Fantasy food thoughts - has it gone downhill as food costs have gone up? Post Covid? Cruising in a couple weeks…

[Tink113]

We will be on the April 15th cruise on the Fantasy & this is our first post Covid cruise.

Hubby & I have been chatting about food costs raising by the day and wondered if we will notice a decline in quality and taste of food on the ship.

Thoughts? Anyone cruise on the fantasy recently and have cruised pre-Covid and want to share their thoughts?

 

[happycamper47]

As stated in other threads that's very subjective. We've been on 6 post-covid cruises and don't feel there has been a decline. (1 Wonder, 2 ea Dream & Fantasy and the Wish)

 

[Tink113]

As stated in other threads that's very subjective. We've been on 6 post-covid cruises and don't feel there has been a decline. (1 Wonder, 2 ea Dream & Fantasy and the Wish)

Yes, I agree it’s very subjective. Just wondering if there has been several people noticing.

Good to hear you don’t see a difference. Thanks

 

[Lauri]

We've been on 3 cruises post covid (a total of 30 days) and found the food to be much better than pre covid. I think they tweaked a lot of their recipes for the better while shut down.

 

[SleepyDeb]

We were on the Fantasy in Jan. I thought the food was better than in prior cruises.

 

[cvjw]

Also on the April 15th cruise. This sailing will be our 6th since covid. 4th on the fantasy since covid. Noticed no change in the food.

 

[DCLCruiseFan09]

The nicer you are to your serving team, the better your food will be.

 

[shoegal9]

We just got off the Fantasy last weekend. We loved the food in the main dining rooms!

Cabanas left a lot to be desired with the exception of the churro mickey waffles. We rarely even went to Cabanas because it was so crowded.

 

[brentm77]

A few weeks ago, I thought it was slightly better than previous Fantasy cruises, but others in our FB group had thought it had gone down hill, so who knows? It seems like sometimes you just get lucky and sometimes you don't, so maybe consistency is still suffering.

My biggest tip of all is listen to the server and ask questions. Assuming your tastes aren't unusually, they know from experience what the average person will really like and what the average person won't. I must be average, because every time I listen to them, I end up really enjoying my dish, and the one or two times they said not to order something and I did, it was not good. The last two cruises, I picked from their top one or two recommendations at every meal and was pleased.

My main observation was that I am getting a bit bored with Disney's menus. Not even cruise to cruise, but night to night. They are predictable and I start to tire of them a bit by the end of the cruise. They need to somehow add some pizazz and be more creative/vary from the rigid formula each menu follows. I think even having a special each night that was changing all the time would help. I would love a dinner buffet like most lines have, just so I can mix it up and skip an MDR or two each cruise when I start getting bored or don't care for a particular MDR. But I also understand the concern with food waste.

Cabanas seemed the same as always. I personally like it and can always find something appealing there. I don't love buffet's normally, but they do a good enough job of keeping food fresh that I enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed the abundance of fresh fruit for breakfast, and really like their oatmeal and toppings. I like to mix it up for lunch, but their carved meats were particularly good this cruise. If you like rice pudding, their coconut rice pudding was to die for too. And the day they had the date pudding and ice cream was fantastic, because it's one of my favorite desserts in the MDRs. It's quick and easy.

Pool-side food still suffers as always, but that isn't different than pre-pandemic. It's edible, but not particularly good most of the time.

 

[DCLCruiseFan09]

My main observation was that I am getting a bit bored with Disney's menus. Not even cruise to cruise, but night to night. They are predictable and I start to tire of them a bit by the end of the cruise. They need to somehow add some pizazz and be more creative/vary from the rigid formula each menu follows. I think even having a special each night that was changing all the time would help. I would love a dinner buffet like most lines have, just so I can mix it up and skip an MDR or two each cruise when I start getting bored or don't care for a particular MDR. But I also understand the concern with food waste.

Cabanas seemed the same as always. I personally like it and can always find something appealing there. I don't love buffet's normally, but they do a good enough job of keeping food fresh that I enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed the abundance of fresh fruit for breakfast, and really like their oatmeal and toppings. I like to mix it up for lunch, but their carved meats were particularly good this cruise. If you like rice pudding, their coconut rice pudding was to die for too. And the day they had the date pudding and ice cream was fantastic, because it's one of my favorite desserts in the MDRs. It's quick and easy.

Pool-side food still suffers as always, but that isn't different than pre-pandemic. It's edible, but not particularly good most of the time.

Couldn't agree with you more about the menus. We started sailing in 2018 and have gotten to the point where on shorter cruises, we typically don't need to look at a menu much since we've sailed regularly the last few years.

I need them to do some complete menu refreshes but with this trend towards first time cruisers, it seems as though most of the "non-repeaters" are happy with the menus. Time will tell. By far, the most disappointing menu I have come across in the resent future was World of Marvel on the Wish. Not a winner in my mind.

 

[MomOTwins]

We sailed a couple weeks ago and I would say it was pretty good. The MDR food was good, not quite as good as our pandemic cruise when the ship was not as full, but definitely as good as pre-pandemic. Pirate menu was a surprise hit—try the lamb shank! The one exception was lobster night—the lobster was not good, but I didn’t have it on my last fantasy cruise in 2019 so maybe that was always the case. Anyhow, our waiter clearly knew and suggested we each order an extra entree that night so we still had a nice meal.

Cabanas was really good at lunch but the breakfast had some misses (eg no POG juice, undercooked mickey waffles and overcooked eggs benedict) whereas on prior cruises I loved the breakfast and didn’t care as much for lunch. We had a very full sailing so I think the kitchen at Cabanas was struggling with the guest volume. The pool deck food was a mixed bag—pizza was just not as good as I remember (rubbery crust and cheese wasn’t as tasty), but burgers surprisingly were excellent and seemed better quality meat than before, and chicken tenders were same as always.

