aswmammoth
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2023
We recently debarked a 6-night sailing from Galveston on the Disney Magic. I have cruised with Carnival, RCL, and NCL multiple times each in the last several years, but not DCL. This was my fiance's first Disney cruise ever, and my first since I was a kid. We traveled as a couple with no kids. As frequent cruisers with other lines but big Disney fans, here is my review.
PRE-CRUISE
Booking: We booked an IGT rate about 4 months out. We prefer to cruise 5 nights or longer, so finding this rate for a longer cruise on DCL pushed us to book.
Online Check In: A NIGHTMARE compared to other cruise lines. On Carnival, NCL and RCL, when online check in opens you can select your port arrival time first, and come back to fill in guest info later. This normally takes less than 5 minutes to get the arrival time you want. With DCL, you have to fill all of your information in first before you can select a port arrival time. I was able to start inputting information for the first 5 minutes just fine, until the servers were so overloaded that nothing worked for upwards of 4 hours. In short, it took 5 hours to complete online check in and receive an 11am PAT and Boarding Group 2. If the other cruise lines that service 20 or more ships can fix this issue, Disney has no excuse.
Pre Cruise Stay: We stayed at the Hilton Galveston Island Resort. I paid about $40 extra for a Park and Go rate. The shuttles require you to sign up for a time slot (9:15, 10:45 and 12:15 I believe). You have to move your car to another parking lot across the street before leaving for your cruise. We chose to move our car and Uber to the port rather than take the shuttle, as we wanted to leave a bit earlier.
Port Check In: Smooth process, no issues. Older terminal but staff was very friendly and helpful.
SHIP
We loved this ship's design! It was the smallest ship we have sailed on in recent years, and it was very easy and quick to navigate. For the most part, everything was very clean and well-maintained. She has been kept in great condition over the years, and it shows.
STATEROOM
We had a standard inside stateroom (11B) with a sideways configuration. If you plan to stay in an inside cabin, I highly recommend the sideways stateroom layout. The room felt much more open and spacious than I expected. This was the most comfortable cruise ship bed I've slept on by far. We had an awesome room steward and great room service experience.
DINING
Cabanas: Food was definitely a step above other cruise line buffets. Service was great. Biggest complaint was on the last sea day, the crowds for breakfast were ridiculous. People lined up 20 minutes or more just to reach the food. Not the fault of the crew by any means, they went above and beyond trying to help the situation as best as possible, but I have never seen crowds like that in a cruise ship buffet before.
Quick service options: Food was good, almost never a wait at any of the locations unlike on some other cruise lines. Disney could stand to improve the quality of their pizza to that of Carnival and Royal.
Main Dining Rooms: The food was mostly good, very good at times. However, we were surprisingly disappointed with our serving team experience. It could have partly been that they seemed so busy constantly, but they did not seem to try to get to know us very well. Our main server struggled to understand us at times, but the assistant server was better. We have always loved our serving teams on other cruises, but we were somewhat disappointed on this cruise. The head server felt more like a manager than a server, he came by nightly to say hello, briefly mention the next day's weather and left.
ENTERTAINMENT
Production Shows: The three production shows were all top-notch in talent and production quality! The only cruise line that comes close in quality of production shows to me is NCL, but Disney is now my favorite of all cruise lines I've sailed with. They had a ventriloquist and a magician on board, but we did not attend those shows.
Dinner Shows: Also great
Trivia/animation classes: Very fun!
Character Meet n' Greets: We did plenty of character experiences, Spider-Man was my personal favorite. However, be prepared for the lines, especially on full cruises. People will start queuing for characters 30 minutes or more BEFORE the scheduled time for the most popular characters. For shorter cruises with less character meeting times, or for popular characters only meeting once or twice per cruise, or to meet the Mouse himself, you could be waiting 45 minutes to an hour in line if you do not show up early.
PORTS
Cozumel: We took a taxi to Mr Sanchos for the day. Despite the ocean and pools being cold, we had a great experience! Drinks and food were very good.
Costa Maya: We stayed on the ship this day. 4 ships in port (15,000+ people), and the massive crowds were visible from the ship.
DEBARKATION
We had a later assigned breakfast time (8:15am). The line to get off the ship looked awful when we got to the atrium, but after leaving breakfast, it took us only 20 minutes to get from the ship's atrium to the ride share area of the port.
SUMMARY
Overall, this was one of our favorite cruises we have taken together! The issues we faced were very, very minor. The Disney Magic does a great job at spreading guests out for the most part. We only noticed very large crowding for characters, before theater shows, and on the last sea day when the temperatures outside were much lower than previous days, the inside activities got very crowded. The Disney experience felt much more enjoyable on this cruise than in the theme parks in recent years, which we really appreciated. We will definitely be cruising with Disney again!
