Service isn't so "Magical" right now...

[booger73]

One interesting fact I'll say about dining - which might or might not "speed it up"
We were also on your same cruise, btw.. and while I believe we did have more experienced servers (I asked) this fact does make a difference:

If Disney/your waiters/head waiter knows that you have some food allergies (in my case, the kids have melons, tree nuts, etc).. you can actually order next night's dinner the night before - mainly, because they want to avoid cross-contamination/chef cooks it separate, etc, etc

We did this multiple times and actually everything came out very fast (i.e. we'd be on main course when people were on appetizers, and on desserts usually when people around us on main).. I don't think we ever left after 700-715p..

Now, some people may not like to 'order early' or can't decide.. but they did take it very seriously and I could tell it made a difference

(I will say our first night was "slower" though, as described by everyone else.. since we hadn't preordered).. but, I didn't mind it

 

[lovesDCL]

denas, I'm sorry to hear that the cruise service was so bad!

Sorry you guys had such bad service. We were on the same cruise as you and had WONDERFUL service & a wonderful time! Everyone we came in contact with anywhere on the ship was nothing but helpful, very friendly & just plain great. We did notice a little ware & tare on the magic but nothing too big & nothing we haven't seen at expensive hotels. Not only did we love the cruise, we loved the Magic & we re-booked for the western Caribbean on the Magic next Jan.

Loriekins, we will be on the Magic in less than 2 weeks...can you please share the names of your servers so that we can request them and make sure that we get to have the wonderful service you did? thanks!!!

 

[Paddle_Nut]

I was on the same cruise as you and we too had no hot water on the return from St. Maarten around 4pm. We didn't see it as a huge issue, we figured it probably had to do something with maintenance and moved on with our life. One afternoon of being inconvenienced because of no hot water is not something that should throw an entire holiday. This was the one and only instance we didn't have hot water, in fact that very morning I had a wonderful hot shower just like all the ones that I had before and after

Our cruise had a higher than normal amount of kids, I heard there were 1100 of the little darlings. With adding a second princess showing proves they tried to address the demand for princess greetings and based on the amount of kids wanting to meet them, I think they did the best they could. The navigator also advertised additional sightings of princesses at different times so if you were on top of it, you most definately got to meet them.

I do feel badly about your service, or lack there of during dinner. We had an amazing experience and perhaps were the lucky ones in having experienced servers.

This was our first cruise ever and I thank DCL for making our first experience a very memorable one.

 

[Paddle_Nut]

To be fair - they may have had towels and bottle of water for sale by the excursion desk, but we weren't on a Disney excursion so didn't check there. On every other line I have been on (RCL, Princess, NCL, Carnival) they have towels and bottled water for sale right where you disembark. After getting all 8 of us down to Deck 1 to disembark and realizing they weren't available, I just gave up and we did without (we purchased water at the beach we went to and I had a blanket for the baby). Since we had to use an elevator for my MIL and the stroller which is a pain since if we were too slow, people would cut in front of us and we often had to wait for a couple of elevator cycles and I usually walked, I wasn't about to hike back up to deck 9 to find towels!!!

My inlaws sailed on Oasis of the Seas last month and I think were doing lots of comparisons - Disney definately lost in their minds for service with the speed of dinner service, lack of towels and water at the disembarkation, etc. And perhaps my MILs comments made me a little more sensitive to these things; afterall we had saved for awhile and paid for their cruise for their 50th wedding anniversary so her little comments increased my irritation and dissappointment!!! Between that and a very sick little baby, things I probably wouldn't have noticed so much became much more obvious to me - when you are really counting on the extra service, when it is missing it is obvious!!

But on the plus side, I missed so many desserts and hiked up so many steps carrying at least on kid most of the time I don't need a post-cruise diet

Water on a string was available for purchase at the gangway (aft) when we went through each time. We were on the 29Jan11 Eastern.

