On Labor Day weekend, I had both the Friday and the Monday off, and we try not to pass up a four-day weekend travel opportunity, so we took a cruise on Disney's newest ship, the Wish! We booked this cruise more than 15 months ago, and we'd been looking forward to seeing how this ship would differ from the other four in the Disney fleet.
We left for the cruise right after school on Thursday. C picked me up at 4:00 and we immediately began our drive down to Florida. We stopped partway in South Carolina for a very short hotel stay - literally about six hours - and after continuing the drive on Friday morning, we arrived at Port Canaveral around 1:00 pm. We had a late check in time of 1:45, which we weren't particularly thrilled about, but it turned out to be awesome because not only were there no lines to board the ship, the cruise terminal was practically empty and I was able to take pictures without a million people in them!
The ship itself is absolutely beautiful. Hopefully my pictures will reflect that. However - and I know it's early in the post for a "however" and in general it's rare for me to not gush about how much I love things - the layout is odd compared to the other four ships. It's like they tried to cram too many things into/onto the ship and ended up causing congestion everywhere. It was an almost-full cruise (just shy of 4,000 guests) on a holiday weekend, so I know those factors certainly didn't help, but we really felt like there were too many people in too small of a space!
In all seriousness, I loved the ship's design and decor. I took so many pictures of little details around the ship and I know I didn't even scratch the surface! There were a lot of little areas to explore and different themes on each deck. Our room was on Deck 9 and had a Princess and the Frog theme, which was beautiful, and in the Grand Hall (known as the Atrium on the other ships), the theme is Cinderella. The two movie theaters are called the Neverland Theater and the Wonderland Theater for Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, and as always, the kids' club has some of the best decor and we were able to visit and take pictures during the open house before we left Port Canaveral. The work of Joey Chou - one of my favorite Disney artists - was both the inside the kids' club, as well as along the hallways around it. His style is fabulous and I have several prints of his both in my house and in my office at school!
The restaurants were also a bit of a disappointment. As I've surely shared before, I have no interest in making friends when I go on a cruise and we've never had an issue getting a table for two. This time, it was an issue. They changed our dining time from the second seating to the first seating, which we were not happy about, but were willing to do if it meant sitting by ourselves. When we arrived for dinner the first night, we were seated with other people and I spoke to the staff and they ended up moving us to a table for six, which looked and felt absurd. The service itself, which DCL is known for, was abysmal, and the crowded, poorly-designed layout did not help matters - the servers were constantly having near collisions and ultimately two ran into each near our table and spilled an entire tray of drinks. And because they'd moved us to a weird table, none of the servers really knew who was waiting on us, which was confusing and frustrating for everyone and ended up taking forever. It was a terrible experience overall! We ended up not going to dinner on either of the two following nights, choosing instead to order room service and take advantage of the quick service options. The restaurant on the second night was Marvel-themed, so I was not heartbroken about missing out on that, but on the third night, we were scheduled to eat at Arendelle, which has a Frozen theme. I absolutely LOVE Frozen, so I was originally sad about not eating there, but I went in at the end of dinner and took a few photos. It was just as crowded and poorly laid out as 1923 (the restaurant on the first night), so I quickly realized that I missed out on nothing!
You might be thinking that I'm just being overly judgy, but other guests shared very similar observations about this ship and this cruise in particular. I was far from the only person unimpressed! Perhaps things will improve as they take feedback from guests into account and as the crew settles in, as it is a new ship and possibly just experiencing some growing pains.
There were dinner shows each night, but we didn't attend; on such a short cruise, we didn't want to spend the time (and to be honest, these shows have been hit or miss on the other ships, so we weren't taking any chances this time). The trivia options were limited, but I'd promised C in the weeks and months leading up to the cruise that I wouldn't participate in any trivia contests (you may recall that I won three of them on our cruise back in April) because I can get just a little competitive, and again, our time on the ship was so limited! They also had a Pirate Night, and although we didn't attend because we were a bit over how crowded everything was, we were able to watch the fireworks from the porthole window in our room!
Saturday was a day in Nassau, and over the years, we've had great luck staying on the ship on port days while most people get off. That was absolutely not the case this time. Whether it was that it was a very short cruise or it was a new ship or the port was Nassau, SO MANY people stayed on the ship! Sunday was Castaway Cay and the opposite happened - it felt like everyone got off the ship because the island so so crowded, especially compared to our experience in April! But even crowds can't spoil a Castaway Cay day, especially on the adult beach where kids aren't allowed!
Speaking of adult-only areas, the Wish is sorely lacking. The other four DCL ships have specific and spacious areas where kids under 18 should not be (it's not always as enforced as I would like, but I digress). Spots on the Wish where adults can get a little reprieve seemed all but nonexistent! I'm hoping the next time we sail on the ship, we discover that we just somehow missed things. One super cute ice cream and sweets place was called Joyful Sweets, and I had seen a few pics online before our cruise, so I took some "props" with me for adorable photos. One of the cast members working in there was so amazing and he helped me with great enthusiasm! Definitely one of the best interactions of the entire cruise! Another cool spot was the Hyperspace Lounge; unfortunately we could not get reservations for it, but we were able to check it out during the open house hours.
We went to one of the lounges that has an amazing wall of windows and while we were there, a storm rolled in and we were able to watch the rain. It didn't last very long, but it was followed by a beautiful rainbow that caused me to quickly leave the lounge, run out the wet deck, and take a million photos. The rainbow appeared to stretch over most of the ship and I loved it!
Monday morning came all too soon! One thing we did differently this time was that we did not "check" our luggage to disembark; we carried it off instead. What a game changer! I don't think we'll ever go back because we walked off the ship at about 7:15 am and were in our car at 7:21 am! On our other cruises, we were typically assigned breakfast at 8:00 am, then had to sit around and wait for our luggage group to be called and we always felt like the entire morning was such a waste of time. Walking off with our luggage was a great decision and saved us so much time on a day when we had a very long drive ahead of us! The drive home was fine, although we did hit some holiday traffic and we ended up getting home around 9:15 pm.
The only truly disappointing thing was that we had tickets Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party for Monday night, but I was not allowed to take the day after Labor Day off. This meant I lost $232 because the tickets were nonrefundable. I'll stop there and let you imagine how I feel about all of that.
Despite some of the negatives we experienced, we are so glad we were able to take this cruise and our big takeaway is that three days was not simply not long enough (although it seems that for the foreseeable future, most of the cruises on the Wish are only three days!). We do have another cruise on the Wish booked for next year, and I'm excited to get to know the Wish a little better!
Happy Tails to you!
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