Let's Tell It Like It Really Is

[bill3540]

The Dream was not cruise ready. At least, not to Disney standards.
With the exception of appearance and cleanliness, this cruise[1/26] fell far below my expectations.
I will never make another inaugural cruise. Too many high maintenance[VIPs] cruisers to accommodate, done so at the expense of the rank and file such as myself and many others.
Crew was not ready.
I'm amazed that we see so many positive reviews of this cruise after hearing all of the "*****ing" that I heard on ship. So, let's "tell it like it really is".
Bill

 

[loveysbydesign]

Sorry to hear you did not have an enjoyable cruise. That's one of the reason's we booked for this October instead of an earlier date. Hopefully most of the kinks will be worked out by then! Hey, on the positive side at least the ship didn't lose power!

 

[DaParkers]

So, let's "tell it like it really is".
Bill

 

[bats]

The only moaning I heard about onboard was for the merchandise and the way it was sold.

I didn't find any staff that weren't ready, everything worked for us, the food was as expected and the aquaduck was fun fun fun!!

There will always be negative ninny's for everything, but to say we're not telling it like it is/was, is not right.

I loved everything apart from the way the merchandise side was handled ... I will tell anyone that asks that it could have been done better and I wrote it on the comments form .. can't do much more than that.

What was it that you didn't enjoy? Hope nothing really spoiled it for you, that would not be good.

 

[BethA]

who were the high profile VIPs? The DCL execs that we saw did not appear to be getting catered to.
We found a few glitches- trouble getting $25 discount on $100 purchase--took days. Disembarking was unorganized.
Not really crazy about what was included with concierge service.
the merchandise fiasco could have been avoided if people were no buying items to sell for a profit.
Sorry you did not enjoy it
Our servers and host were the best ever. We only found some iin customer service not too knowledgable.

 

[nikicares]

We just returned from the Disney Dream Maiden Voyage and there was many great things about this cruise! YES a few kinks to be worked out, but I think that comes to say with anything 'new' - did you get a IPhone when they 1st came out?! LOL

I think that this ship is completely amazing, from the size of the ship, the decor, rooms, to the service.

I agree with the above post that states the only really negative was the Maiden Voyage Merchandising! This was a MESS! I do not personally feel that anything such as a T-Shirt, Jacket, Hat or Pin was worth this hassel. There was so many people that were only there to grab items for resale when they returned home! This truly saddens me. There were many guests that were on a 1st time Disney Cruise that was not able to even obtain a hat in memory of their voyage.

I saw people grabbing RACKs of Shirts and Jackets! Leaving nothing for other guests! This is disgusting and selfish. I believe that Disney needs to find a better way to handle the speciality merchandise.

Merchandising suggestion/solution: The RSP (reserved item presale), where ALL speciality items are available to order in advance and pick up on the ship. I also believe that all dated and speciality items should be limited to 1 per person! With the few collectable items that Disney awarded Maiden Voyage guest to 1 per stateroom! I do not believe because some guest booked 2 families to a room (to save money) should be allowed to get 2 stateroom gifts! They only paid the same price as a single family in a room and split the cost - they should not be giving extra items (many are being sold on EBAY)! I believe that Disney can find a way to limit these items to per person and per stateroom by using the Key to The World cards to verify when picking up items on board.

This system would also limit the crowds for newly released items in the shops and all guest can enjoy the shops for the items that are being sold in them and not the greedy people.

Enough about Merchandise!

I agree that there are some minor kinks that I believe will be worked within the next couple of sailing and months. Such as closing the pools for the Sail Away party so the families and kids can be closer to participate more. There was many guests talking about the 'keg beer' was not working and on ship yet, the dinning hostess' learning the seating schedule, and such things... these are all very minor issues that will easily be noted by Disney and changed soon I am sure.

As far as catering to the VIPS... I am not sure what causes this feeling, as we were concierge level with many VIPS, and we never felt they were "expecting' better service than us? They never seemed to be 'needy' of the staff. Though I did see many Platinum members that expected to be catered to because of there membership level, but in some ways maybe Disney needs to re evaluate the membership level benefits to help with this issue (but again not a Maiden Voyage or Disney Dream issue).

All staff members were doing their very best to answer questions and concerns of guests, to the best of their ability (people remember this is a new ship to them as well), they are learning too!

I personally feel honored and blessed to have been a guest on the Dream's Maiden Voyage! And I want to send a special Thank YOU to the Disney team, for all the extra gifts in our stateroom that will remain in our personal possesion as a memory and token of our Maiden Voyage cruise with you! Thank you to the staff for all your hard work and effort to make this a great experience!

