LA to Vancouver Repo with Special Needs child

[Vanvmom]

This was our 4th DCL cruise, yet our first with a special needs child. There were some great highlights, and a few minor disappointments. Highlights first: Flounders was great with our twins, even the one with special needs. Guest services was great each time we had to retrieve our refridgerated meds. Met some AMAZING people and some very helpful cruise staff. Disappointments: no embarkation photo for people who cruise out of LA with wheelchairs or strollers. Difficult to get food during non-meal times that are toddler friendly (my DDs don't eat chicken strips, hamburgers or hot dogs). Not a big deal to many people, but my DDs get up early and nap at noonish, so it was hard to feed them lunch when Beach Blanket Buffet was closed from 10:30 till noon, and they are allergic to something in the mac and cheese from room service. A couple of days we tried to get some raisins and cereal at breakfast to keep in the room for lunch time and got "I'm not sure it is okay to do that, let me talk to my manager" from the staff as we tried to leave the dining area with a tray of finger food for the girls to eat at lunch. We also had problems a couple of nights when we left the dining room early due to fussy babies. Our assistant server said he would bring us our food to our room, and both times, the food order was missing items we'd ordered - salads, appetizers, etc. One other disappointment that really created a hassle for us - we had early dinner, so we had early breakfast on disembarkation day. One of our DDs is tube fed at night. We had to stop her tube feed early to get to breakfast on time, then ended up waiting over 2 hours after breakfast was over for our group to be called for disembarkation. We were the next to the last group allowed to leave the ship. Normally, this would not be a problem, but when you travel with a baby who doesn't deal well with being confined to your arms for 2 hours...it doesn't make for a happy ending to a vacation. And yes, we went to Guest Services and made a suggestion that since the luggage tags are assigned by rooms, that the breakfast times should be assigned by tags instead of by dining times.