mjwood77
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2009
- Messages
- 61
Our comment card says it all. We gave everything great ratings including service, food, entertainment, etc, we even would recommend DCL to a friend. We had a great time. However, when it came to the question about cruising with DCL again. We said definetely not. There wasn't really a space to explain this to them. So they will probably think we are insane.
So we had wanted to try Disney Cruise line for a number of years. We love WDW/Disneyland (have gone at least once a year for 8 years). Everyone has told us what a great product it is. We didn't want to do a traditional Disney Cruise for a number of reasons 1) Price 2) Only 7 days 3) Lack of variety in itinerary (so even if we wanted to do B2B it isn't all that exciting) 4) Number of kids. So when the 14 day 2010 transatlantic was available for booking in 2008 we jumped at the chance.
Everyone we ever talked to said you will never see the kids even on a 7 day with 1200 kids. Swore up and down. There were only 400 kids, so a lot less than a typical DCL cruise. However, I have to say that was not the case for us. We don't have kids. We are not used to being surrounded by kids. All of our friends kids apparentally are are super well behaved. We do not hate children. In fact at our wedding last year we had about 30 kids under the age of 4. However, we saw many ill behaved children on the cruise. Talking to some people this may have been due to our location on the ship. We were on deck 6, so the rooms are bigger so more families. Kids running up and down the hall at all hours of the night, Slamming doors, screaming, knocking people over, running up and down the stairs, hitting all the buttons in the elevator with the parent standing right there, eating chicken fingers in the pool, tantrums in the shops, talking through the shows/movies (in my ear since they aren't in their seat but standing against my seat), kicking my seat through the entire show/movie etc. Apparently since we are on a Disney ship we are supposed to ignore the screaming baby at the 10:30 movie. Some of this may have been due to the expectations being built up by both DCL advertising and people's previous reviews. We expect that sort of behaviour at WDW, so I can sort of filter out the tantrums, but it's generally for shorter durations (3-4 days). After 14 days of crying kids, I had my fill.
I wish there were more adult only areas during the day. Basically there is in the quiet pool outside (can be windy/cool) , Cove (loud coffee machines), and Sessions. We tried to play games in Diversions, but there were a couple teens that would come in and be so ridiculously loud/obnoxious. So if there were more adult only areas during the day, that would have made a difference.
It also seemed as if they didn't have a good idea of how to entertain people for more than 7 days besides the shows/movies. This may have been partially due to some entertainment not making it to the boat due to the volcano. They ran "The Wheel" so many times. A good adult team trivia game would have made a much better replacement. A lot of the activities that we would enjoy (ie karoake, trivia, liars club, etc) were family activities so weren't enjoyable.
So the things that are amazing:
Dinner service. Our servers were fabulous.
Dinner Food. Didn't have a bad meal.
Quick service Food. Good variety except the lack of real ice cream (but hey I saved calories because I'd rather go without than have soft serve)
Shows-we skip them typically on the other cruise line. These were really enjoyable. The Disney productions are amazing.
Pirate Night/Fireworks
Castaway Cay
Things that were lackluster/terrible:
Breakfast food. The pancakes were stale on multiple occasions. I don't eat at buffets because the food isn't fresh. So we specifically go to the restaurant service to avoid this. Unfortunately it appears it's the same food.
Breakfast service. Most of the time they didn't check back with us on refills and only got pastries 50% of the time. Since these are the same people that serve dinner and are amazing, this has to be due to Disney's tipping policy.
The coffee in the dining room/drink station is undrinkable and we drink the free stuff at work, this caused us to spend a lot more money on the specialty coffee than we would on other cruise lines where we never do. Also espresso is not available for free (is on some other lines) so this increased our bill.
The ship is obviously in need of refurb which usually wouldn't bother us too much. The door between our state rooms wouldn't lock and the bathroom door wouldn't latch. Between the seats in the Walt Disney Theatre and the matress my back was killing me by the end of the 14 days.
Noise on the ship. You can hear EVERYTHING through the walls.
Also the boat creaked so much. It didn't keep us up, but our travel companions had to request ear plugs because they are light sleepers
Palo-honestly didn't think it was worth the money since the food wasn't that much better than the regular restaurant. Wasn't bad, but other cruise lines it is clearly a step above the regular dining room, and these seemed to be about the same.
I can see that it is a great product especially if you have kids. Or if you are obsessed with Disney (if I never hear another Hannah Montana song again....) My BIL and SIL were traveling with us and they are 100% converts and will be booking with DCL again. But for us... it was good fun, don't regret it, but it's kind of been there...done that.
However, we will be going to WDW in September.
