I'm just back from five days in WDW and four days cruising on the Disney Dream. It was a wonderful vacation overall, but we did have some difficulties getting vegan meals on the Dream.
Our park meals were great as usual (we also ate twice at Sweet Tomatoes which is a huge hit with my whole family).
We had noted that we had several vegans in our group when we booked, and I even called a week or so before we left to make sure this was included in our reservation. It was. When we got to our first dinner with our assigned servers, we explained right away that we were vegan. Our server said "Yes, vegan, vegetarian." English was clearly not his first language. We quickly tried to explain the difference between vegan and vegetarian. He said "ah, no eggs, no eggs" and even though we then repeated the part about no milk or dairy products we weren't sure he'd gotten it. (The fact that he offered us whipped cream for our bowls of fruit later suggested that, no, he hadn't.)
This made us pretty nervous about ordering because we didn't feel confident that he knew what we wanted. (Especially my daughter, who has severe allergies to both milk and eggs.) And the process was incredibly slow. He'd give us the menu, we'd ask if a dish on the menu could be made vegan, and the server would disappear for 10 or 15 minutes. He'd come back, say no, and then we'd ask about another dish. Off he'd go again. Meanwhile we're getting hungrier and hungrier. And it didn't improve much.
On the third night, he showed us the menu for the next restaurant and told us to pick what we wanted for the fourth night. Sounded good. I picked a ravioli dish that included cheese on the menu, but (after disappearing again for a long time) he assured me it could be made without cheese. Fourth night arrives, we wait for our meals, and sure enough the ravioli dish arrives COVERED IN CHEESE. I almost burst into tears. What is the point of pre-ordering a vegan dish if they are going to put cheese on it? And of course then I had to wait some 20 minutes until they prepared me a new dish.
On the final morning, the breakfast menu had no vegan options. We had saved some soymilk from Cabanas the day before (more about Cabanas later) so when we saw muesli on the menu (uncooked rolled oats with fruit and nuts added) that was made with cow's milk, we asked if we could have it served without the cow's milk and we'd add the soymilk we'd brought. Ten minutes later the server gives us bowls of uncooked rolled oats. That's it. No fruit, no nuts, just oats. We were all very upset, and finally the server went and got us new bowls with the proper toppings.
All in all, the dinners were very stressful for us. People rave so much about cruise meals, and we have always raved about Disney park meals, but this was pretty awful.
I will say that our experience at Cabanas, the buffet restaurant at the top of the ship where we had most of our breakfasts and lunches, was very different. On our first day we met Calvin, a wonderful chef, who watched for us every day and cheerfully made us delicious vegan meals, and found soymilk and vegan desserts for us. Another Cabanas chef made me a lovely apple cake for dessert one night, and made a chocolate birthday cake too. I believe his name was Khristian. They really saved our vacation for us! They even sent vegan burgers and grilled tofu out to
Castaway Cay for us to have for lunch that day.
The ship was gorgeous, we all loved it (my six year old granddaughter cried when we had to disembark because she didn't want to leave) but the food situation was disappointing. I do think this was a training issue and that
Disney Cruise Lines needs to catch up to the Parks in this area.
I did write to the Cruise Lines Guest Services about this. I was told that this was an unusual experience and that these things don't normally happen, and, no, we could not get any discount or consideration towards future trips.
Teresa
I'm glad that you contacted Disney about it, but I would have hoped they would offer you something after all the trouble your server put you through. I would have been so ridiculously pissed (and disappointed) if I had to go through that night after night. What a horrible way to end each day.
