Never again

[DCLMP]

Since they decided to turn Southampton into MCO I'm hoping they put another ship over there with some better itineraries and bring back the long cruises.

 

[auntlynne]

Since they decided to turn Southampton into MCO I'm hoping they put another ship over there with some better itineraries and bring back the long cruises.

If I replace “MCO” with PC, I think you are saying Southampton is a busier port than it used to be?

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

If I replace “MCO” with PC, I think you are saying Southampton is a busier port than it used to be?

Southampton is the main UK cruise port, it has been for many years, long before Disney started sailing from there. Its where Titanic sailed from in 1912.

The change in the % of UK and Irish people and Americans sailing on the cruises from Southampton in August is due to the 2021 UK Staycations on The Magic. That was a series of short cruises to now where from various UK ports. It was very successful and as a result Disney have changed the August UK cruises to more short cruises.

The shorter cruises are attractive to UK people as the majority can drive and its cheaper than going to Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World Florida.

The ports are not important to UK people, most stay on the ship in port. The Americans are not booking the short cruises as its too expensive to fly transatlantic for a short cruise.

Americans like longer 7 day plus European cruises as they use the ship as a means of transport between countries.

UK people like the short cruises as the ship is the destination, not the ports.

 

[Chipmunkmaniac]

All I wonder is what the satisfaction rate of these cruises are… i heard last year they were very low.
Those that have experienced other dcl cruises hate the madness on these and the uk people come with expectations created online of seeing tons of characters with a minimal wait and magical moments all atound where în reality they cant even meet chip and dale or stitch and stand in line an hour to meet Micley…

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

Someone posted this on a cruise group

 

[DCLMP]

If I replace “MCO” with PC, I think you are saying Southampton is a busier port than it used to be?

Or Southampton to LHR. I guess my point was they've turned the cruises out of England into short cruises that cater to the locals. I liked the long northern European cruises.

 

[RedHead0186]

If the worst thing that happens on a cruise of 3000 people is that a couple of teenagers swipe some booze from the free booze cabinet in the concierge lounge and some kids are being noisy in the hallways at midnight then it truly has been a safe and incident free cruise. These are the worst case incidents from a 1950s sitcom tv show. Real life is usually much much worse.

I honestly wouldn't consider breaking DCL policy to be "incident free."

 

[Snowwhyt]

Being run over by children and having that loud noise, especially during the early dining is problematic for me also. I love well-behaved children would love to have tons of them around me, but those few bad apples certainly can make a big problem
My worst cruise was on the fantasy on the last cruise available, that would allow children to sail without a Covid shot. We were sold out in almost 2 weeks once that was announced. Everyone was trying to get there credit used from previous Canceled sailings.
My priority is to sail while School is in session. And take late dining.

 

[cdoc29]

Just got off the Fantasy on 8/17 Western Caribbean. This was our first cruise in August when kids were still out of school and many Europeans take vacations. The boat sailed at capacity and there were kids all over the place and we experienced similar things that you mentioned. I attribute it a variety of reasons some of which I blame on Disney. Here are my thoughts why in now particular order.

1) The last time we sailed was pre-pandemic and back then the Oceaneers Club and Lab had activities every 1/2 hour. Activities in the Club would be 9am-9:30am-10am etc... while activities in the lab would be 9:15 am - 9:45 am - 10:15 am etc.... In other words the club were packed with activities. This cruise the actives were much fewer and spaced out, 0900-0930 in the club, 0945-1015 in the lab then 1030-1100 in the club. Also they had way more open house hours in the mornings and afternoons were they closed half the kids area for supervised play in favor of open play that required parents. I attribute this to lack of staff as it required less crew members but as a result fewer kids (including mine) used the club.

2) with activities in English many of the guests whose language was not English didn't even use the club and their children usually ran around.

3) The Navigator app is cumbersome to use as opposed to the old navigators for planning a day. In the old navigators it was easy to pan out activities and see where conflicts arose with plans, in the app unless the kid has a smart phone they have to rely on their parents to tell them what is available to do.

4) the movie theatre did not show as many movies during the week as it was pre-pandemic and was used for many non-movie activities such as bingo and port shopping talks.

5) In our humble experience we have found that Families in the US provide a tighter level of supervision when their kids are in sight (though many kids were running around un supervised that were clearly of the lab/club under 10 age) where as the Europeans tend to give their kids more freedom in their presence.