So we had wanted to try Disney Cruise line for a number of years. We love WDW/Disneyland (have gone at least once a year for 8 years). Everyone has told us what a great product it is. We didn't want to do a traditional Disney Cruise for a number of reasons 1) Price 2) Only 7 days 3) Lack of variety in itinerary (so even if we wanted to do B2B it isn't all that exciting) 4) Number of kids. So when the 14 day 2010 transatlantic was available for booking in 2008 we jumped at the chance.
Everyone we ever talked to said you will never see the kids even on a 7 day with 1200 kids. Swore up and down. There were only 400 kids, so a lot less than a typical DCL cruise. However, I have to say that was not the case for us. We don't have kids. We are not used to being surrounded by kids. All of our friends kids apparentally are are super well behaved. We do not hate children. In fact at our wedding last year we had about 30 kids under the age of 4. However, we saw many ill behaved children on the cruise. Talking to some people this may have been due to our location on the ship. We were on deck 6, so the rooms are bigger so more families. Kids running up and down the hall at all hours of the night, Slamming doors, screaming, knocking people over, running up and down the stairs, hitting all the buttons in the elevator with the parent standing right there, eating chicken fingers in the pool, tantrums in the shops, talking through the shows/movies (in my ear since they aren't in their seat but standing against my seat), kicking my seat through the entire show/movie etc. Apparently since we are on a Disney ship we are supposed to ignore the screaming baby at the 10:30 movie. Some of this may have been due to the expectations being built up by both DCL advertising and people's previous reviews. We expect that sort of behaviour at WDW, so I can sort of filter out the tantrums, but it's generally for shorter durations (3-4 days). After 14 days of crying kids, I had my fill.
I wish there were more adult only areas during the day. Basically there is in the quiet pool outside (can be windy/cool) , Cove (loud coffee machines), and Sessions. We tried to play games in Diversions, but there were a couple teens that would come in and be so ridiculously loud/obnoxious. So if there were more adult only areas during the day, that would have made a difference.
It also seemed as if they didn't have a good idea of how to entertain people for more than 7 days besides the shows/movies. This may have been partially due to some entertainment not making it to the boat due to the volcano. They ran "The Wheel" so many times. A good adult team trivia game would have made a much better replacement. A lot of the activities that we would enjoy (ie karoake, trivia, liars club, etc) were family activities so weren't enjoyable.
So the things that are amazing:
Dinner service. Our servers were fabulous.
Dinner Food. Didn't have a bad meal.
Quick service Food. Good variety except the lack of real ice cream (but hey I saved calories because I'd rather go without than have soft serve)
Shows-we skip them typically on the other cruise line. These were really enjoyable. The Disney productions are amazing.
Pirate Night/Fireworks
Castaway Cay
Things that were lackluster/terrible:
Breakfast food. The pancakes were stale on multiple occasions. I don't eat at buffets because the food isn't fresh. So we specifically go to the restaurant service to avoid this. Unfortunately it appears it's the same food.
Breakfast service. Most of the time they didn't check back with us on refills and only got pastries 50% of the time. Since these are the same people that serve dinner and are amazing, this has to be due to Disney's tipping policy.
The coffee in the dining room/drink station is undrinkable and we drink the free stuff at work, this caused us to spend a lot more money on the specialty coffee than we would on other cruise lines where we never do. Also espresso is not available for free (is on some other lines) so this increased our bill.
The ship is obviously in need of refurb which usually wouldn't bother us too much. The door between our state rooms wouldn't lock and the bathroom door wouldn't latch. Between the seats in the Walt Disney Theatre and the matress my back was killing me by the end of the 14 days.
Noise on the ship. You can hear EVERYTHING through the walls.
Also the boat creaked so much. It didn't keep us up, but our travel companions had to request ear plugs because they are light sleepers
Palo-honestly didn't think it was worth the money since the food wasn't that much better than the regular restaurant. Wasn't bad, but other cruise lines it is clearly a step above the regular dining room, and these seemed to be about the same.
I can see that it is a great product especially if you have kids. Or if you are obsessed with Disney (if I never hear another Hannah Montana song again....) My BIL and SIL were traveling with us and they are 100% converts and will be booking with DCL again. But for us... it was good fun, don't regret it, but it's kind of been there...done that.
However, we will be going to WDW in September.
.
That's so awesome. We're sailing on the 5-15 Med cruise and wanted to wait until then to book a trip in 2011 on the Dream, but didn't wait because it's filling up fast! No inside stateroom available, no early diner seating available. Which is OK with me, since I prefer the later seating but other family members with young ones would have enjoyed the earlier seating. I just love cruisin Disney
