JUST off the Magic...WOW

[Lollipop's Mom]

Our first cruise - loved it - I am killing time in the airport right now. Loved the ship, loved our 'little room' and most of everything else was super.
Poured rain in cozumel, but grand cayman had great weather. Water at castaway cay is FRIGID and several pizzed off people who pre-booked water excursions (snorkeling) that could not get their money back when the water was too cold. I suggest you cancel water activities and play it by ear on the day once you feel the water. We will swim in fairly cold water, but this was really really cold.

Our dining team was terrible - can go into more on that later - we ended up skipping dinner 3 times because it was so bad. I will be home tomorrow - also without going into too many details, my daughter was injured during one of the gameshows (they had metal props with sharp edges and had teams building towers - tower toppled, landed on her and sliced both her knees wide open - fun fun fun). Long story short, we were in medical for a while, she got stitched up and a tetnus shot. Not a fun ending to the trip (was 2nd last night). I wont even go into how all one cast member handled this situation right now - thats a whole other thread....

So I would say 90% of our cruise experience was incredible with a 10% bad experience. We had one situation with the ocean quest club playing a kissing game and it being encouraged by one of the kids crew members thinking it was 'cute' - again another long story!

Food was good, room steward was incredible, room service great, shows INCREDIBLE. We have rebooked onboard for feb 2010 and probably going to keep the reservation at this point.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

Our first cruise - loved it - I am killing time in the airport right now. Loved the ship, loved our 'little room' and most of everything else was super.
Poured rain in cozumel, but grand cayman had great weather. Water at castaway cay is FRIGID and several pizzed off people who pre-booked water excursions (snorkeling) that could not get their money back when the water was too cold. I suggest you cancel water activities and play it by ear on the day once you feel the water. We will swim in fairly cold water, but this was really really cold.

Our dining team was terrible - can go into more on that later - we ended up skipping dinner 3 times because it was so bad. I will be home tomorrow - also without going into too many details, my daughter was injured during one of the gameshows (they had metal props with sharp edges and had teams building towers - tower toppled, landed on her and sliced both her knees wide open - fun fun fun). Long story short, we were in medical for a while, she got stitched up and a tetnus shot. Not a fun ending to the trip (was 2nd last night). I wont even go into how all one cast member handled this situation right now - thats a whole other thread....

So I would say 90% of our cruise experience was incredible with a 10% bad experience. We had one situation with the ocean quest club playing a kissing game and it being encouraged by one of the kids crew members thinking it was 'cute' - again another long story!

Food was good, room steward was incredible, room service great, shows INCREDIBLE. We have rebooked onboard for feb 2010 and probably going to keep the reservation at this point.

So so sorry for the problems, Wow.

Hope DD gets better, was this a deck thing? or clubs?

 

[pfp258]

How wonderful that even with those mishaps you still were able to enjoy your cruise! If only more people shared your attitude!

 

[flafan]

I can not wait to hear more. Will you be posting photo's?

 

[mickeywho?]

We're booked for the Stingray excursion at CC this coming Friday. Do you think the water is too cold for us to enjoy this? I wonder if we should cancel the reservation and rebook it there if we find the water comfortable...hmmm what to do?
Glad you had a good experience despite some bad stuff! I'd love to here all about it! Safe trip home.

 

[CastleCreations]

We had the opposite on our November Western...Rain in Grand Cayman and sun in Cozumel...can't wait to read more..

 

[Lollipop's Mom]

I am at the airport hotel in Seattle right now - what a day we have had! I am exhausted. I can't wait to get home now tomorrow.
I have lots of photos and lots of stuff I can review.
As for the castaway excursion - I don't know how much time and how far you are in the water for the stingrays, but if it is fully in and a long time - I would cancel and rebook at port. There were only a handful of people who actually went in the water.

 

[MagicMe]

Definitely sounds like an experience. Who were your waiters? We had good service from our waiter and absolutely great service from our assistant waiter.

It's interesting that people thought they could get their $ back because the water was too cold. They were still offering the excursions.

Sorry to hear about your DD. Glad the rest of your trip was great enought that you re-booked.

 

[Kurby]

glad 90 percent was great - hard not to talk about the bad stuff though.

can't wait to read more.

 

[JanDave]

Hi Liz: It was great meeting you and your daughter. I know we had the same dining servers as you did. As we walked into the dining room for Monday night's dinner, Carla and I were told that they were moving us. We ended up at a 4 top and new servers. We thought it was because the family we were seated with didn't want "intruders" at their table.

Sorry to hear about your daughter's injury.

Jan

 

[Cruisin1]

Sorry to hear about the injury and the poor dining team.

We had a great time without incident. The shows were absolutely fantastic (with the possible exception of the silly hypnosis bit)!

It was disappointingly cold in the water at Castaway Cay - though there still were quite a few snorkelers and swimmers in the water. We enjoyed laying in the 75F sun while it was around 10F back home.

This is probably too late for the person wondering about the rays: the water there seemed to be only about 1-2 feet deep so the water temp shouldn't be too much of a factor.

Cozumel was a little chilly though it was close to 70. We didn't see the pouring rain while we were on shore - just a small drizzle at most.

Too bad about missing 3 dinners - each one was so different, I'd be sorry to miss any. I found a few desserts that were totally awesome and the ever-changing menus were interesting.