 

[lbgraves]

Water on a string was available for purchase at the gangway (aft) when we went through each time. We were on the 29Jan11 Eastern.

LOL! Thanks! I was beginning to think I had gotten mixed up but we never went to deck 9 before getting off the ship last cruise. I have seen this setup on a few cruises. Perhaps it depends which gangway you are departing or the CMs working that cruise?

 

[denas]

Thanks for all of the comments. I guess this just confirms my initial post - the service was hit or miss!! Like I said initially, there were some CMs who were great, it was just surprising that it was so inconsistent. ANy one of the little things wouldn't have mattered, but all of them together just made me question the premium I had paid for Disney service - it is usually the little things that Disney does that makes it special so likewise it is the little things that when either missing or done wrong that make it not so special. I know that maintenance issues happen - it wasn't so much the lack of hot water, it was the CMs response when I reported the issue that was annoying. It wasn't that Princess Aurora wasn't at the gathering, it was that the CMs specifically told us that the entire event would be repeated so I didn't make the effort to go around each evening to meet princesses. As I stated - overall I rated the cruise just "good" (whcih is the centerl marking on Disney's surveys). We did rebook, but will move that date well into 2013 when those dates come out so that we are through with the training period for CMs.

As I stated originally, I didn't really post this thread to be a giant gripe about my cruise, I posted it so that others who may not be able to cruise very often and are only in the planning phase consider their dates - if you are looking to cruise in 2012 OR 2013, I would recommend moving your dates out until the Fantasy has been out for around 6 months so that Disney will be done with training and have more experienced CMs who can make your trip magical!!! We spent a lot to take 8 people on a cruise. If I had understood that the service wouldn't quite be what I had experienced before CONSISTENTLY, I probably wouldn't have booked for this year or on this line. I am so glad that so many others had great service, but not surprised. It just all seemed very inconsistent - once a waiter who ordered something for room service for me and had it delivered to our table and sometimes waiters who couldn't even refill drinks!!! We really needed and were counting on the extra service, especially help with carrying trays and finding a place to sit, with my MIL, a baby, and kids who now outnumber the parents!!!

And Dr. Nick was great (hopefully none of you actually have to meet him). So were the two RNs we dealt with. THey were so apologetic that I had to pay for the Motrin - they kept telling me they supply it to guest services and I could pick it up for free there, but after three visits to guest services with no Motrin, I ended up paying the $10.

I am glad so many of you had a great cruise and sorry for those of you also impacted by it. We will do Disney again, but not as soon as we had planned. We shared a cab with a lady and child who had done the Carnival Dream the week prior and I think we will try Carnival (minus the in-laws) next!!

 

[jax1623]

I too was on the same cruise, and thought it was just "good". This was our second time on DCL, I really felt like there was a total lack of staff, compared to our last cruise. There seemed to be far less character interaction than last time, I hardly saw anyone going general maintence of the deck/ship, the kids clubs had 1/2 the amount of staff as last year (they were great though). The only crew there seemed to be alot of was bar servers, there was someone asking you every 5 mins if you needed a drink.

Dinning room service for us was just OK as well. While our servers were very nice, the assistant was very slow with drinks and the were always flat, We though it was funny at first. I mentioned it to our server on day 3 and he said he would make sure we got our drinks faster ( we never did). At the Character breakfast we were not offered any pastries, so my husband asked the assitant server for some and he brought out 1 FROZEN donut for 4 of us to share. Our sever did bring our the wrong order on occasion (alway the dessert though) Unlike other we did not find the food slow, our servers seemed so focused on getting the food out that they harldly interacted with us. I noticed that after they serverd dessert our server would let out a HUGE sigh of releife (never really got a chance to talk to him so I assume he was fairly new).

