I came to this site prior to my trip to get a great deal of information to make my trip successful. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to write down your great ideas. Unfortuately, I was not able to use many of them due to the shortened cruise and issues we expereinced. Below is the email I sent to the disney cruise line after our trip. I was very disappointed by the way we were treated we are booked on NCL this year and hope to have a better experince.
The sign of a good company is when issues occur their ability to make it right. Disney use to live by this motto. I am not sure what has happened.
Letter: ( excuse my typos)
Hurricane Ivan postponed our trip from a 4 day cruise to a 3 day cruise (I would really say it was 2 days, I will go into more detail later on that).Although there was only one storm I felt that the Disney resort we stayed at made the best of a bad situation on the other hand the cruise line made a bad situation even worse. The Wilderness resort did an outstanding job of making the best of a bad situation. I almost did not even care there was a hurricane. They keep us well informed, they were a well oiled machine that had done their planning and it showed. As for the cruise line, well that is a different story on the same storm.
We arrived in Disneyworld on the Wednesday prior to the storm each day (several times a day) I would try to find the cruise line representative to confirm my cruise information, transportation schedule and ask some questions. I could not find her, a matter a fact the only time I saw her was when we were getting on the bus to go to the cruise on Monday.
I was scheduled (prior to the hurricane) to leave the resort at 11:45am on Sunday. I was told by the cruise line call center that the cruise would be delayed and I could expect them to pick me up at the same time on Monday and it would take approximately 2 hours to get to our new port of departure. We understood that the weather was out of your control and felt at this point this was the best you could all do. On Sunday when the storm hit I was speaking to another guest in the hotel who said the bus was not coming for her until 2pm. I tried to confirm this information several times between Sunday and Monday am. I finally gave up and decided to have my stuff ready at 11:45am in case my time was different from hers. No bus ever did come however we were given vouchers to have lunch. It was 11:30 am so we took the kids for lunch. We were disappointed but knew we would still get to the ship by 4pm so not to worry. Finally at 2:30pm the bus came when we were all seated on the bus we were informed of several facts:
1. The trip to the dock would be 4 hours not the original time of 2.
2. Don't use the bathroom because the bus driver needed to use the bus tomorrow and did not want to clean it
3. We were to clean up after ourselves.
4. We would be stopping at a rest stop.
Well 5 hours later ( 7:20pm) we finally got to the dock. Once there we were to stand on a very long line for security and then another long line to get checked in at this point I was furious! I asked to speak to a supervisor, the supervisor informed me that it was what it was and that they all were working a lot of hours and it was not their fault that the hurricane hit. The hurricane was not the issue, the lack of caring, lack of customer service and the cruise line lack of planning for this situation was the issue. I was so upset that as I made my way onto the ship I was crying. I was crying for waited 2 years to be treated so poorly and my family herded like cattle after not eating fro 8 hours. We were all tired, sweaty. I was done. I was lucky enough to run into Lisa (a cruise line worker) who walked us to our room and was very kind. This was my first sign that things were looking up.
Once on board we were informed that our luggage was not in our room and we could expected it around 11pm. Here we go again. We only had enough time to get to our room to grab our life vest and head out to the drill. It was now 8:15. The person running the drill could tell my 2 year old had taken all she was going to take she wanted to eat. We headed to the restaurant we to be in that evening only to be told that we were not able to be seated and that we could wait until everyone else from that time was seated and they could find us a couple of tables and split us up. I did not take no for the answer and the matred made a call and soon we were sitting in our seats. It was very uncomfortable everyone else had been changed had the opportunity to be on board all afternoon and dress appropriately for dinner. I did not even have the chance to wash my face. At 12 midnight my bag arrived. I finally got the entire luggage settled at 1am. This was my first day of my cruise. We missed the show and there was nothing for us to do but to go to bed and hope tomorrow brought a better day
The two days on the actual cruise were wonderful. Our houseman was wonderful, he was friendly and warm our waiters WONDERFUL and Lisa great. Lisa made a point whenever she saw me to ask how my trip was going. On the last day my daughter did not know she was suppose to be part of the graduation show but Lisa allowed her at the last minute as the group was filing on the stage to take part. She even had an extra shirt in her bag. Now that is prepared! She is very special. My children loved the Oceaners lab and club.
On Wednesday we were informed we had to have the bags outside the room by 11pm. So I spent my last evening packing up. There was only one evening that I was not either packing or unpacking. This is vacation???
The cruise line had opportunities: they could had picked us up earlier to get us on the ship so we could enjoy the ship for eth afternoon, kept me informed, made sure that the people taking the ship knew what was going on. We spent most of our time in the parks on Friday and Saturday making calls to the call center to find out what was happening. Stagger the bus throughout the day to make it so we did not all show up at the same time.
I kept saying to my husband, dont worries Disney will take care of us look what the resort did. I was wrong. You did nothing special, we were late to arrive, missed the whole first day and no one cared.