6) My kid in Edge said there was never room in the club which I attribute to the fact that 11 & 12 year olds that were in both club/lab and edge before were now exclusively in edge. They increased the amount of kids in Edge when they changed the ages but the space was still the same size. As a result he formed a group of friends who planned their own activities such as Aqueduct, seeing shows and such and was never in Edge, they had their own hangout spot by the port adventures desk.

7)Many Kids of club/lab age have gone through the covid lockdown era and I believe that changed how they interact with the world and their parents. They are more timid and less adventurous that pre-pandemic, I felt like many kids avoided the club out of this change to the collective personality change in kids as a result of the lockdowns.

In all Disney needs to do a better job with kids programing, They rely heavily on the video game type entertainment and less on the craft and other things. They need to increase they offerings to pre-pandemic levels and better train their counselors for todays youth.

 

[DCLMP]

I honestly wouldn't consider breaking DCL policy to be "incident free."

Teenagers being teenagers happens on every cruise. All of us have been teenagers so it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Not saying it's right, but it is what it is and has been that way for decades, and if you say it hasn't you are totally in denial. The drunk loud adults that act like teens is much more concerning.

 

[DCLMP]

7)Many Kids of club/lab age have gone through the covid lockdown era and I believe that changed how they interact with the world and their parents. They are more timid and less adventurous that pre-pandemic, I felt like many kids avoided the club out of this change to the collective personality change in kids as a result of the lockdowns.

Kids are resilient and reflect the attitudes of their parents. Clubs were full on all my post covid cruises.

 

[CarolynU]

Just returned from a 7 day Norwegian Fjord cruise on the Disney Dream and it was horrible. Not the ship, not iit’s wonderful crew. Not the places we visited but the cowardly attitude off Disney Cruise Line to wake up and smell the coffee and stop appeasing those who are ruining your product. We had gangs of kids running around terrorizing adults and others all over the ship. We had adults bring there kids into adult areas, we had adults when confronted on there kids behaviors basically shrug it off. We had people playing loud music in there staterooms, we had kids running around in the dining rooms, kids running in the stateroom hallways at one in the morning. A large Spanish family cutting the lines for the dinning every night like they were royalty. Now I don’t blame Disney for creating this but do hold them accountable for not confronting these families or policing this bad behavior. Now I’m European but I have never encounter so much entitlement, cue cutting, selfish behavior on US bases cruises. We wil not take another European based cruise again and it hurts to say this as an European but this was embarresing.

I’ve been reading exactly the same elsewhere. Apparently the short cruises out of the Uk have been horrific for some people.

 

[CarolynU]

Just got off the Fantasy on 8/17 Western Caribbean. This was our first cruise in August when kids were still out of school and many Europeans take vacations. The boat sailed at capacity and there were kids all over the place and we experienced similar things that you mentioned. I attribute it a variety of reasons some of which I blame on Disney. Here are my thoughts why in now particular order.

1) The last time we sailed was pre-pandemic and back then the Oceaneers Club and Lab had activities every 1/2 hour. Activities in the Club would be 9am-9:30am-10am etc... while activities in the lab would be 9:15 am - 9:45 am - 10:15 am etc.... In other words the club were packed with activities. This cruise the actives were much fewer and spaced out, 0900-0930 in the club, 0945-1015 in the lab then 1030-1100 in the club. Also they had way more open house hours in the mornings and afternoons were they closed half the kids area for supervised play in favor of open play that required parents. I attribute this to lack of staff as it required less crew members but as a result fewer kids (including mine) used the club.

2) with activities in English many of the guests whose language was not English didn't even use the club and their children usually ran around.

3) The Navigator app is cumbersome to use as opposed to the old navigators for planning a day. In the old navigators it was easy to pan out activities and see where conflicts arose with plans, in the app unless the kid has a smart phone they have to rely on their parents to tell them what is available to do.

4) the movie theatre did not show as many movies during the week as it was pre-pandemic and was used for many non-movie activities such as bingo and port shopping talks.

5) In our humble experience we have found that Families in the US provide a tighter level of supervision when their kids are in sight (though many kids were running around un supervised that were clearly of the lab/club under 10 age) where as the Europeans tend to give their kids more freedom in their presence.

6) My kid in Edge said there was never room in the club which I attribute to the fact that 11 & 12 year olds that were in both club/lab and edge before were now exclusively in edge. They increased the amount of kids in Edge when they changed the ages but the space was still the same size. As a result he formed a group of friends who planned their own activities such as Aqueduct, seeing shows and such and was never in Edge, they had their own hangout spot by the port adventures desk.

7)Many Kids of club/lab age have gone through the covid lockdown era and I believe that changed how they interact with the world and their parents. They are more timid and less adventurous that pre-pandemic, I felt like many kids avoided the club out of this change to the collective personality change in kids as a result of the lockdowns.

