What Changes Would You Like DCL to Make?

[mousefan73]

There are two rules I wish DCL would either enforce, or do away with. The first is the rule against saving seats in the theaters. People do it all the time. Other people are bothered by it all the time. If DCL won’t enforce it, get rid of the rule and the source of conflict it brings.

Second is the adults only areas, particularly the beaches. If you aren’t going to stop families from bringing kids under 18, why bother with the rule?

I like the adults only areas. I am ambivalent about the seat saving. I am just annoyed by the lack of consistency. That said, if those are my only complaints, I guess it was a very good cruise.

I wish they would make the "adult" areas for 14 or 16+ ... or allow flexability with teen clubs ages. I get not having little kids screaming and running around. but sailing with my 16 year old who couldnt hang with me in satelitte falls with her mom was deal breaker for us and have since been also on other lines. . Our last sailing sailing was with our DD and her high school 2 best friends as a graduation gift... was horrible as 2 were 17 and one was 18.. they basically couldnt do anything together on the ship that was fun. really impacted the trip. DCL is extreme in following the rules... 2 went to the Vibe aquaduck time slot and the one friend who was not paret of vibe was told she cannot slide with... seriously??? good customer service is knowing when to make excpetions to the rules.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

I wish they would make the "adult" areas for 14 or 16+ ... or allow flexability with teen clubs ages. I get not having little kids screaming and running around. but sailing with my 16 year old who couldnt hang with me in satelitte falls with her mom was deal breaker for us and have since been also on other lines. . Our last sailing sailing was with our DD and her high school 2 best friends as a graduation gift... was horrible as 2 were 17 and one was 18.. they basically couldnt do anything together on the ship that was fun. really impacted the trip. DCL is extreme in following the rules... 2 went to the Vibe aquaduck time slot and the one friend who was not paret of vibe was told she cannot slide with... seriously??? good customer service is knowing when to make excpetions to the rules.

The issue with that is, an 18 year old is legally an adult. Any issues that arise with an 18 year old are treated more harshly than if a younger person is involved.

While I have no doubt you feel your 16 year old is "adult" enough to behave in an adult area, there are many that aren't. How does DCL ( or any other company) say to one 16 year old "you can come in" and say to another "you can't"?'

May I ask if you were aware of the age restrictions on DCL before crusing?

 

[mousefan73]

The issue with that is, an 18 year old is legally an adult. Any issues that arise with an 18 year old are treated more harshly than if a younger person is involved.

While I have no doubt you feel your 16 year old is "adult" enough to behave in an adult area, there are many that aren't. How does DCL ( or any other company) say to one 16 year old "you can come in" and say to another "you can't"?'

May I ask if you were aware of the age restrictions on DCL before crusing?

yes we were in way but until you are impacted you dont realize how much it impacts the sailings when you are in a mixed age group..

I tell everyone DCL is great for little kids / tweens but once you reach late teens sail european lines where your teens are treated like the young adults they are and not young children. Another issue I had with DCL is the driking policy for 18+ on med sailings.. how can I as a parent sign "permission" for an adult. to drink.. has no legal standing. unless i have court ordered guardenship .

 

[RedHead0186]

good customer service is knowing when to make excpetions to the rules.

"Good customer service" to one person (in making exceptions to the rules) may mean poor customer service to others. If DCL makes an exception to letting a non-adult into the adult area, that may disrupt others who wish the adult areas to be truly adults only. So for them, it's poor customer service. And as @PrincessShmoo pointed out, if DCL allows exceptions for one situation, how do they then draw the line at making other exceptions? Yes, you knew your teen was mature, but DCL doesn't know that. And they can't guarantee that other close-to-18-year-olds will also be mature. So they make a policy and they stick to it.

I certainly understand how this impacted your cruise, and I'm not trying to minimize that. But, that is also a limited circumstance that is not likely to happen for you again. And there are plenty of areas on the ship where everyone can hang out together, regardless of age. I understand your frustration but I don't think the solution is for DCL to make exceptions to the rules on who's allowed in the adult areas.

 

[Dug720]

Good customer service" to one person (in making exceptions to the rules) may mean poor customer service to others. If DCL makes an exception to letting a non-adult into the adult area, that may disrupt others who wish the adult areas to be truly adults only.