My hope is let all of you know that when the chips are down, take the cancellation because nothing good will come from continuing on with your cruise
The sign of a good company is when issues occur their ability to make it right. Disney use to live by this motto. I am not sure what has happened.
Letter: ( excuse my typos)
Hurricane Ivan postponed our trip from a 4 day cruise to a 3 day cruise (I would really say it was 2 days, I will go into more detail later on that).Although there was only one storm I felt that the Disney resort we stayed at made the best of a bad situation on the other hand the cruise line made a bad situation even worse. The Wilderness resort did an outstanding job of making the best of a bad situation. I almost did not even care there was a hurricane. They keep us well informed, they were a well oiled machine that had done their planning and it showed. As for the cruise line, well that is a different story on the same storm.
We arrived in Disneyworld on the Wednesday prior to the storm each day (several times a day) I would try to find the cruise line representative to confirm my cruise information, transportation schedule and ask some questions. I could not find her, a matter a fact the only time I saw her was when we were getting on the bus to go to the cruise on Monday.
I was scheduled (prior to the hurricane) to leave the resort at 11:45am on Sunday. I was told by the cruise line call center that the cruise would be delayed and I could expect them to pick me up at the same time on Monday and it would take approximately 2 hours to get to our new port of departure. We understood that the weather was out of your control and felt at this point this was the best you could all do. On Sunday when the storm hit I was speaking to another guest in the hotel who said the bus was not coming for her until 2pm. I tried to confirm this information several times between Sunday and Monday am. I finally gave up and decided to have my stuff ready at 11:45am in case my time was different from hers. No bus ever did come however we were given vouchers to have lunch. It was 11:30 am so we took the kids for lunch. We were disappointed but knew we would still get to the ship by 4pm so not to worry. Finally at 2:30pm the bus came when we were all seated on the bus we were informed of several facts:
1. The trip to the dock would be 4 hours not the original time of 2.
2. Don't use the bathroom because the bus driver needed to use the bus tomorrow and did not want to clean it
3. We were to clean up after ourselves.
4. We would be stopping at a rest stop.
Well 5 hours later ( 7:20pm) we finally got to the dock. Once there we were to stand on a very long line for security and then another long line to get checked in at this point I was furious! I asked to speak to a supervisor, the supervisor informed me that it was what it was and that they all were working a lot of hours and it was not their fault that the hurricane hit. The hurricane was not the issue, the lack of caring, lack of customer service and the cruise line lack of planning for this situation was the issue. I was so upset that as I made my way onto the ship I was crying. I was crying for waited 2 years to be treated so poorly and my family herded like cattle after not eating fro 8 hours. We were all tired, sweaty. I was done. I was lucky enough to run into Lisa (a cruise line worker) who walked us to our room and was very kind. This was my first sign that things were looking up.
Once on board we were informed that our luggage was not in our room and we could expected it around 11pm. Here we go again. We only had enough time to get to our room to grab our life vest and head out to the drill. It was now 8:15. The person running the drill could tell my 2 year old had taken all she was going to take she wanted to eat. We headed to the restaurant we to be in that evening only to be told that we were not able to be seated and that we could wait until everyone else from that time was seated and they could find us a couple of tables and split us up. I did not take no for the answer and the matred made a call and soon we were sitting in our seats. It was very uncomfortable everyone else had been changed had the opportunity to be on board all afternoon and dress appropriately for dinner. I did not even have the chance to wash my face. At 12 midnight my bag arrived. I finally got the entire luggage settled at 1am. This was my first day of my cruise. We missed the show and there was nothing for us to do but to go to bed and hope tomorrow brought a better day
The two days on the actual cruise were wonderful. Our houseman was wonderful, he was friendly and warm our waiters WONDERFUL and Lisa great. Lisa made a point whenever she saw me to ask how my trip was going. On the last day my daughter did not know she was suppose to be part of the graduation show but Lisa allowed her at the last minute as the group was filing on the stage to take part. She even had an extra shirt in her bag. Now that is prepared! She is very special. My children loved the Oceaners lab and club.
On Wednesday we were informed we had to have the bags outside the room by 11pm. So I spent my last evening packing up. There was only one evening that I was not either packing or unpacking. This is vacation???
The cruise line had opportunities: they could had picked us up earlier to get us on the ship so we could enjoy the ship for eth afternoon, kept me informed, made sure that the people taking the ship knew what was going on. We spent most of our time in the parks on Friday and Saturday making calls to the call center to find out what was happening. Stagger the bus throughout the day to make it so we did not all show up at the same time.
I kept saying to my husband, dont worries Disney will take care of us look what the resort did. I was wrong. You did nothing special, we were late to arrive, missed the whole first day and no one cared.
My hope is let all of you know that when the chips are down, take the cancellation because nothing good will come from continuing on with your cruise
