their pockets every time we went back to the cabin and it was so fun to explore the ship and track down the other cabins participating and sneak in our treats.
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If I had nothing to compare it too, I would have given our cruise 2 big green thumbs up.
...but...
In comparison to our cruise last summer on the Wonder I missed a lot of "Disney" touches. Disney sets the bar high, and once you come to expect their exceptional service and attention to detail anything short of that stands out like a neon sign.
We had a Deluxe family oceanview stateroom with veranda, room 8144. It was just around the corner from the laundry room. I was worried that there would be extra traffic and noise because of that but it was not an issue at all. In fact, it was very handy. We were close to Aft elevators but convenient to Midship elevators as well. Our room was spacious and beautiful. The verandah was wonderful but not oversized. Our stateroom host, O'dell aka the Whatsup Man, was fantastic. The room was always tidy, he made at least 1 towel animal every night and left chocolates on the beds.
Our dining rotation was EG, RP, AP, AP and RP but we did Palo's on the first night and Remy on the 4th (Pirate) night. This is where the problems came in. Our servers were Jersen from Hondouras and Lisette from Spain. I don't know where the disconnect was but we did not have a good experience with them. I wanted to, I REALLY, REALLY wanted to but they were off every.single.night. I don't know if the fact that we were not at dinner for the first night threw them off, although since I made reservations for Palo online months ago I would assume that they would have been prepared for that. It seemed like they were inconvenienced or offended that we didn't come to dinner the first night. There were constant language barriers which is odd because my husband is fluent in spanish. My food at Royal Palace was sub par. My appetizer of the spinach souflfe was way over cooked and the cheese sauce over it was cold and congealed. I know that it must be very challenging to feed over 4,000 people at one time so my expectations were not high. My husband had the lobster appetizer and it did not taste fresh to me, at all. My 8 year old wanted to try escargot and we all agreed that it was good.
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She also had the cream of mushroom soup which really good. I ordered the filet for my entree. It came with a potato side and a reduction sauce. The sauce was burned, plain and simple. I would have never said anything about it and just eaten the steak and potato (which were both yummy) without the sauce but our server just happened to be at the table when I took my first bite and he could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong. I tried to tell him that the sauce was burned but that it was okay, I would eat the rest of the dish without the sauce. But no, no, no he insisted that he take it back and bring me another one. Now, honestly, I would have rather kept my plate. It rubbed me the wrong way that he insisted on bringing me another one. But I knew that he had good intentions and just wanted me to enjoy my dinner. So 5 minutes later he brings out a plate with the steak and potato only and the sauce reduction in a separate bowl and said "the chef said the sauce is good, this is what a reduction taste like."
Great. Little did Jersen know, and little did the chef know, but I like to cook. I know how to cook. And I know what a balsamic reduction should and should not taste like. And I can promise you that I didn't pay $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to sit at our dining room table on the Disney Dream to debate it. The whole ordeal, which should have been a complete non-issue, completely set the tone for every other meal. All of our other dinners in the main dining rooms were awkward and uncomfortable and very un-Disneylike.
My husband ended up saying something in passing to our (fabulous) waitress at breakfast the next morning and she said something to Simone who was the Head Server, Dining Room Manager, I'm not exactly sure what his title is. Either way, he was the guy above Jersen and Lisette. I was uncomfortable talking to him because I knew that they would get in trouble and it wasn't really their fault. Granted they brought my kids the wrong drinks, I never got a refill on my water and they had zero interaction with my kids at dinner but I could tell that both Jersen and Lisette seemed to be under at lot of stress and I felt like they were nervous wrecks trying to be perfect that kept them from being relaxed and natural. I knew that saying anything other than praise and compliments would only make things worse.
So, for dinner the next night we went to AP. We had a fantastic table (which Simone was very quick to point out to us, to make sure we knew they were trying to make us happy) right next to one of the screens where Crush comes out and talks.
