Okay, we're back and if anyone has read any of our prior posts you will see that we are fairly unapologetic Disney and
DCL fans. I have been slammed before for my opinions because I haven't lived through the horror of a hurricane impacted cruise. Well now I have and my perspective really hasn't changed.
Well, I guess there will always be a selected few who will stick up for Disney down to the bitter end...................me not being one of them!
Yep, there sure are and I've come to the bitter end! I have been a customer serivce professional for 20 years, and I am fanantical about providing exceptional serivce and I expect nothing less as a customer. And that's why I choose to spend a good deal of vacation money with Disney, they have very rarely dissappointed me as a customer. Have I always agreed with their policies or procedures, nope. Do I think there can be confilicting and confusing informattion, yep. But I have found that most issues are resolved well beyond my expectations.
To my fellow 9/27 cruisers, I'm sorry if you're experiences were frustrating and you certainly have every right to your feelings and opinions. What I'll share was our experience.
On posts just before we were to leave, I encourage everyone to keep in touch with DCL and don't expect them to call us. Why, because that is simply unrealistic. They have only so many people working for them, many of whom live in Florida and may have had to prepare for the hurricane. Also they are dealing with multiple cruises and issues and handling a zillion incoming calls. I checked with DCL Friday morning the 24th. All was still a go for Saturday embarkation. We were to leave the house at 12:30 EDT for the airport. I thought about calling before we left, then got busy and didn't. However, I checked the boards one more time and saw a post from theZitofamily about the change in departure date. Called DCL, information was confirmed.
Now the choice was mine. Fly to Fl as scheduled and ride out the hurricane, try to change our flights or cancel the cruise. Since we booked our air independently from Disney, I knew we were on our own for flights and accomodations. We chose to leave as scheduled, I figured getting a flight in Monday morning could be very difficult right after a hurricane. I also think I would have had penalties to pay to change our flights. So away we went.
While at the airport my TA called, she had been contacted about the change. She immeidately got on the phone and found us a place to stay for the three nights. We were originally booked at the Hyatt for Friday night, but they didn't have any rooms for Saturday and Sunday. She found us a suite at the Hilton Vacation club at Sea World for less a night than the Hyatt.
We got to Orlando, took a taxi to the resort and checked in for a weekend of quality family time. We had also given this cruise to one of our Aunts for Christmas. We booked she and her son with Disney air. DCL called the TA with changes to their flights Friday night.
I was going into Disboard withdrawal as I didn't have a pc. But we checked in via our best friends, who were on the boards because they were getting their Wonder Cruise changed to ours. Theirs is the 11 year old girl who surrvived cancer and was given the trip by a wish foundation. So we got some info that way. I also called DCL periodically to see what the latest was. Hurricanes tend to not do just what we would like them to and you won't know how much damage is done until it is over. So my expectations were that information would be chaning rapidly.
We weathered the storm very well indeed, thank God. My heart just breaks for those folks who have battled the elements for 6 weeks now. Monday came and off to the air port to catch a bus. Oh yeah, DCL called our Aunt and changed their flights again to get them into Miami.
We got to the air port at 9 am, we were on the first bus that pulled out at 10 am. At this point we hadn't heard about the Sheraton thing.
On the bus was a snack bag for the trip, which was about 3 3/12 hours. We pulled into PE to drop off Wonder guests. From what I heard there were a ridculous number of ships needing to use PE that day. The Magic was not supposed to be able to dock until the Wonder could pull out. Docking priority was given to those ships that had passengers to disembark, which to me makes sense, since they'd need to make flights and start the trips home. And people were coming from all over at all kinds of times due to changed flights and closed airports in order to embark.
Off to the Sheraton. DCL rented two big ball rooms, one with tables for us to sit at, one set up to run movies for the kids. We were able to check in, register our youngest for the lab, even make Palo, spa and shore excursion resrevations as they had crew from the Wonder helping with these. Food and drink was provided all day as well as entertainment and character appearences.
We thought this worked out great. We met up with our Aunt and Annie and her family and spent the day together. This also had to cost the company a lot of money. They really could have just let us all stay where we were, airports, hotels or wherever until they could take us right to the ship. I was appaled by the behavior of some of the guests. Screaming at the CMs who were just there to try and help. Hey, even if you have a legitimate beef, that doesn't excuse rude and abusive behavior.
Eventually we were called in groups to board busses for the ship, which had just pulled in at around 6 or 6:30 after another ship left. We were asked to remain on the bus, because it was cooler and the line was long already at the terminal. We understand that a ship doesn't just pull in and open it's doors and on we get. Customs has to clear the ship first, and that takes however long it takes.
Boarding was a bit chaotic, mostly becaue of the guests not listening and feeling like they had to get on first. Our other two families were first over to the ship so they were on about 7, we got on about 8:15. We went straight to dinner, took a deep breath and started a most excellent cruise.
We are going to receive a 40% refund for this trip, the 25% discount on a future cruise and we got $200.00 state room credit. Oops that's right, because everything took longer than expected on Monday, the company gave us all an additional $100.00 state room credit.
Sure we were sad that we lost 2 days and nights. Sure we were disappointed that we weren't going to CC. That wasn't Disney's fault. We feel they did the best they could and did it well. This was a constantly changing situation requiring flexiblity on everyone's part. The CM trying to run the passanger unloading from the buses told us that he had more than half his staff there trying to keep things moving. The other half were home trying to make repairs to damaged homes.
I'm sure we weren't treated any differently than anyone else, yet we had no significant complaints. We also went out of our way to say encouraging, supportive and kind things to all of the CMs we interacted with. One poor girl at the hotel was driven to the lady's room in tears because of the yelling and screaming people were doing at her, as if she made any of the decisions.
Someone said they missed Palo and the spa because reservations were full at the hotel. Did you ever check directly with those places on the ship. The times we were in Palo it was never full, so there had to be cancellations or openings. We also booked a spa appointment for my daughter on Wednesday for Thursday no problem. We found if we were pleasant, polite and proactive things seemed to go fine.
Finally, for perspective. And for those who have said before that the plights of the world shouldn't be brought into these posts, well get over it. Here was a real world eye opener for us. Because of this storm, cancellations and these boards, we got to share this cruise with our best friends and their daughters. The middle daughter, Annie is 11 and just survived a year battling cancer. How could I look at her happy, healthy face, lit up from enjoying the cruise and then complain because I waited too long to board the ship. The sobering fact is we may never have had the chance to sit at any dinner table with that princess ever again. We were grateful to be on this incredible ship, with our children and people we love and celebrating the life of our God-daughter. What could be better!