On day 4 the head server asked me how service could be improved, he asked ... so I told him... He didn't reallly seem to care. I also mentioned my disappointment that ALL the menu's were IDENTICAL to last year.. not 1 item had changed ( not from what I could tell anyway). His response was to say "while you are from Canada, so what is your specialty dish that you want to come here to eat" . My response..that I was not expecting nor was I asking to eat what I eat at home, I was just commenting that I would be nice to see 1 or 2 different items from last year.

What bothered my the most was the the smoking, there are designated areas to smoke so why was there little enforcement of this? Several time on deck 10 by the mickey pool, I saw cigarette butts on the floor of the deck, I also witnessed serveral people smoking as they walked around deck 10, again in the kids area, same thing on castaway cay and no staff around to to do anything about it!

While we weren't as "WOWED" as our last cruise, we still had a wonderful vacation. This time I am just not in as much of a hurry to return anytime soon.

 

[Pixelfrog]

Yeah, it's interesting because I didn't get the impression from any of the negative comments here that anyone was overly picky or expecting more than was promised. In retrospect, I probably could have been more disappointed with the dinner service if I didn't have a huge table of family members distracting each other from the fact that it was taking so long. The comments I've read here seem perfectly reasonable, especially in light of the fact that Disney cruises are so much more expensive than other cruise lines.

We also are a little different with regard to character experiences because my husband and I used to work at Disneyworld. Because of this, we have friends who still work there and get us in for free to the parks and we use their discounts when shopping, so it's a cheap enough vacation for us that we took the kids every year. At this point, they couldn't care less about characters, so we didn't have any issues with meeting any in particular. So I suppose that the key areas that could be an issue were things that we simply wouldn't have noticed.

I'd sure be pissed, though, if I was told my son could see Jack Sparrow on Thursday and then he didn't show up.

 

[myolite]

As I stated - overall I rated the cruise just "good" (whcih is the centerl marking on Disney's surveys).
<snip>

And Dr. Nick was great (hopefully none of you actually have to meet him).

We rated everything "good" with a few exceptions.. And agree that Dr. Nick was fantastic. Dr. Inge was "okay". and an anonymous on-call doctor was "poor".

 

[Spokavegas]

We just cruised the Magic on the 1/22/11 Western.....and had an AMAZING cruise, so it's definitely hit or miss. Our Asst Server and Server were both new- but they were sure trying hard! We went to more dinners in the dining room this cruise than we'd ever intended to. Also saw maintenance crews working on sprucing up paint, etc all over the place! And no broken arms on theater chairs during our whole week.

But I do agree with the PP who mentioned about them changing up the menus a little bit.....it'd be nice before our Wonder cruise next year! Hope they're not the ship with all the newbies then!

 

[jwongclan]

We just came back from the same Eastern cruise. This was our first DCL trip so overall we thought it was fantastic! We were travelling with a large party (of 14) and had the early seating. Yes, dinner service did take about 1hr 45mins first few nites but I was chalking it up to our group being so big. However, when we finally told our server (who was great btw) that we wanted to make a 7:30pm show, he really speeded things up and we were done by 7:15pm. He told us that we just needed to let them know if we were trying to be out a certain time and they would try to expedite everything Our asst server was new and being trained but he got the hang of things after a few nites. We've cruised Carnival several times before and found overall service better on those cruises but again, we understood there was a lot of training going on and this cruise was a sold out cruise (thanks to all us Canadians taking advantage of a great Cdn only deal Like previous posters, the lack of hot water and even some noisy construction around our room did NOT detract one bit from the wonderful shows, kids programs and overall "magical" experience our group had. Oh, and I found out from reading these boards that the 2nd princess gathering sometimes does not have all the princesses of the 1st one so I made sure I was in the queue very early on for the 1st gathering. Tks DIS boards for making our 1st cruise memorable!!