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Before I looked at the menu I noticed the table next to us had several orders of fried calamari. I had no idea it wasn't on the menu, I swear. My kids happen to love fried calamari so when Jersen came by to take our order I mentioned that I was excited about the calamari. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I could see the panic on his face. Calamari wasn't on the menu. The table next to us had put in a special request for it the night before. I told him it was fine, no big deal, but again, he was insistent that he was going to do something about it. So he comes back and says that tomorrow night he would have calamari especially for us. Great, except we aren't eating in the dining room tomorrow night, we have reservations at Remy. Which again, were made months in advance online and I'm positive that they have record of that. So then he goes off again, comes back with Simone, they are acting like we're having an emergency when all the while, I've said "HEY, IT IS NO BIG DEAL YOU DON'T HAVE CALAMARI." Simone tells us that we can have calamari on the last night. Okay, awesome. Let's just order our food and enjoy the show at Animators. I don't even remember now what we got for appetizers or entrees but they were good. The food was much better at AP. Except for halfway through our meal, Simone makes this big production of bring out a covered plate of, you guessed it, CALAMARI! I'm about to break out in the hives at this point. I do not enjoy unnecessary attention. I do not like to feel like people are falling over themselves trying to please me when I don't have a problem to begin with. I like for servers, bar tenders, wait staff in general to feel relaxed, pull up a chair, chit-chat and get to know us. And they totally missed the mark. It was like a run-a-way train I could not get back on track.
So on top of all of this drama over the calamari, again, zero attention to my kids and all of our drinks were empty. That's what I care about. Not special order calamari or a burned sauce. I care that my kids feel like special little princesses.
That they are having the most magical time possible. 
And we just could not get them to understand that. 
They also didn't understand the dine and play deal with the kids club. The CM's in the club told us to let our servers know that we wanted to do the dine and play. They looked like they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. But my husband I kept an eye out for the CM's and walked the girls over to go play. Once I got back to the table I was ready to enjoy an adult drink
and some adult time with my husband 
. There is a notation on the dessert menu that says something like "be sure to ask your servers for one of our delicious coffee drinks made with specialty liquers" so, we did. They had no idea what we were talking about. They took the menu from us, read it to each other, gave it back, got all flustered, looked at us like we had 3 heads until my husband was like, you know what? I'll just take an irish coffee. They didn't know what that was either. I think he ended up with just a plain cup of coffee. I ordered a Cosmo, which thank the Lord they knew how to make!
It was so good!! But I didn't care to order a dessert, I just wanted a bite of my husbands. Jersen seemed so offended that I didn't want dessert. "How about if I make you a special small icecream sundae?" "Maybe you would like to try the trio of desserts?" This isn't the straw market, I don't want to be haggled! I just want to drink my Cosmo, thankyouverymuch. Anyway...
Our 3rd dinner was at EG. This was the last night of the cruise and the kids decided they wanted room service and to go to the kids club instead of dinner. We get to our table and sure enough, there is a gigantic plate of calamari, some crab legs and fresh bruschetta. It was really good but again, I felt like they were offended that the kids weren't at dinner with us. I only wanted the Tuna appetizer. After the calamari and crab legs and bruschetta I wasn't that hungry. It just blew my servers mind that I didn't want anything else. He asked if I wanted it before my husbands entree or with his meal and I said "Whatever is easier for you, I don't have a preference." But he was so stressed out. I guess I could have just ordered an entree to make him happy but honestly, I'm proud of myself for making some healthier eating habits recently and have lost 25 lbs. Not eating when you are not hungry is a big part of that. Anyway, I wanted a glass of wine and DH wanted a rum and coke with a lime. Lisette could not understand what he wanted, at all. Eventually she figured out what rum meant? and (I think) asked him what kind he wanted. Captian Morgans he said. What does she bring back? A glass of Captian Morgans and a plate of lime slices. 
It's comical at this point.
Okay, more to come later. We really did have a great cruise and I'll share those parts next!
As soon as we booked our 5 night double dip on the Dream I started looking around on the internet for tips to get the most out of our cruise and quickly found the Dis boards. These boards have been an amazing resouce and wealth of information!!
I joined our Cruise Meet threat and decided to participate in the FE Exchange. For those of you that have never done it, DO IT! My kids had so much fun checking to see what was in their pockets every time we went back to the cabin and it was so fun to explore the ship and track down the other cabins participating and sneak in our treats.
If I had nothing to compare it too, I would have given our cruise 2 big green thumbs up.
...but...In comparison to our cruise last summer on the Wonder I missed a lot of "Disney" touches. Disney sets the bar high, and once you come to expect their exceptional service and attention to detail anything short of that stands out like a neon sign.
