It was a very different cruise, I would even say weird in some aspects.
If I separated it into to parts - the on board experience and the experience of the two days at
Castaway Cay...I would say the Castaway experience was a significant upgrade, while the on board experience was downgraded. That's the headline IMO.
Since our entire family (myself, wife, 19-yr old son, 16-yr old daughter) is fully vaccinated, the arrival at port and embarkation process, while different, went smoothly.
On board, the lack of activities really stood out. Perhaps that is why there was no paper Navigator, as it would have been mostly blank. The few activities they did have were repeated over and over, presumably to give multiple opportunities for them so that each occurrence wasn't too heavily attended. The movie theater only showed Black Widow and Jungle Cruise, and nothing else (normally, Cruella would probably have been part of the rotation). In the adult lounge for the four nights, they had karaoke twice and Match Your Mate twice. No variety acts. They did the same music trivia (80s, 90s, 2000s,) 3 or 4 times a day in 687.
Since we were traveling with a 19-yr old, it would have been nice to know beforehand that the 1820 Society was canceled (but of course, it was still advertised on the screens in the elevators). This was a big disappointment. As a result, our son just spent a majority of the cruise in the stateroom. Had we known in advance there would be no 1820 Society, there would have been a good chance we would have canceled and rescheduled.
Another thing they should have notified guests prior to sailing was that guest laundry rooms would be closed. First night, I went to iron a shirt and another gentleman was heading towards me with his shirt and knew where I was heading. He stopped and said "the laundry rooms are closed, I guess there will be a lot of guys in wrinkled shirts at dinner on this cruise". Not a huge deal in and of itself, but goes back to the lack of communication from
DCL that we have seen throughout this ordeal, and in particular the last 6 weeks or so where they left guests booked on these Aug Dream sailings twisting in the wind for so long. Once they finally announced they were resuming operations with this sailing, they should have been very transparent and specific about what changes to the on board experience we should expect.
The overall reduced capacity (there's been plenty of numbers tossed around - 25%, 30%, etc) is certainly what made the days at Castaway truly fantastic. There were far fewer loungers/chairs on the beach, and spread out well. Still, there was no problem finding any. There were so few people on the beach, in the water, etc. that you really felt like it was "private island ". This was the first day, early afternoon, with good weather (second day had bad weather) ...
View attachment 597183
On the flip side, the reduced capacity made for some weird aspects. Our room was near the aft elevators. When we got off the forward elevators and had to make the long walk down the hall, very few doors were decorated, and of course, no FEs hanging. You even saw less CMs. Was very strange.
Another strange sight was the atrium completely empty in the evening. The below pic was about 7:30 pm when it is normally buzzing with activity (live music, characters greets, backdrop photos, etc)
View attachment 597185
As expected, the crew were all fantastic. Food was excellent (although, they could have used the time off to refresh the menus). I think the fact that they only had to make dinners for about 30% of the usual number of people allowed them to improve the quality and preparation of the dinners in the MDRs.
Debarkation was okay. Line to get off the ship was still fairly long - and not physically distanced. I guess they didn't care if everyone infected each other on that line and got sick 2-3 days later since we'd be long gone from the ship at that point.
And a PSA if I may,...please make sure you are taking the correct luggage from the terminal. For the second time, we had someone take one of our bags/suitcases. And strangely, neither time was it a black upright suitcase. Fortunately, they got in touch with the people who took it and they were on a DCL bus back to MCO, so they alerted the driver and he left it with the DCL folks at the Magical Express area and we were able to get it when we got to MCO.
ice cream on board?