 

[5boyz]

We just came back from the same Eastern cruise. This was our first DCL trip so overall we thought it was fantastic! We were travelling with a large party (of 14) and had the early seating. Yes, dinner service did take about 1hr 45mins first few nites but I was chalking it up to our group being so big. However, when we finally told our server (who was great btw) that we wanted to make a 7:30pm show, he really speeded things up and we were done by 7:15pm. He told us that we just needed to let them know if we were trying to be out a certain time and they would try to expedite everything Our asst server was new and being trained but he got the hang of things after a few nites. We've cruised Carnival several times before and found overall service better on those cruises but again, we understood there was a lot of training going on and this cruise was a sold out cruise (thanks to all us Canadians taking advantage of a great Cdn only deal Like previous posters, the lack of hot water and even some noisy construction around our room did NOT detract one bit from the wonderful shows, kids programs and overall "magical" experience our group had. Oh, and I found out from reading these boards that the 2nd princess gathering sometimes does not have all the princesses of the 1st one so I made sure I was in the queue very early on for the 1st gathering. Tks DIS boards for making our 1st cruise memorable!!

Did you have some little girls, a baby, a older lady in a wheelchair by any chance? maybe some boys too I cant remember everyone.....lol

 

[fumipappa]

We opted for the Thursday princess gathering. As we watched the princesses file in, Aurora wasn't there. On the Monday princess gathering, Aurora, Tiana, Cinderalla, Belle, Snow White, Alice and Peter Pan had all been present. I asked a CM where we could find Aurora. She told me they had decided not to include her, Alice or Peter Pan in this gathering because it had been too crowded on Monday. I was kind of suprised that the CMs had not been prepared for the amount of little girls who would come to a princess gathering and didn't know how to manage the crowds. Hasn't DCL been doing princess gatherings on the Magic for years??? But, the worst part was that Aurora was not only NOT coming to the princess gathering, she wasn't out again at all until the party the final night. My daughter was in tears about missing her favorite princess which made me really irritated that I had followed the navigators and assumed it really would be repeated on the second day. My 4 year old couldn't stay awake until 10:30pm to see her the final night.

To be fair, Aurora showed up on Wednesday at lobby, 7PM separate from princess gathering.(I brought back the navigator and checked). I understand serving dinner was slow but it could be done by stepping out a bit from dinner table to go to lobby to take pictures with Aurora, if it was really important for people. I understand OP assumed that Aurora would show up next princess gathering but navigator is not guaranteeing who would show up any where( both princess gathering).
First day of gathering, navigator is showing Belle's picture and second one, showing Cinderella. So again, no indication of Aurora at all.

Also, Alice and Peter showed up LATER of the prince gathering time, and they were not on any controlled area. they had CM next to them but not to control line or KTTW/Picture taken. I took their presence as line control/ease waiting time for actual princess gathering. (especially peter, he was running around the path from Lobby to Parrot cay).

And by me staying with cranky 5yrs old, I felt that the line was well-managed comparing with busy time of Magic Kingdom.

I agree with the slow service of Dinner table though. Some people left dinner at 9:15PM for late seating but we were always staying at dinner table until 9:45PM, 30min different. Only time we left table without having dessert was Pirates night. We did not want to miss it. Otherwise slowness did not bother us much because... it was "dinner", we wanted to talk about what happened during the day time and shared a lot among the family.

 

[fumipappa]

And one more,

hot water came out between 5:00-5:15PM. we came back from excursion around 4PM and noticed only cold water. called guest service and they told me that hot water must be available at 5:00PM. Yes, it was inconvenient, but unless you stay all day at ship, it was not big factor, at least for us.

 

[Loriekins]

denas, I'm sorry to hear that the cruise service was so bad!



Loriekins, we will be on the Magic in less than 2 weeks...can you please share the names of your servers so that we can request them and make sure that we get to have the wonderful service you did? thanks!!!

Our servers were Andrae & Khumong (sp). We will be requesting them next year too!