Palo brunch was excellent as always—exactly the same as prior cruises. Remy brunch had a new menu including the best wagyu filet I’ve ever had—if you can book it this is a must do. We did not do either venue for dinner.

Overall I would say there was no overall trend of reduction in food quality like has been the case at the theme parks. We had a nice dining experience.

 

[Joel0917]

Was on fantasy last week, my wife said lobster was over cooked. For me most steaks were too rare. By the end I had to almost get medium well and that was nice and pink so who knows.

I did learn from servers that new this year, on your comment survey, bad food counts against the waiters not the chef. So your waiters can be awesome but the food bad and you rate it that way, the bad food hurts the servers. This is absurd. Our two waiters were great but the lobster was just bad and the pork chop one night was too dry, so now we can’t say. The waiters said they are told it’s their job to get us new food and make sure we like it. Crazy! Our waiter said if we didn’t like the food or had a complaint leave that part UNRATED and write In the comments.

Perhaps Disney should put food taste and quality back under the chef for scoring not the waiter.

 

[AquaDame]

I've been told in the past rating the food bad hurts the waiters as they are supposed to recognize and offer something else in that case. They've always stressed that we should let them know if we are unhappy with our food and about marking the cards with that in mind.

 

[holula]

I've been told in the past rating the food bad hurts the waiters as they are supposed to recognize and offer something else in that case. They've always stressed that we should let them know if we are unhappy with our food and about marking the cards with that in mind.

This is what I’ve been told too. Generally if I’m trying to decide between two things then I’ll ask the waiter and go with whatever they recommend. They have never let me down.

 

[kiford]

I've been told in the past rating the food bad hurts the waiters as they are supposed to recognize and offer something else in that case. They've always stressed that we should let them know if we are unhappy with our food and about marking the cards with that in mind.

Which is still completely stupid IMO. I had some items that weren't great, and my servers did offer me something else which I ate and enjoyed, but if I was asked about the food, I'd still say that it wasn't great because not everything was. That they went the extra mile to find me something else says good things about them, but it doesn't change the fact that the kitchen or menu designer had a miss. That's always annoyed me. If I'm not honest about the food, it doesn't get changed. So I had to give it lower than a 10 in the survey on our last cruise because most of the food was good, but not all of it was. I can only hope that the fact that we tipped our servers extra (through GS) might give them extra points because my server was really good in keeping on top of my allergies and recommending other items I could eat and my assistant server was really attentive and good about bringing me different breads because of allergies. If they really think that the servers should be offering something else, then ask that question - don't blame them because I can't eat half the stuff off the Pirate menu and that the chicken I had to default to was a bit overcooked. And I wasn't hungry because we'd eaten far too many snacks during the day.

 

[emmabelle]

We're on 4/29 so I hope it will be good!

 

[brentm77]

Which is still completely stupid IMO. I had some items that weren't great, and my servers did offer me something else which I ate and enjoyed, but if I was asked about the food, I'd still say that it wasn't great because not everything was. That they went the extra mile to find me something else says good things about them, but it doesn't change the fact that the kitchen or menu designer had a miss. That's always annoyed me. If I'm not honest about the food, it doesn't get changed. So I had to give it lower than a 10 in the survey on our last cruise because most of the food was good, but not all of it was. I can only hope that the fact that we tipped our servers extra (through GS) might give them extra points because my server was really good in keeping on top of my allergies and recommending other items I could eat and my assistant server was really attentive and good about bringing me different breads because of allergies. If they really think that the servers should be offering something else, then ask that question - don't blame them because I can't eat half the stuff off the Pirate menu and that the chicken I had to default to was a bit overcooked. And I wasn't hungry because we'd eaten far too many snacks during the day.

It's the constant struggle. I feel like it's time for all of us to be honest on the food surveys, but it is easy to say and hard to do when you have a great serving team. I loved my last serving team, they were the best we have had, but it's not ideal to have something fixed when I don't think it is "excellent." For example, my pork chop was terribly dry. I didn't finish it. But our servers were super busy already, didn't offer to bring me something else when I didn't finish it, and I wasn't hungry enough to even get another dish and wouldn't have wanted to extend dinner. So, I either take one bite and make my server's job even harder by sending something back, or I punish them by being honest on the survey so that Disney knows the food needs some work, or I pretend it was perfect so a great serving team isn't punished. Shame on Disney for putting guests in that situation. It is really frustrating to run into little things like this when paying so much for a premium product. But if we all start being honest, hopefully it will average out for the servers.

 

[Love2Cruise2015]

My family and I were just on the Fantasy this past March and we found that the food tasted good but the selection of food at Cabanas wasn't as good as in past sailings.

 

[TestingH2O]

My biggest tip of all is listen to the server and ask questions. Assuming your tastes aren't unusually, they know from experience what the average person will really like and what the average person won't. I must be average, because every time I listen to them, I end up really enjoying my dish, and the one or two times they said not to order something and I did, it was not good. The last two cruises, I picked from their top one or two recommendations at every meal and was pleased.

I agree that this is the key. Ask your servers and be open to hearing their experiences. Also, if you order something and they offer to bring you something else at the same time, take them up on the offer.

 

[disneygeek401]

I was on the Fantasy in December 2022, and personally I felt like the food was very good. Granted, yes it is mass produced cruise line food, so you are not dining at a michelin 5 star restaurant, but I thought it was very good. There were very few things I disliked. But, as other posters have mentioned, food is very subjective.