Riding the SANDY hurricane Fantasy Roller Coaster.. And it Rocked

[reigle4]

I have to show this report to my husband. He won't believe there is somebody else like me. I would have done the same.

 

[purplegirl247]

It looks like a good 4-5 hours where things were really bad and of course that would seem like forever to those stuck in the middle of it. Too bad DCL didn't give more instructions, like putting loose objects in drawers or being careful of slamming doors during the rough seas. Hopefully, they'll change things a bit in how they handle things in the future

I too was on this sailing. I think part of the reason why there wasn't more information given was that the worst of the waves occurred in the middle of the night, and I'm guessing the Captain didn't want to awaken anyone/freak anyone out unless he really had to (which turned out to be twice, lol). A heads up to secure our items would have been nice, but if it had come at midnight, we probably would have been more worried than anything else.

Great account, OP! Matches our experience as well, except we didn't see the crying crew. As I mentioned in another thread, I think we were a bit sheltered because we were on deck 2 midship, so didn't get as much listing. I'm curious to find the other thread, to see what kind of craziness they were reporting! (We were apprehensive with all the rocking and creaking, but were put at ease as soon as Captain Tom reported that the ship was behaving normally.)

 

[pdarrah]

Just a comment on the crush disembarking. My family was on a Panama cruise that disembarked VERY late - we were held up by US Customs clearing the ship (the general belief was that they were much more thorough than usual because we had a stop in Columbia) By the time they cleared the ship to let the passengers off, all the breakfast seatings (early & late) were finished and everyone was milling around the lounges and other public areas.

The lobby was packed in like sardines with the people who wanted to be off first (presumably to catch flights). Since our flight wasn't until that evening, we just stayed out of it, but there were a lot of complaints about the crowd pushing and shoving on the DIS later.

That was on the Magic, so far fewer people than the new ships which probably compounds the problem. The difficulty is, I'm not sure how DCL can control this short of forcing people to disembark by deck or something which isn't needed for 95% of the cruises. To organize the disembarkation, they would have to pass out instructions at least the night before and they don't usually know there will be a problem until well after that.

 

[huffjoann]

first i am glad overall everyone is fine and while the damage was fixable.
I am not sure if DCL or anyone else was fully prepared for how bad Sandy was gonna be,,, I am sure it was quite scarey and just not a usual great Disney time.

i had a friend sailing on another line for a first time and she got caught in Sandy,, sadly she is very jaded now towards cruising. She is quite thrifty hence the cruise during the middle of hurricane season,, one of those take your chances things and in this case it didn't work out at all! unfortunately she went can't even talk about a DCL experience despite it all.

i hate cruisers or anyone had to go thru the storm wrath!

 

[lbgraves]

Just a comment on the crush disembarking. My family was on a Panama cruise that disembarked VERY late - ...

That ends up occuring whenever there isn't a closed loop cruise apparently, especially a PC repo. We knew to expect it from our friends who were on the WB repo. We camped out on deck 4 with friends while the kids played and we relaxed on the loungers...avoided the entire mess. Of course, we were not in a rush because we were just staying in Orlando for the day while waiting for our flight out the next morning.