I am still trying to wrap my mind around this cruise. I am not itching to book another
Disney Cruise, though we probably will in 3 years when our youngest granddaughter is old enough but, sadly I can wait. I can't say that we had a bad or even ok time,I just was put off by the amount of rude people and unruly children. This has nothing to do with the staff or the
Disney Cruise line at all. I heard a comment by a father, I paid a lot for this vacation so screw everyone else. I wanted to remind him, the rest of us paid a lot as well and are entitled to enjoy ourselves as well but, I kept my mouth shut. Could this have happened on any cruise ? Absolutely.
It's funny you say that, my mother (66 YO) and I (26 YO) went as a mother-daughter trip before my wedding, and at first we felt the same way. Although I have to say, even though it was a short cruise, as the days went on we had more and more fun, and really ended up having a fabulous time. I've never really been a lover of cruises, because I've found that other guests always seemed to interfere with my serenity levels. But as huge Disney fans, the
DCL was on our bucket list for over a decade, and we thought we'd give it a shot.
As we soon realized (although we should have figured all along,) being on a Disney cruise did not take away from the fact that we were still on a cruise. I think we were expecting the more over-the-top Disney things we're used to at WDW, and were missing a bit of the Disney magic. A couple of things really helped for this:
- As we figured our mother-daughter trips may be fewer and further between after the wedding, we splurged for a balcony. It was fabulous. We spent so much time out there, reading, sipping on drinks that we brought on board ourselves and even smoking cigars we bought in port. Biggest advantage? This gave us a safe haven where we could truly relax.
- Going to see the entertainment shows they put on at night really helped to give us our fix of Disney magic (we're suckers for innocence, and cried at both Golden Mickeys and Dreams.)
- The gift shops! We hit both gift shops two different times, where we had a hilarious observation - having been used to walking out of every attraction in WDW straight into a gift shop, we found ourselves actually WANTING a better shopping experience (can you believe it???) We hardly buy anything, but love to look around - and while those shops were hectic with people while we were there, it still brought us Disney magic.
- We had a blast in Key West (wish we could have been there for sunset though!) and LOVED Castaway Key. I'd love to spend MANY days on that island... What we did in Nassau was great (walked into the British Colonial hotel and relaxed at their beach side bar) but we've both been there before and weren't all that interested in doing much else. We headed back to the ship on the early side, to do what? Hang on our balcony
- The parents may have been a nightmare (and many of them were,) but watching the kids have so much fun was truly a joy. At dinner we were placed with other delightful no-kids guests, and every night we all mused on how wonderful the children were.
My fiance has never been on a cruise, and loves Disney, so I bet I'll be back on DCL with him someday. Having said that, 4 days was perfect.
We did have a great time despite the lack of manners of some people