 

[denas]

To be fair, Aurora showed up on Wednesday at lobby, 7PM separate from princess gathering.(I brought back the navigator and checked). I understand serving dinner was slow but it could be done by stepping out a bit from dinner table to go to lobby to take pictures with Aurora, if it was really important for people. I understand OP assumed that Aurora would show up next princess gathering but navigator is not guaranteeing who would show up any where( both princess gathering).
First day of gathering, navigator is showing Belle's picture and second one, showing Cinderella. So again, no indication of Aurora at all.

Also, Alice and Peter showed up LATER of the prince gathering time, and they were not on any controlled area. they had CM next to them but not to control line or KTTW/Picture taken. I took their presence as line control/ease waiting time for actual princess gathering. (especially peter, he was running around the path from Lobby to Parrot cay).

Had I not been told specifically by the CM on Monday that the entire princess gathering would be repeated on Thursday, I would have made an effort to see Aurora on Wednesday night. The CMs planted themselves at the back of the line and told everyone from a certain point on to please come back on Thursday because they could see the princesses then. Again, my point was that to find out on Thursday that she wasn't coming because , as I was told by the CM who I asked "it was just too crowded so we changed our minds" wasn't really fair since I no longer had the opportunity to see Aurora again. Finding out on Thursday that my last chance to see her was the previous evening is the point. I told my daughter that we weren't going to wait in any more lines because we would see the princesses on Thursday at the princess gathering. THis is my complaint - not that characters weren't present, but that the CMs seemed off. I would have appriciated being told that the last chance to see Aurora was Wendesday evening - we would have gone to see her then and avoided the entire Thursday princess gathering and I really would have appreciated not having to deal with my sobbing 4-year-old moaning about missing sleeing beauty "her favorite princess" and being told - "see mommy I told you we should have seen her last night". Or even better - eliminate the whole "princess gathering" thing and simply have the princesses out more often by name so you can find the ones you want. Overall, I was just really surprised to be told by the CM that they just didn't expect so many kids. THe Magic has been doing princess gatherings forever and I would assume that most little girls show up. I gave this as an example, along with the response I got to my complaing about the lack of hot water, of the general lack of service on the magic. No - a cold shower didn't "ruin" my cruise, but, the response from maintenance was incredibly poor. Yes, my daughter saw a lot of characters and had great interactions, but, when an event is planned it should occur and not occuring because the CMs didn't understand how to deal with a mass of little girls is pretty un-Disney. I don't really care if no one else thinks that missing Aurora on THursday is a big deal - it was to me because I planned my day around seeing her and she wasn't there. I am glad everyone else got a chance to see Aurora.

I have no intention of taking another Disney cruise for a few years and by then my daughter will hopefully have outgrown princesses. My youngest is a boy. But I will warn everyone else to ignore the navigators and CMs, and see any character you are interested in the first time they appear as you may not find them again.

I guess PP said it all when commenting that service was better on Carnival their previous two cruises. I just checked prices for the August 2012 cruises on Carnival as they just published. I had booked on board with Disney for a cruise that month. Even with my on board booking discount, Carnival will cost us half the amount for the same 7-night carribean itinerary, same size room as Disney. I will just not be paying that Disney premium again for untrained CMs. And on Carnival I don't have to worry about chasing characters who may or may not show up as scheduled.

 

[NAB]

The princess gatherings are new....at least the this type. Two years ago and before that it was only autographs only. And they sat at tables. It went much quicker.

My dd also noticed Sleeping Beauty wasn't out much. Cinderella was out the most and Princess Tiana.

The person that said leave the dinner table to go see the princess...bad idea. For one you don't know how long you would have to stand in line to see her and second your food would be cold by the time you got back or not served to others at the table at all.

I remember two years ago on the last sea day that a lot of the characters were out at the same time all over the ship, didn't see that this time either.