We had a Deluxe family oceanview stateroom with veranda, room 8144. It was just around the corner from the laundry room. I was worried that there would be extra traffic and noise because of that but it was not an issue at all. In fact, it was very handy. We were close to Aft elevators but convenient to Midship elevators as well. Our room was spacious and beautiful. The verandah was wonderful but not oversized. Our stateroom host, O'dell aka the Whatsup Man, was fantastic. The room was always tidy, he made at least 1 towel animal every night and left chocolates on the beds.
Our dining rotation was EG, RP, AP, AP and RP but we did Palo's on the first night and Remy on the 4th (Pirate) night. This is where the problems came in. Our servers were Jersen from Hondouras and Lisette from Spain. I don't know where the disconnect was but we did not have a good experience with them. I wanted to, I REALLY, REALLY wanted to but they were off every.single.night. I don't know if the fact that we were not at dinner for the first night threw them off, although since I made reservations for Palo online months ago I would assume that they would have been prepared for that. It seemed like they were inconvenienced or offended that we didn't come to dinner the first night. There were constant language barriers which is odd because my husband is fluent in spanish. My food at Royal Palace was sub par. My appetizer of the spinach souflfe was way over cooked and the cheese sauce over it was cold and congealed. I know that it must be very challenging to feed over 4,000 people at one time so my expectations were not high. My husband had the lobster appetizer and it did not taste fresh to me, at all. My 8 year old wanted to try escargot and we all agreed that it was good.
She also had the cream of mushroom soup which really good. I ordered the filet for my entree. It came with a potato side and a reduction sauce. The sauce was burned, plain and simple. I would have never said anything about it and just eaten the steak and potato (which were both yummy) without the sauce but our server just happened to be at the table when I took my first bite and he could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong. I tried to tell him that the sauce was burned but that it was okay, I would eat the rest of the dish without the sauce. But no, no, no he insisted that he take it back and bring me another one. Now, honestly, I would have rather kept my plate. It rubbed me the wrong way that he insisted on bringing me another one. But I knew that he had good intentions and just wanted me to enjoy my dinner. So 5 minutes later he brings out a plate with the steak and potato only and the sauce reduction in a separate bowl and said "the chef said the sauce is good, this is what a reduction taste like."
Great. Little did Jersen know, and little did the chef know, but I like to cook. I know how to cook. And I know what a balsamic reduction should and should not taste like. And I can promise you that I didn't pay $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to sit at our dining room table on the Disney Dream to debate it. The whole ordeal, which should have been a complete non-issue, completely set the tone for every other meal. All of our other dinners in the main dining rooms were awkward and uncomfortable and very un-Disneylike.My husband ended up saying something in passing to our (fabulous) waitress at breakfast the next morning and she said something to Simone who was the Head Server, Dining Room Manager, I'm not exactly sure what his title is. Either way, he was the guy above Jersen and Lisette. I was uncomfortable talking to him because I knew that they would get in trouble and it wasn't really their fault. Granted they brought my kids the wrong drinks, I never got a refill on my water and they had zero interaction with my kids at dinner but I could tell that both Jersen and Lisette seemed to be under at lot of stress and I felt like they were nervous wrecks trying to be perfect that kept them from being relaxed and natural. I knew that saying anything other than praise and compliments would only make things worse.
So, for dinner the next night we went to AP. We had a fantastic table (which Simone was very quick to point out to us, to make sure we knew they were trying to make us happy) right next to one of the screens where Crush comes out and talks.
