We had an overall great time. Was i thrilled to miss doing the parks due to the delay - No! At least our flight situation worked out.
So many decided to do self disembark. we had already set out our bags, ran back to cabin after the initial announcement of a delay but they were already taken. That's what i get for being efficient lol. The line for the self disembark was a zoo, many guests refusing to leave their bags in the atrium. Let's just say the guests were a huge part of that particular problem, plenty of meltdowns were in evidence. Normal circular area taken up by a 'sea' of bags/people when we went down to the area around 9 am. Sat at the bar and chilled until they opened back up the luncheon buffet
.
No issues at all with toilet, cabin AC issues (we are well-versed with 'fiddling' with AC dials lol) or any smells. Dummies in cabin before us locked the safe when they left. Maintenance in cabin to unlock within 15 min of our phone call & the desk called to make sure it had been performed to our satisfaction. Our cabin was absolutely immaculate. If it weren't I'd have been on the phone with housekeeping, same as anywhere else.
Only unusual motion we felt was sitting in O'Gills watching Pens beat the Senators. Joking dubbed it vibrating chair effect. \/
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lol! I do feel bad for the people on board, apparently theres been issues with AC and toilets the whole time as well as weird vibrating.
There was also a stop in Freeport for medical reason.
Other than the injured child whom i assume wasn't critical or they'd have life-flighted him off the ship (best wishes there!). It was A non-event really. If they hadn't have announced we were diverting, wouldn't have known until we say the lights in Freeport.
Latest report is that they now are not docking till 11am, with first passengers off at 12:30pm.
That was the self-disembark. Ship cleared for others later. We didn't exit until closer to 1:30 pm. No sense to hurry at that point as the day was basically shot.
You get what you pay for! Was this an inexpensive cruise?
Are you kidding me? LOL NO. Any CC double dip is a premium
She should go to Disney for the day instead of waiting at the airport
Well that was our plan after disembarking
This has been called an unexpected mechanical issue. I don't believe it has anything to do with something that was worked on/added during dry dock. Something like this could have happened last month or 3 months down the road.
The mechanical issues have been mentioned for some time. Was surprised to read it wasn't being addressed in the rehab. Sounded like intermittent pod propulsion issues . I'm just glad we weren't dead in water & tugged all the way back into port. I was told one was not working, causing the issue.
As for the brown trail when embarking, likely sediment in the channel.
From reading this thread from the beginning I think there are 4 or 5 groups of.people.
1 group basically says it's Disney, nothing should ever break, I paid way too much to be inconvenienced, by a mechanical breakdown that Disney should.have known about and avoided.
2, Disney didn't do enough or inform us enough.
3. Disney did what they could under the circumstances.
4. Another adventure in the books. To quote my friend, life's amazing adventure continues.
The point I'm making is this. If it's made by man it will fail. Maybe at the most inopportune time. Same thing Neptune was trying to say.
As far as I can tell
DCL owned the problem. They said weve had a malfunction. Well take care of rescheduling Disney air. If you didn't book thru us, gs will help. This is me but I think where the issue comes in is that some weren't getting info as fast as they thought they should.Or if they were in their cabins they may have missed it. In the age of ordering pizza and groceries with an app, and being able to track it real time people think someone can snap their fingers and the problem goes away. The impression I get is that Commodore Tom or one of the officers should have been sitting next to them the whole time, with a play by play.
Heres the issue. Something breaks. The head engineer on duty, gives everything a once over to establish what the problem is. Then he/she calls the bridge and informs them. Then the bridge calls the Capt, and Chief engineer. The cheng and the engineering team start trouble shooting to find the exact extent of the damage. At this point, all the Capt knows is something broke. The cheng calls the bridge and says, this is what we got, this is whats left, this is what the power plant can give you.It may be `10 minutes, it could be 3 hours. Its a case by case. Capt gets on the PA says well be late, this is whats being done. Dept heads are woken up and things start to move to support the plan. All of this takes time. Meanwhile, the engineering team is hard at work getting all of the details they need, and I'm sure there was a call to 200 Celebration for shoreside engineering support. Who in turn more then likely called Germany for more technical help. The whole time the ship is coming in, the engineers, are earning there money. Shore support is calling with instructions. Germany or whoever built the broken system is calling for info. Now they have a ballpark on what it will take to fix completely. Again, this could be an hour later or 5 hours later. I can pretty much gty that no engineer that night got any sleep. They could even be breaking down the broken parts, so the new can be dropped in when the ship drops lines to the pier. Ship comes in. Now either temporary repairs are made or permanent repairs are made, depending on what happened. Office says new sail time 6 pm based on current info. Incase heres the new itin. Parts go in, what ever broke gets tested and ok everything seems to be ok. Now, theres a group of alphabet soup organizations that gets involved. The CG will come aboard and ask what happened, what did you do, lets see it. That takes time. Now, the ships insurance gets involved. Who what where when how. They have to give an approval. Now the shipping class gets involved. And the list goes on. All it takes is for 1 group to say no, and its game over. That's also assuming that whatever the fix was worked and a new problem didn't pop up. And then the process starts all over again.
unless you were actually there, you cannot grasp what others experienced or felt.
Many were first-time cruisers and parents trying to wrangle their kids. When you're stressed it's a whole 'nuther ball game, trust me.
Disney made one announcement and said that's it until the morning. We didn't catch that we could sleep in or we would've. Why the heck there was no letter on the fishie that night is beyond me, especially considering the volume of crap you get each day!
In that regard i was dis-satisfied. Morning announcement made after we were on way to breakfast.
Regardless, the event has no major bearing on whether i would book another DCL cruise. We had already decided the price paid for the cruise wasn't 'worth it' to us, especially as we felt the MDR food quality had dipped since our last cruise. MGM = Mouse Got my Money already, I'm a lifer and will still be handing over fistfuls of $$$ to Disney in some fashion.
DCL's communication to the guests onboard was a "fail-boat". All information we were 'told' came directly from GS, obtained after waiting in a long line after the initial announcement that was very garbled sounding in O'Gills:
*GS had no information, nor a hand out to explain, their solution was to wait for the AM announcement. Captain being so 'kind' as to not want to disturb anybody with further announcements. Seriously, that is laughable.
*we already had our luggage out & collected prior to the announcement. Were told no way could we get it back to self-disembark
*told we still had to vacate our cabin by 8 am. Surprise, the am announcement we heard on way to breakfast while lugging our roll on indicated otherwise. Insult to injury to wake up early for naught.
*we had to purchase internet pkg to deal with airline carrier on our own, GS said they couldn't help us since we didn't purchase flights thru DCL.