Absolutely this! Plus once one person reports that an exception was made, the first thing out of the next person who wants the exception's mouth is "I read it on the DISBoards/Facebook/random blog" or "I saw it on YouTube" and then it becomes not the exception but the rule - and there are no more adult-only areas on board. Truly "good customer service" is consistency in enforcement of policies. NOT making exceptions for one passenger's self-reported "very adult" teenager.

A quick look at "age for adult areas" on all the major cruise lines in the US showed that ONLY Celebrity (ironically) allows 16+ in their adult areas. Everything else is 18+. With the shocking exception of Carnival which is 21+. I honestly figured if anyone was going to start at 16 it would be Carnival.

 

[lilsonicfan]

I totally agree about the buffet being open on port days. We are on the EBTA and have early dining, so we are finding that on some of the port days we won't be able to go to the main dining room as we won't be back onboard in time, which is a bit of a bummer (especially since other options are limited).

We had early dining on the EBTA too (2019), I will say that our servers were really great about being flexible - they encouraged us to come to dinner even if we were running late, they said they could speed things up for us. I'm sure someone will tell you this isn't to be expected, but one thing on the EBTA is that over the course of the trip, mostly all in the first 7-8 days, you lose six hours as the time changes. By Day 4 or 5, they were keeping Cabanas open late for breakfast as people were getting up later and later. So there was maybe a little more flexibility overall.

 

[Kit Jackson]

I also wish they would hold a "midnight buffet" (if not at midnight) on the night of Pirate Night

This would absolutely have to include margaritas.

 

[holula]

I've found on cruises, I can just order a salad, or just the entree. I've even, on occasion, requested "just one baked potato" for dinner. I've also order off the kid's menu when I'm not up for a 3 course meal. They are very accommodating if you just let them know.

It’s more about having to go to the restaurant and maybe put on some clothes other than the warmest clothes I have and look vaguely presentable vs just nipping to the pool deck and grabbing one of those Mexican bowls or shawarma.

 

[European]

Being able to turn a placeholder into a booking myself online or modify a booking you made with the 10% onboard discount instead of having to call DCL.

 

[mousefan73]

"Good customer service" to one person (in making exceptions to the rules) may mean poor customer service to others. If DCL makes an exception to letting a non-adult into the adult area, that may disrupt others who wish the adult areas to be truly adults only. So for them, it's poor customer service. And as @PrincessShmoo pointed out, if DCL allows exceptions for one situation, how do they then draw the line at making other exceptions? Yes, you knew your teen was mature, but DCL doesn't know that. And they can't guarantee that other close-to-18-year-olds will also be mature. So they make a policy and they stick to it.

I certainly understand how this impacted your cruise, and I'm not trying to minimize that. But, that is also a limited circumstance that is not likely to happen for you again. And there are plenty of areas on the ship where everyone can hang out together, regardless of age. I understand your frustration but I don't think the solution is for DCL to make exceptions to the rules on who's allowed in the adult areas.

I was referring to three teenage girls who are obviously matured standing in line at the top of the aqua duck and one of them is told you can’t slide with because you are not under 18. And this would have rode with their friends anyways. And not take another’s space.

To begin with no one was aware that this would be restricted. And you can imagine how put off embarrassed this just turned 18-year-old who felt when she had to do the walk of shame and walk down the stairs past everyone.

The CM could’ve simply not made a big deal with it and just pushed her through. No one would’ve gotten wind of it.

 

[Dug720]

The CM could’ve simply not made a big deal with it and just pushed her through. No one would’ve gotten wind of it

Until the girls started talking about it, posting about it, etc. And then it's out there in the world so the next time there is a mixed age of adult and minor group they whine and complain about it. And when it's a guy who's 18+ with an minor girl who claims she's family or "my best friend just like family" and something happens, Disney's getting sued by the girls parents.

I've never seen a CM ask how old someone is before loading them into the Aqua Duck raft, so how did her age even come up? Unless one looks very young and the other very old? And why couldn't she have ridden solo? If there were 3 of them wouldn't someone have had to go solo anyway?

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but the information is out there (like all over these boards) that 18s cannot do the teen clubs and 17s cannot go to adult areas. Short of going on Celebrity where they allow 16+ in adult areas (other than the casino) I'm not sure what line you think you could have cruised and had them do things together.

 

[Dug720]

I would like for them to bring back the Future Cruise agents and allow you to once again book a specific cruise while on board. I'd even be ok with them making the deposit for a specific cruise non-refundable to prevent the old trick people would use of booking an inside cabin at the cheapest, furthest out cruise to lock in the discount and OBC. 9 times out of 10 when I sail I know what cruise I want to book, and it's annoying that I have to go through the charade of booking the future cruise thingy, wait for my travel agent to get it, then she has to call to book what I've already told her I want.

