My thoughts having been on many Disney cruises

My thoughts having been on many Disney cruises
by rflor (2019-04-22 17:13:45)

In reply to: Disney cruise posted by domer4

Full Disclosure: my wife is a travel agent who specializes in Disney.

Disney is very well-suited for families with children and Disney fans. Rather than a casino, Disney dedicates half a deck to kids clubs focused on the 4-12 age set. Our kids loved the clubs so much they would beg not to leave for dinner and shows with us.

Disney also has kids' clubs for the 12-14 and 15-17 age brackets that are generally well-attended.

For dining, Disney focuses heavily on the "main" dining rooms. Each dining room has its own theme and your servers rotate with you throughout the cruise. Unlike other lines, Disney does not do much specialty dining, aside from 2 18+ restaurants (Palo (Italian) and Remy (French) that are excellent. I put Remy up there with land-based 4* fine dining restaurants.

Part of your premium is Disney's focus on service. We've found the customer service, cleanliness, and onboard ship quality to be significantly better than other lines, despite every cruise being upwards of 40-50% kids.

What itinerary are you looking at and cabin type? $6,500 for a family of 4 for a 6 day cruise is a good price for a Disney cruise, which is probably due to the January timing.

For older families or those who are not Disney fans, I agree it becomes more difficult to justify Disney's premium vs. Royal Caribbean or Celebrity. I do not consider Carnival to be in the same demographic, although they're trying to be with their new ships.

The trip is 6 days from Galveston

Since we live in TX, we can drive to the port.

Goes to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, then back to Galveston.

Cabin has a walk out "balcony"

Thanks for your reply.

Gotcha...then that's a good price

Disney has been able to charge a premium (over a typical Disney premium) for the Galveston cruises because:

A. The Wonder (your ship) is one of the older, smaller ships, and it fills up quickly. Verandah rooms command a higher premium on those ships due to their limited number

B. The Galveston cruises are in high-demand due to the novelty factor and driveability for many (like yourself).

If you're interested, my wife can help with alternative dates/itineraries/etc if you wish to find something cheaper (my email attached)

fwiw

while I've only been on one Disney Cruise and generally agree with your comments (see my post below, other than our pool cleanliness), we have been on many, many Royal Caribbean cruises and I'd say for Voyager, Freedom and Oasis classes of ships, the cleanliness and onboard ship quality have been very, very good.

I was on one of the initial two Disney ships (materially smaller than any of the RCCL classes of ship I mentioned) and the Royal Promenade blows away anything on those Disney ships.

The bottom line is if you have kids the "right" age and your family enjoys Disney, that trumps all else and people should take the Disney cruise. If your kids are, say 15 or older, probably better off on RCCL or comparable.

Dream Class ships are very different

Disney's Dream class (Fantasy and Dream) have significantly more adult amenities and public spaces than the classic ships.

It's hard to compare the Royal Promenade to Disney as Disney chose not to focus on the specialty dining you find on other cruise lines.

I predict Disney's new Triton class ships will directly address those shortfalls as they are larger than Dream but keeping the same passenger count. They also need to address the "bored teenager" risk, which RCL has been very successful at competing against Disney.