The really BIG problem with dinner on the Wish Class ships

[CruiseGoon]

The short of it, is that the Wish Class ships are too big.

We went on the Wish earlier this year and we experienced how crowded and slooooow the food service was. I really did not care for the beer-garden style seating in Arendelle. I watched a Youtuber's review of the Treasure where he pointed out this problem is exactly the same as it is on the Wish. We are going on the Destiny at the beginning of January and I'm dreading this aspect of dinner service. We're going to try to skip our Worlds of Marvel night so we can go to Palo. I'm looking forward to the heroes and villains theming, the Hercules show and the adult bars and even the Lion King dinner show. I'm just dreading the food service during dinner.

Contrast that with going on the Magic at the beginning of November that was a mom and dad only vacation. Dinner was among the swiftest and most efficient we've experienced. Our waiters weren't rushed, but they were quick with the plates and still took time to visit and share stories.

The problem is scale. the Wish Class carries around 4000 passengers. Our cruise on the Magic had around 2000 passengers. All of the DCL ships have 3 main dining venues. So double the number of passengers are being crammed in, to 3 dining spaces that have to serve double the number of plates in the same time frame each night. This is why the constant reviews of slow service and cold food.

When the Wish Class was conceived, it seems like the designers took no account of what scaling up passengers would do to their rotational dining model. The solution should have been obvious that a 4th dining venue needed to be added and make the existing 3 a little smaller. That way, they could've kept up with the industrial scale of food service that needed to take place. It's not likely that the problem will be able to be fixed with the 4th Wish Class ship on account of the venue spaces being fixed.

I for one am looking forward the new class being built that is supposed to be closer to the Magic Class size.

 

[disney2you]

But the Wish class is basically the same size as Fantasy and Dream? with roughly 1250 rooms and 4000 guest capacity. Do you avoid the Fantasy and Dream as well?

 

[Kwami]

The problem isn't the number of guests. The Wish-class ships have approximately the same number of guests as the Dream-class ships.

The problem is that the show requires the servers to be strict about serving things at specific times so that they aren't distracting you too much during the show. That means rushed courses and cold food and missed drink refills and ordering dessert before you know how full you'll be. It's all rather annoying.

 

[Wedgeout]

Think it’s all about the passenger to crew ratio they are using on each ship. Much larger ships outside Disney do just fine at the dining service. I think it’s more of the themed dining experience IP choices that is drawing people away.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

FWIW out of our 4 cruises, our slowest dinner service by far was on Magic. 2nd slowest was Treasure (but even that was way better than Magic), and Dream and Fantasy were quite good. It really depends on so many factors, and doesn't only come down to ship size.

But yes, I did find the dinner shows somewhat problematic for efficient service, and I am also looking forward to the new smaller class of ship (but not because of dinner service expectations).