In all Disney needs to do a better job with kids programing, They rely heavily on the video game type entertainment and less on the craft and other things. They need to increase they offerings to pre-pandemic levels and better train their counselors for todays youth.

My grandkids found the kids clubs on the UK sailings boring as the cm’s did little with them. It was more like just free play.

 

[RACHEL_GB]

Just catching up on this thread - my two cents for what it’s worth, is I feel it’s a DCL/summer thing. I’ve been on 2 DCL European (July & Aug), 1 DCL Caribbean (End Jul) and this year, tried a Royal Carib around Europe in May half term. So not completely apples with apples but the Aug DCL Europe pre-Covid and the DCL last summer out of PC were where I saw the worst behaviour, particularly the Aug European one. Our experience in May with kids was that there was a lot of kids on board the RC ship but they were well behaved in general. My observation at the time was that RC was a lot more organised, right from the get go. Disney is a bit of a free-for-all from the moment you arrive, despite PATs etc. like the OP said, perhaps they just need to say no to their customers a bit more frequently and call out behaviour? We certainly missed the Disney touch on our cruise but it felt a lot calmer. I would def avoid Disney in July/August now if I can.

 

[Lucien Franciosa]

Disney is a bit of a free-for-all from the moment you arrive, despite PATs etc. like the OP said, perhaps they just need to say no to their customers a bit more frequently and call out behaviour?

YES! I think this is a major point that has been mostly lost in this thread. Lots of disagreements on what constitutes bad behavior, some rationalizing it away, disagreements on if its cultural, but some agreement its seasonal. But to me the message to Disney should be they should not take such a hands off approach and risk offending a few passengers for addressing bad behavior, versus a lot of passengers feeling their vacation was negatively impacted by others misbehaving. Even Carnival is trying to address this by acknowledging some passengers get out of hand and that Carnival will be cracking down. It's not clear they have, but the first step is to acknowledge the problem. And 'kids will be kids' is just ignoring the problem (you didn't say that, others did). I was taught to be respectful to others, it's as simple as that.

 

[DharmaLou]

More room for me. Life is too short to complain about first world problems.

 

[DCLMP]

YES! I think this is a major point that has been mostly lost in this thread. Lots of disagreements on what constitutes bad behavior, some rationalizing it away, disagreements on if its cultural, but some agreement its seasonal. But to me the message to Disney should be they should not take such a hands off approach and risk offending a few passengers for addressing bad behavior, versus a lot of passengers feeling their vacation was negatively impacted by others misbehaving. Even Carnival is trying to address this by acknowledging some passengers get out of hand and that Carnival will be cracking down. It's not clear they have, but the first step is to acknowledge the problem. And 'kids will be kids' is just ignoring the problem (you didn't say that, others did). I was taught to be respectful to others, it's as simple as that.

The OP's complaints were mostly regarding parents not managing their children. Kids are going to be kids. It's the adults job to correct bad behavior. A cruise especially a Disney cruise is an environment where kids are going to become over stimulated very easily. I'm not sure how you fix rude adults that can't reign them in.

Some of the complaints on this thread were very petty. I can't imagine letting any of those things ruin my vacation. I've been on a lot of cruises that were just kid soup. 1200+ kids on a cruise you have to expect behavior all across the board. I'm always impressed how well these cruises actually go. I haven't heard of any serious problems with the teens.

 

[Lucien Franciosa]

The OP's complaints were mostly regarding parents not managing their children. Kids are going to be kids. It's the adults job to correct bad behavior. A cruise especially a Disney cruise is an environment where kids are going to become over stimulated very easily. I'm not sure how you fix rude adults that can't reign them in.

Some of the complaints on this thread were very petty. I can't imagine letting any of those things ruin my vacation. I've been on a lot of cruises that were just kid soup. 1200+ kids on a cruise you have to expect behavior all across the board. I'm always impressed how well these cruises actually go. I haven't heard of any serious problems with the teens.

agreed, it’s the parents job. Disagree that if the parents are not doing their job we should just turn our backs.

 

[DCLMP]

agreed, it’s the parents job. Disagree that if the parents are not doing their job we should just turn our backs.

Can you point out where you said we should turn our backs?

I'm not going to police other peoples kids, but those that want to can certainly do that. I will be in the adult area enjoying my cruise.

 

[auntlynne]

Have we decided that the inappropriate behavior is just inappropriate in our own culture? That maybe elsewhere it is normal and acceptable?