Before I looked at the menu I noticed the table next to us had several orders of fried calamari. I had no idea it wasn't on the menu, I swear. My kids happen to love fried calamari so when Jersen came by to take our order I mentioned that I was excited about the calamari. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I could see the panic on his face. Calamari wasn't on the menu. The table next to us had put in a special request for it the night before. I told him it was fine, no big deal, but again, he was insistent that he was going to do something about it. So he comes back and says that tomorrow night he would have calamari especially for us. Great, except we aren't eating in the dining room tomorrow night, we have reservations at Remy. Which again, were made months in advance online and I'm positive that they have record of that. So then he goes off again, comes back with Simone, they are acting like we're having an emergency when all the while, I've said "HEY, IT IS NO BIG DEAL YOU DON'T HAVE CALAMARI." Simone tells us that we can have calamari on the last night. Okay, awesome. Let's just order our food and enjoy the show at Animators. I don't even remember now what we got for appetizers or entrees but they were good. The food was much better at AP. Except for halfway through our meal, Simone makes this big production of bring out a covered plate of, you guessed it, CALAMARI! I'm about to break out in the hives at this point. I do not enjoy unnecessary attention. I do not like to feel like people are falling over themselves trying to please me when I don't have a problem to begin with. I like for servers, bar tenders, wait staff in general to feel relaxed, pull up a chair, chit-chat and get to know us. And they totally missed the mark. It was like a run-a-way train I could not get back on track.
So on top of all of this drama over the calamari, again, zero attention to my kids and all of our drinks were empty. That's what I care about. Not special order calamari or a burned sauce. I care that my kids feel like special little princesses.
That they are having the most magical time possible. And we just could not get them to understand that. They also didn't understand the dine and play deal with the kids club. The CM's in the club told us to let our servers know that we wanted to do the dine and play. They looked like they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. But my husband I kept an eye out for the CM's and walked the girls over to go play. Once I got back to the table I was ready to enjoy an adult drink and some adult time with my husband . There is a notation on the dessert menu that says something like "be sure to ask your servers for one of our delicious coffee drinks made with specialty liquers" so, we did. They had no idea what we were talking about. They took the menu from us, read it to each other, gave it back, got all flustered, looked at us like we had 3 heads until my husband was like, you know what? I'll just take an irish coffee. They didn't know what that was either. I think he ended up with just a plain cup of coffee. I ordered a Cosmo, which thank the Lord they knew how to make! It was so good!! But I didn't care to order a dessert, I just wanted a bite of my husbands. Jersen seemed so offended that I didn't want dessert. "How about if I make you a special small icecream sundae?" "Maybe you would like to try the trio of desserts?" This isn't the straw market, I don't want to be haggled! I just want to drink my Cosmo, thankyouverymuch. Anyway...Our 3rd dinner was at EG. This was the last night of the cruise and the kids decided they wanted room service and to go to the kids club instead of dinner. We get to our table and sure enough, there is a gigantic plate of calamari, some crab legs and fresh bruschetta. It was really good but again, I felt like they were offended that the kids weren't at dinner with us. I only wanted the Tuna appetizer. After the calamari and crab legs and bruschetta I wasn't that hungry. It just blew my servers mind that I didn't want anything else. He asked if I wanted it before my husbands entree or with his meal and I said "Whatever is easier for you, I don't have a preference." But he was so stressed out. I guess I could have just ordered an entree to make him happy but honestly, I'm proud of myself for making some healthier eating habits recently and have lost 25 lbs. Not eating when you are not hungry is a big part of that. Anyway, I wanted a glass of wine and DH wanted a rum and coke with a lime. Lisette could not understand what he wanted, at all. Eventually she figured out what rum meant
? and (I think) asked him what kind he wanted. Captian Morgans he said. What does she bring back? A glass of Captian Morgans and a plate of lime slices. It's comical at this point. Okay, more to come later. We really did have a great cruise and I'll share those parts next!
so I was all stressed out with wardrobe issues but finally my husband said, "Wear another dress and I'll borrow a sports coat from the restaurant, who cares, let's just go enjoy dinner." Brilliant. So we did just that, and boy did we ever enjoy dinner. As I mentioned before, I like to cook. And I have an appreciation for well prepared dished and enjoy trying new foods. I personally thought the food served at Remy's was some of the best prepared dishes I have ever had. The service was very formal but friendly, not stuffy at all. The staff was incredibly warm and relaxed. The first thing they do is prepare a signature cocktail called the Collette. It has muddled raspberries, pear vodka (I think), champagne and they finish it with some chopped dried apricots for flavor and also the sugar in the fruit causes the champagne to bubble. It was a nice drink and the presentation was fun to watch. 
LOVE cheese 
and we got a little bit of a Parent Fail for mostly skipping out on that. We grabbed the kids and raced back to our room to catch the fireworks, only to figure out that we couldn't see them from our verandah.
Looking forward to reading more.