PRE-CRUISE
Booking: We booked an IGT rate about 4 months out. We prefer to cruise 5 nights or longer, so finding this rate for a longer cruise on DCL pushed us to book.
Online Check In: A NIGHTMARE compared to other cruise lines. On Carnival, NCL and RCL, when online check in opens you can select your port arrival time first, and come back to fill in guest info later. This normally takes less than 5 minutes to get the arrival time you want. With DCL, you have to fill all of your information in first before you can select a port arrival time. I was able to start inputting information for the first 5 minutes just fine, until the servers were so overloaded that nothing worked for upwards of 4 hours. In short, it took 5 hours to complete online check in and receive an 11am PAT and Boarding Group 2. If the other cruise lines that service 20 or more ships can fix this issue, Disney has no excuse.
Pre Cruise Stay: We stayed at the Hilton Galveston Island Resort. I paid about $40 extra for a Park and Go rate. The shuttles require you to sign up for a time slot (9:15, 10:45 and 12:15 I believe). You have to move your car to another parking lot across the street before leaving for your cruise. We chose to move our car and Uber to the port rather than take the shuttle, as we wanted to leave a bit earlier.
Port Check In: Smooth process, no issues. Older terminal but staff was very friendly and helpful.
SHIP
We loved this ship's design! It was the smallest ship we have sailed on in recent years, and it was very easy and quick to navigate. For the most part, everything was very clean and well-maintained. She has been kept in great condition over the years, and it shows.
STATEROOM
We had a standard inside stateroom (11B) with a sideways configuration. If you plan to stay in an inside cabin, I highly recommend the sideways stateroom layout. The room felt much more open and spacious than I expected. This was the most comfortable cruise ship bed I've slept on by far. We had an awesome room steward and great room service experience.
DINING
Cabanas: Food was definitely a step above other cruise line buffets. Service was great. Biggest complaint was on the last sea day, the crowds for breakfast were ridiculous. People lined up 20 minutes or more just to reach the food. Not the fault of the crew by any means, they went above and beyond trying to help the situation as best as possible, but I have never seen crowds like that in a cruise ship buffet before.
Quick service options: Food was good, almost never a wait at any of the locations unlike on some other cruise lines. Disney could stand to improve the quality of their pizza to that of Carnival and Royal.
Main Dining Rooms: The food was mostly good, very good at times. However, we were surprisingly disappointed with our serving team experience. It could have partly been that they seemed so busy constantly, but they did not seem to try to get to know us very well. Our main server struggled to understand us at times, but the assistant server was better. We have always loved our serving teams on other cruises, but we were somewhat disappointed on this cruise. The head server felt more like a manager than a server, he came by nightly to say hello, briefly mention the next day's weather and left.
ENTERTAINMENT
Production Shows: The three production shows were all top-notch in talent and production quality! The only cruise line that comes close in quality of production shows to me is NCL, but Disney is now my favorite of all cruise lines I've sailed with. They had a ventriloquist and a magician on board, but we did not attend those shows.
Dinner Shows: Also great
Trivia/animation classes: Very fun!
Character Meet n' Greets: We did plenty of character experiences, Spider-Man was my personal favorite. However, be prepared for the lines, especially on full cruises. People will start queuing for characters 30 minutes or more BEFORE the scheduled time for the most popular characters. For shorter cruises with less character meeting times, or for popular characters only meeting once or twice per cruise, or to meet the Mouse himself, you could be waiting 45 minutes to an hour in line if you do not show up early.
PORTS
Cozumel: We took a taxi to Mr Sanchos for the day. Despite the ocean and pools being cold, we had a great experience! Drinks and food were very good.
Costa Maya: We stayed on the ship this day. 4 ships in port (15,000+ people), and the massive crowds were visible from the ship.
DEBARKATION
We had a later assigned breakfast time (8:15am). The line to get off the ship looked awful when we got to the atrium, but after leaving breakfast, it took us only 20 minutes to get from the ship's atrium to the ride share area of the port.
SUMMARY
Overall, this was one of our favorite cruises we have taken together! The issues we faced were very, very minor. The Disney Magic does a great job at spreading guests out for the most part. We only noticed very large crowding for characters, before theater shows, and on the last sea day when the temperatures outside were much lower than previous days, the inside activities got very crowded. The Disney experience felt much more enjoyable on this cruise than in the theme parks in recent years, which we really appreciated. We will definitely be cruising with Disney again!
