Honestly, I think that DIS ruins us allergy parents in to thinking that Disney is this magical cruise line that knows food allergies super well. We went in assuming that they would take great care of us and they did not...like most restaurants, we should not have and then did not let our guard down again. We had to stay on alert and make sure everything WAS safe. I am thankful I packed foods for our daughter, because sometimes waiting 45 minutes at quick service or the buffet was just too long for her when she was starving. It was our fault for assuming that Disney was going to be awesome and amazing and my expectations were high based on reviews. I read a few reviews of horror stories about parents with food allergy kids on the ships just having awful times, cross-contamination issues, etc. and in my head I chalked them up to "oh, they were not prepared, or oh they did not communicate their allergies properly" but we did EVERYTHING we were supposed to do and then some...and there were still multiple slips and issues in addition to the lack of going above and beyond like we had read about. Now that I think about it, I know of two people that had allergic reactions while on board and received epinephrine. One guy, I spoke to him personally, and he felt there was a cross-contamination issue, but was going to follow up with his doctor to make sure he had not developed a new allergy.
On a positive note, the health center treated both patients AMAZINGLY well! We packed a lot of Benadryl and a lot of Epi-Pens. We used the Benadryl twice for small reactions, but it stopped with the Benadryl. (The soft serve would sometimes give her a reaction, and sometimes not...almost like they did not clean out the machine well and another flavor had an allergen?)