I've been on Royal and Celebrity as well as Disney since cruising re-started and both of those lines have future cruise offices that are fully staffed and they were always filled with people booking on board - and taking much longer than just booking the future cruise certificate (which I only did on Celebrity because the itineraries weren't out yet...but even then my TA was able to convert it to a cruise online).

At the very least, if they are going to continue the inane ONLY future cruise certificate requirement on DCL, at least make it so you (or your TA) don't have to call to convert it.

 

[tvguy]

Use some sort of system for disembarkation on the last day like other cruise lines. Have people wait in an assigned public room until their assigned time to disembark. Have refreshments and entertainment in that public room while you wait. 45 years of cruising, Disney's "walk off when you want" in reality was "wait in line for 45 minutes". I prefer a comfortable waiting area, and actually walking right off when called like on other cruise lines.

 

[Disturbia]

I would love to be able to get to the sailaway party (move it by 15-20 mins!!!). We have 3 kids and it’s next to impossible to get an elevator from one of the theatres (we book deck 7-9 but muster drills are on lower decks) from there. We usually just end up going outside to the shuffle board area and hearing the music.

The other change is saving the allergy info on an iPad so we only have to go through the menus (we already know what we are ordering by the time the server arrives with tickets) vs the server hand writing tickets for each kid and each entree and dessert every night for an hour! The guy was so stressed out and sometimes reiterate that his job was on the line (multiple times), he even pre filled the tickets one time. We felt bad for him but it was annoying at the same time. We did tip extra for everyone.

There should be more cabanas on the family beach (they can extend it). Lost $$$

 

[geoffrey]

Bring back the paper Navigators

Making reservations should be more of a lottery and not based on a specific time.

Stream audio for funnel vision movies into the app so you can listen with headphones.

Bring back the secret outside area on deck 7 aft . I know, it can't be done and I understand why they removed it, but I still miss it.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Bring back the paper Navigators

Hear, hear!

 

[mcd2745]

Being able to turn a placeholder into a booking myself online or modify a booking you made with the 10% onboard discount instead of having to call DCL.

I would also like to see slight modifications to the placeholder. First, make debarkation day the official start date or purchase date of the placeholder regardless of which day on the cruise you book it. This way you don't need to wait to do it. Also, two years is 730 days. Extend it slightly to 750 days. Just gives you a little more flexibility.

 

[holula]

After searching through 13 days of Remy/Palo for the EBTA, I’d like DCL move to the WDW model for booking restaurants.

You tell them that you want say, Palo Brunch. It then shows you all the available times for every day of the cruise. You pick what you want on the day you want. None of this selecting a day and the people in your stateroom and then finding out then only have a 10am reservation on that day and then having to exit that whole day and going into the next day and trying again.

I love the way they have updated the WDW search where you can select a range of dates and it will show you every res in that date period. DCL needs this.

 

[WorldCruiser]

Love these! The overall change they need to make is they need to stop shutting the ship down entirely once the entertainment for the lounge ends 11-15pm. Give us stuff to do after that other than silent disco- which no one does.

Leave the adult pools open (until 1 or 2am, IMO), like you said. Have a trivia session in the pub that starts at 11:30pm. Show a movie on Funnelvision at midnight - and leave the ice cream station open until it's over. Do mixology and/or other tastings that start 11:30 or midnight. None of these things require large number of cast members to still be working in order to facilitate these things.

Yeah the silent disco or dance party every night stinks. Do some other things like a trivia. It seems like the Treasure is shutting down earlier than the Fantasy. Adult entertainment outside of the spa has really taken a back seat on the newer ships.

 

[Cfabar1]

Yeah the silent disco or dance party every night stinks. Do some other things like a trivia. It seems like the Treasure is shutting down earlier than the Fantasy. Adult entertainment outside of the spa has really taken a back seat on the newer ships.

Yes, I wonder if a part of this is related to a desire to limit/lessen kids club offerings (I believe before small world nursery was open until midnight, and lately it has been 11 PM for example).

DCL seems to have decided that they are going after the “family” customer base first and foremost… But even on family trips mom, dad, the crazy aunt, and especially grandpa love to have a good time too! That’s a HUGE part of the appeal of DCL (and RCCL as well for that matter).