Way to go Disney - the Maiden Voyage was a memory of a lifetime for our family!

 

[dursin]

The Dream was not cruise ready. At least, not to Disney standards.
With the exception of appearance and cleanliness, this cruise[1/26] fell far below my expectations.
I will never make another inaugural cruise. Too many high maintenance[VIPs] cruisers to accommodate, done so at the expense of the rank and file such as myself and many others.
Crew was not ready.
I'm amazed that we see so many positive reviews of this cruise after hearing all of the "*****ing" that I heard on ship. So, let's "tell it like it really is".
Bill

We're on Maiden Voyage #45 in June...hopefully they'll work out most of the bugs by then.

 

[cseca]

Sorry Bill,
You're on a Disney board, unfortunately you will see some responses that will say "Give them a break!"...

In my mind if a MV is considered a "trial" cruise then they should charge accordingly.
And if the first 6 months of the cruise is expected to be trial cruises, all of them should be priced accordingly.
So when things are still wonky at least the people are paying the appropriate price for it.

Labelling something as a special cruise (and I think MV is something special) should make it be a special experience.
Not be the:
"We're still training our crew-cruise"
"Or we don't know how to handle 4000 guests-cruise"
"We don't expect so many people to want special merchandise-cruise"
"We don't really know what works or what doesn't yet-cruise"

The fact that the MV cruise neither Maiden (after 8 cruises prior) nor is it special (with so many issues onboard) really cracks me up!
But they sure charge for it tho...

Anyways, did you write your letter to DCL? You should... they should know what went wrong in your experience. Maybe the next MV would be better...
Not that I'll be on it... hehe

 

[m2house]

We were also on the MV and agree the Dream was not maiden or special. We love DCL. All five of us are platinum castaway club members. But if we are being honest, we really didn't get what we paid for. We had numerous problems. And it was definitely not easy to get issues taken care of.

 

[BethA]

I do echo the thought that never researching this, I expected it to be more special-thus the increased price. Had I known would I have gone on a different cruise- maybe.
I have to disagree with not giving two gifts if two families share a cabin. My sister in law went with my son and myself. It would have been no fun deciding who gets an item- and no we did not do that to save money since we were on the concierge level. I do not see giving a free litho as a problem. If she had other family members in other cabins maybe, but not when 2 unrelated adults are in the same cabin.
they should limit the quantity people can buy of limited merchandise. We had early dinner and everything was gone by the time we got to the store.

 

[jlwhitney]

It really wasn't being charged as a special cruise. It is all supply and demand. Disney expected it to sell well so they charged more. Just like spring break cruises, or summer ones, or holiday ones. All of us on the MV proved that to be true. We went! I have no regrets and enjoyed it completly. There were kinks but nothing that took the enjoyment away from it.

It is a trip my DH and I will never forget.

As I heard someone say: no one can take away the fact that we cruised on the MV, no matter what we got or bought.

 

[cseca]

It really wasn't being charged as a special cruise. It is all supply and demand. Disney expected it to sell well so they charged more. Just like spring break cruises, or summer ones, or holiday ones. All of us on the MV proved that to be true. We went! I have no regrets and enjoyed it completly. There were kinks but nothing that took the enjoyment away from it.

It is a trip my DH and I will never forget.

As I heard someone say: no one can take away the fact that we cruised on the MV, no matter what we got or bought.

I disagree.
If it wasn't a special cruise they would not have:
1. a plane with a banner flying above the ship to say "Happy Maiden Voyage" or something like that.
2. free champagne with souvenier glasses.
3. Mickey hands to wave goodbye
4. Special merchandise to commemorate the event.
5. Trio of musician on the port.
6. MV freebies for guests in their staterooms
etc.

It is a special cruise and they wanted to treat it that way. However, they were not ready. And that was nobody's fault but theirs.
Yes, they can't control human nature but they definitely can see that majority of the issues happening simply because they did not learn from their past mistakes.

Yes, it's supply and demand. But not simply that. They made it sound like it's a special cruise but they failed to prepare for it. Simple as that.

As I said before, if they want to make the first 6 months trial cruises that's fine. Just don't charge extra and expect the guests to be completely happy when the product didn't meet the regular Disney's level of service/product.

That's all... accept their failures, learn and fix their future sailings.
And if nobody is willing to step up and tell them what's wrong, they'll never learn or fix anything.
How is that helping anyone?