 

[bb528]

it stinks you had a couple negatives, we had a blast, booked our own stingray city excursion @ GC, glad we did as it was fabulous..chip whitney @ stingray sailing tours was fantastic and I highly reccommend him.

Cozumel was ok, too many vendors trying to get your business but still a nice walk even in the chilly wx.

CC was nice as the sun provided me with a burn I'm still feeling...

our serving team (we had 800 seating @ table 41) Ramen and Ignistavious (sp) were great, we had a family moved to our table from Alabama and they were fun to be with, theor daughter celebrated a birthday on Fri night.

The shows were cool, gotta agree with the hypnosis tho...a bit lame

by far the best vacation we have ever taken I'll post some pix tommorrow...

 

[frdeb1999]

Sorry about your problems. Nice to hear you still enjoyed yourselves for the most part though. Looking forward to hearing more and seeing the pics! As for the cold water....we cruised in Dec and the water was too cold for any of us. Although there were people still swimming and such. Depends on what your used to I'm sure.

 

[WiseMan]

We're booked for the Stingray excursion at CC this coming Friday. Do you think the water is too cold for us to enjoy this? I wonder if we should cancel the reservation and rebook it there if we find the water comfortable...hmmm what to do?
Glad you had a good experience despite some bad stuff! I'd love to here all about it! Safe trip home.

The feeding portion is done in shallow water. However, when you go snorkeling with the stingrays after feeding you might experience the cold. My DW and DD did the excursion without much problems on the same cruise as lollipop.

 

[Jennifer in MI]

Glad I'm not the only one who got a burn at CC!!! Ouch! I'm still hurting!

Grand CAyman was gorgeous! We did an early submarine adventure and then spent time on an empty ship! Cozumel was chilly - but 70 felt warm to us leaving 0 degree temps behind! The dolphin swim was wonderful that day!!! CC was gorgeous!!! Water was chilly, but once you got used to it, it felt really good. My boys all snorkeled. We were disappointed that the parasailing was cancelled though!

I'm so sorry your Meg got hurt. I hope she's okay now and that the stitches are out! We had a medical issue on board too - my nephew had a seizure. The medical team was wonderful and all is well now.

I'd like to hear more about the kissing game though. I had kids in that club and it wasn't mentioned!!!

 

[Weedy]

My family is going in March with a 11 and 13 year old. What was up with the kissing game?

 

[Jodi]

WOW, that's some cruise you had, Lollipop. Glad you were able to remain optimistic throughout. Hope your DD is OK .

 

[Lollipop's Mom]

My family is going in March with a 11 and 13 year old. What was up with the kissing game?

Well in the typical 11-13 yr old crowd, they had the 'cute boy interested in girls' and the 'boy crazy 12 yr old girl who likes to flirt'. Well all week apparently they were 'going out' and then 'broke up' and then would go out again....just like at school.

So the last night, my daughter walked into the kids club and there were a crowd of kids in a circle with these 2 in the middle and they were all saying "do it....come on....do it.....". My daughter asked what was going on and they said they were trying to get this boy and girl to kiss because it was the last night (Ok still very typical behaviour at this age). So the girl finally gives in and kisses the boy a few times and while this is happening one of the camp leaders came over and asked what was going on and they told him. So instead of saying "Lets not be doing this in the kids club/take it elsewhere on the ship", he ENCOURAGED it and started going "oh you cute little love birds!" and then would walk away, then come back and say "I saw you kiss!! I saw it!" and was right in there with the kids.
NOT COOL in the kids club. I can only imagine they deal with making out in the stack, and some of the 11-13 yr olds - this happens at school every day with this age and is part of exploring and growing up. BUT...the camp leader should never have encouraged it!! I would have thought he would shut it down! My daughter just went over and watched some video games for a bit.

They did one night that was girls only and they were painting nails and all of the nail polish was gunky and old. She said to the leader "You know, I think Disney can afford some new nail polish don't you? Or do you have a budget you have to go by? Because seriously this stuff needs replacing badly!". LOL.
Then they did this odd game where all the girls were to write down a secret on a piece of paper, then the leader was putting them in a hat, pulling them out and they had to guess whose secret it was. My daughter was really uncomfortable with it for some reason - hit her the wrong way, so she chose not to put a secret in. A few other girls decided not to as well.
Well this game BACKFIRED huge when the leader pulls out the secret "I am in love with a woman". Well all of the more immature girls started laughing and screaming and so on, and this one girl went red in the face and sat back and started to cry. YIKES - NOT cool!!! That game was not thought through very well!

She said she watched kids play guitar hero here and there, but it really lacked things to do like make friendship bracelets to take home, make a tshirt,etc.... There are so many things they could have been doing, but it was mostly races around the ship and video games. This club definately would appeal more to boys in my opinion.

But those 2 incidents and the incident where she got hurt aside, we had a FABULOUS cruise. I never expect ANY vacation to be incident free. If everything was perfect it would be boring!

 

[jejojual]

We are headed on our first Disney cruise in November and we will have one son in the younger kids club (age 7) and one who will just have turned 9 who I assume would be in this club. I have to tell you I'm concerned now. He would be mortified with the kissing game thing... is this normal on Disney cruises?

 

[Max02215]

I wouldn't worry about it. My kids have been on 5 cruises (leave on our 6th on sat!) and we have had no problems. It may have been the group of kids on the ship at that time. I had asked my kids if they have ever heard of the kissing game or something similiar and they said no. I wouldn't worry about it. Enjoy