 

[KSDisneyDad]

I guess PP said it all when commenting that service was better on Carnival their previous two cruises. I just checked prices for the August 2012 cruises on Carnival as they just published. I had booked on board with Disney for a cruise that month. Even with my on board booking discount, Carnival will cost us half the amount for the same 7-night carribean itinerary, same size room as Disney. I will just not be paying that Disney premium again for untrained CMs. And on Carnival I don't have to worry about chasing characters who may or may not show up as scheduled.

This is where it pays to book early on Disney. I booked a cruise on June 2, 2012 on the Fantasy for 5 of us in two rooms (inside and verandah across the hall).

I just now priced the Carnival Dream leaving on June 2, 2012 (same exact day) for nearly the same itinerary. Our Disney cruise is going to St. Maarten, St. Thomas and CC. The Carnival cruise is also going to St. Maarten & St. Thomas, but they are also going to Nassau (yuck!).

For the exact same room types, the Carnival Dream cruise is priced $172 MORE than our Disney Fantasy Cruise!! Plus, since I rebooked onboard Disney, I am getting an extra $550 in onboard credits that I wouldn't get on Carnival.
We are getting a Disney Fantasy cruise in June 2012 leaving on the exact same day as Carnival for the nearly the same itinerary as Carnival for $722 less than the Carnival Dream.

In full disclosure, the cost of our particular Disney cruise has gone up by nearly $3,000 since we booked on the first day of booking.

So far, no other cruise line can seem to beat the price I am getting on Disney in June 2012 (BTW - the Oasis was about $1,200 more than our Disney cruise - not including the OBC's - leaving on the same day for the same itinerary as Carnival). The RCCL Freedom has not yet announced their June 2012 dates.

And one other reason for us to cruise on Disney. Both the Oasis and Carnival Dream will be at St. Thomas and St. Maarten on the exact same day. The Disney Fantasy will be at those ports on the opposite days!! (BTW - Carnival Dream and RCCL Oasis will also be at Nassau on the same day whereas DCL will be at CC by itself).

I only bring this up to the OP so that you keep your on-board booking discount and credits. If you decide to take another DCL cruise in the future, book the first day you can - don't wait as our price jumped quickly by $725 and then again by another $2,275 about two weeks ago! This will enable you to book a DCL cruise for about the same price or less than other cruise lines.

 

[5boyz]

While we are talking about rebooking and booking cruises....does anyone know if I can change the room they assigned to me? I sat for 1.5hrs waiting to rebook, which is not acceptable to me....the ONE person that was doing it seen me looking at my watch when I booked I knew exactly what I wanted booked put the downpayment but he was taking soooooo long, he finally said you are all done I will deliver the paperwork to your room. I didnt get it til the next morning when we were leaving only by chance I went back to the room and it was there. Anyway, I put it in my purse and forgot about it. When I checked my emails Monday I had confirmation from them, I noticed they already assigned me a room. So I tried to call to ask about it but was on hold for half an hour and had to go do school pick up. So cant call til tomorrow as it is a surprise for the kids and dont want them to hear me talking. So thought I would come here and ask....

 

[OrangeCountyCommuter]

And one more,

hot water came out between 5:00-5:15PM. we came back from excursion around 4PM and noticed only cold water. called guest service and they told me that hot water must be available at 5:00PM. Yes, it was inconvenient, but unless you stay all day at ship, it was not big factor, at least for us.

We have reached a new low folks.... Now it's OK for Disney to not provide hot water.

And it's "ok" for service to be hit or miss

And so on..

Really?

So if this same review was for another cruise line would it still be OK or would there be outrage followed by the "DCL is wonderful"posts???

(And if Carnival provides hot water that $172 extra just might be worth it IMHO. If they can get my meal too me in a reasonable time it's definetly worth it! LOL! I am willing to pay for service but I don't think it should be "hit or miss" and "well it's ok if they miss sometimes"

And as the poster points out she/he is NOT comparing apples and oranges. Right now Disney is charging $3,000 MORE for thier cruise... where it's "ok not to provide service" )