 

[jlwhitney]

I guess I see things as the glass is half full. Since personally things were not that much different for us. Every crusie we have been on has had something that was not perfect. We are all human and humans are never perfect nor will they ever be. This cruise we had a better server and assistant server (only 2 out of the past 5 cruises, not counting this one had we had a good serving team). Our stateroom host was very pleasant and our room was always done timely. The only things I saw going wrong was people acting crazy and complaining about everything.

It still makes me laugh that people are complaining about it having issues, and yet they complained about the shake down cruises. If those had not been there would have been more problems. Anyone going on something realtively new really needs to expect some kinks.

So i guess you would have rather paid less to not have them call it the maiden voyage and not have any of the gifts they gave us.

 

[cseca]

...
So i guess you would have rather paid less to not have them call it the maiden voyage and not have any of the gifts they gave us.

Yes, because that would be honest.
That means they have not gotten all the kinks out and we should expect some problems.

It's like paying for a Christmas cruise price and finding out the boat was without any christmas stuff. Wouldn't you think the guests would be a bit disappointed?
It's that kind of expectation...

Again, this is our opinion. Which after talking to some fellow cruisers seem to be pretty similar. Other cruisers we talked to were also very kind, disney cruisers repeaters. And they were not the gimme gimme gimme type of people.
Nobody we talked to said the cruise was horrendous, but it wasn't a Maiden Voyage we expected.

We didn't go on MV to demand freebies, but we did expect a certain level of specialness of the cruise. Instead we had what we thought was a regular cruise experience. It felt like they tried to make it sound special but didn't quite pull it off in reality.

One more time, we did not think the cruise was horrid. But we did think they were not ready and that it was too much to pay for the experience we had.
That's all.

Did we enjoy the cruise? Most of the time yes.
Did we expect more? Absolutely
Does this mean we won't ever cruise again? Of course not, we rebooked already onboard. We just won't spend the extra $ on a MV again, after this experience. I'll let the others be their guinea pigs next time around

 

[jlwhitney]

I had like no expectations for the cruise, since I knew it was new and going to be a lot different from the Magic/Wonder. I would do a MV again, the only thing that would stop me would be we did not enjoy being around the insane, whiny, complainy people.

We were so blessed to have 6 wonderful table mate who had a great time and who did not complain about this and that.

 

[cseca]

I had like no expectations for the cruise, since I knew it was new and going to be a lot different from the Magic/Wonder. I would do a MV again, the only thing that would stop me would be we did not enjoy being around the insane, whiny, complainy people.

We were so blessed to have 6 wonderful table mate who had a great time and who did not complain about this and that.

I'm glad you had a wonderful time.
And I hope your next cruises would be just as wonderful and then some.

But I also hope that other cruisers that find issues would send a constructive criticsm letter to DCL and let them know. There's always room for improvement and any company who does not acknowlege that fact would not succeed. And I want Disney to succeed and continue to grow and yet maintain to be a great company.

 

[kpros]

Hi everyone

I was generally happy with the cruise. I thought some of the problems were rather funny. When our TV wouldn't work, the front desk told me to unplug it so it would reboot. You don't usually get that kind of instructions from the front desk. And I really enjoyed the phone system that kept saying that the party had already checked out (while we were underway).

I think our biggest issue was with our service team. The server was trying hard, but just wasn't ready for two tables of 8. And the assistant server was just lost from day 1. That was disappointing. But when it comes right down to it, we have had less then steller service in the past on a few cruises.

And I agree with everyone about the merchandise - the clothing sales could have been done better.

Anyway, we had a good time and we are looking forward to the west coast repo and first alaska on the "Classic" Wonder.

Ken

 

[MomsOf2boys]

One of our cruises, the ship had just come out of drydock and things were not ready for sailing. The tub ran of brown rusty water, the phones were not hooked up, they were painting our deck still, the door to the bathroom would not shut all the way... the staff seemed "rusty" as well and were looking for things and fixing things all the time.

We enjoyed the cruise but knew that it was not ready to sail. I kind of get that is what people are saying and I believe they aren't being just whiney. I wondered how it would be and think that it will take them a good while to get used to this. When the new ship comes out they will be more experienced at handling so many people, they will have read your letters and learned maybe about the merchandise, but there will still be some kinks even then!

Those who went concierge, how were things with them now having a lounge and deck to staff as well as the cabanas and the room visits?

 

[BethA]

they should have had a more extensive survey at the end of the cruise. I do intend to send a letter addressing the issues we ran into along with the good things too. We were lucky- although our asst server appeared to be new, the server and head server were excellent--also the first time I did not have to endure a long "excelllent" speech. Maybe because they knew they had provided amazing service