I just recently got back from a Disney Wish sailing and I wanted to post a quick review for those of you thinking about booking...
Overall, this was by far the worst designed cruise ship I've ever been on. The confusing pathways, lack of elevators, dead ends everywhere, no real pools or pool deck, and just an overall strange layout of the ship made for a very frustrating experience. For reference, I have sailed on all 5 Disney ships (with a total of 26 DCL sailings), 21 Royal Caribbean ships, 7 Carnival, 3 NCL, 2 Princess, and 1 Celebrity. So I've been on a lot of ships and feel I have a good amount of experience with different layouts of them. I'm also a big DCL fan as well so saying something negative about DCL is not usually my personality.
Here's some Pros....
- Our stateroom (standard balcony) was very nice. Comfortable bed. Lots of storage. Plenty of electrical and USB outlets.
- The Wi-Fi on the ship is a huge improvement. The unlimited package was a huge step in the right direction and I never once felt like it was being restricted, throttled, or anything like that. It's almost sad to say that I felt the Wi-Fi was my favorite features of the entire ship.
- Entertainment was very hit & miss, but what was a hit was very good. Marvel dinner show and the Pirate night entertainment was great... everything else kind of seemed like a miss.
- The best food options were the poolside grab & go, Keg & Compass, and the ice cream shop. Everything else was mediocre at best. Or, I should say not up to DCL standards.
- Keg & Compass was a really nice area, but a shame that two out of the three times we went, it was over crowded and we couldn't get in. We were told to skip one of our main dining room meals if we wanted a better chance of getting in there. Why would someone want to do that?
- Aqua Mouse was fun, although I may prefer the AquaDunk and the AquaDuck more. It was more of a "conveyor with TV screens" than it was a water slide, and the entire structure looked absolutely ugly on the pool deck.
- Kids club area. Disney still does this better than any other cruise line. But I also come to expect that from them. The slide getting down into the kids area was a lot of fun!
Cons... (and I have quite a few!)
- The layout of the ship is a disaster. It is a confusing mess to get anywhere on the ship. Interior and exterior areas. Both were totally confusing. Tons of paths leading to dead ends, other paths, like trying to get from one side of the top of the pool deck to the other, required going down several flights of stairs and then up others, because there is no path to simply walk the top of the outer decks. There was only one entrance in and out of the Heroes Arena which meant if you walked in, went upstairs to the top and all the way around, the only way out was to walk all the way back around the entire thing.
- The lack of Mid-ship elevators made for constant overcrowding of the elevators that were there. Also, the elevators seemed super glitchy. Buttons were hard to press sometimes, and other times so easy to press that people would end up pressing 3 or 4 buttons just by hovering over them. Several times on my sailing I encountered problematic and crowded elevators. And lack of stairs also didn't help this issue. Getting around the ship was just awful and I don't even understand how this was allowed to happen.
- The food was some of the least impressive I've had on all of the five ships. There was nothing at any of the rotational dining that I would say really stood out at all. Some of it was just "okay" and other options, were just outright bad. We didn't do either of the higher end upcharge restaurants (but we did go take a look at both of them) but usually the rotational dining room food has always been high quality, and for this ship it was not. We even had our servers recommend NOT getting some items because they felt it wasn't good and that was the first time I've heard a server say that on a DCL ship.
- Speaking of food, it was also a strange choice that in the Marvel dinning room, none of the food seemed themed in any way. You now have menus from two different Pym's Test Kitchen that are open at the parks, both with clever "larger" food items, and nothing like that at all was on the menu here. Seemed like another missed opportunity to do something fun.
- The pool deck is very strange. No real "swimming pool" just a lot of smaller pools and none of which seemed like your typical cruise ship pool. Almost like a bunch of slightly bigger hot tubs that weren't hot tubs. They were more like a bunch of shallow wading pools with people just sitting in them. Any of the pools deep enough to swim in were so small it was like trying to swim in a bath tub, not to mention difficult to find where they were at on the ship. Most people on our sailing were just sitting around in these shallow pools watching a movie... or looking quite bored.
- Entertainment - While there was some good options like the Marvel Dinner show and the Pirates night, the Frozen dinner show and the Little Mermaid show just left a lot to be desired. Little Mermaid seemed like kind of a mess and the Frozen show was "odd" as I didn't quite understand why neither of the princesses sang any of their own songs, and instead the entire show seemed almost like a parody of Frozen. Compared to the Rapunzel and Tiana dinner shows on the other ships, this was by far my least favorite of the three.
- Service - I always set high expectations from anything Disney and while this ship is new, most of the staff is not when it comes to DCL. Everyone seemed to come from other ships, so I don't understand why the overall service on this ship seemed much worse than any other ships I've been on. Wait staff, cabin steward, even the staff at the AquaMouse just seemed less friendly than I am used to.
- Why are we still social distancing meeting characters? Hasn't this been back to normal in the parks for months now? There are no mask mandates or any other COVID restrictions other than needing to show proof of vaccine and a negative test, so why can't we hug characters again when we can in the parks, and the parks don't require any testing or vaccines. This has to be confusing for those people who book a WDW stay and then a cruise who were just able to hug characters on land but then get yelled at for doing the same thing on the ship.
- Movie theaters - What happened here??? Why are they so small? We tried twice to see a movie, even got there early, and both times the seats were all taken so we gave up trying. The theaters are TINY TINY. They look like someone's home theater setup. I was told they only have about 75 seats each. They build two theaters with half the seats as any other movie theater on the other ships. This seems like a really odd choice and a huge mistake considering one of the marketable features of DCL is to always see the latest theatrical releases on the ship even on the day those films are released.
- Adult spaces. Want to get into Star Wars? Forget it. Reservations only and no one could really tell us how to get one. All the other spaces either seemed small or difficult to get to. I miss just having an entire section dedicated to adult areas. There were some spaces like Cove Cafe we only found once and trying to find it again was just too frustrating to even bother. It's really hidden! Oh! And in the off chance you do get into the Star Wars bar (we peeked our heads in while it was closed thanks to a very nice CM), the whole place actually doesn't feel very Star Wars. The giant screen is very nice, but the rest of the bar looked like any other typical cruise ship bar. Very little theming outside of the giant screen behind the bar.
- Shops seem really small, crowded and cramped. I wanted a magnet and waited about 40 minutes just to get that. I didn't spend too much time in the shops because they were just claustrophobic and none of the merchandise really stood out to me.
- Heroes Area was a strange space. It felt like a budget version of the Skyplex on the Quantum ships. And half the time they just had bouncy castle style things set up like the ones you can rent for $200 for your kids party, or a $25 velcro golf set you can get from Amazon. If you wanted to play basketball, you were mostly out of luck because I rarely saw that space being used as a basketball court. Oh, and is there really only ONE Ping Pong table on the whole ship??? We only ever saw one! Luna also felt like a "budget version" of Quantum's Music Hall. It's like someone from Disney went on a Quantum class ship and said "We should do this... but make it smaller and cheaper." This area was also annoying to get in and out of with only one entrance and exist. Again, the layout of the ship was just horrible.
- Speaking of long lines, the lines for all the food were insane also. The poolside grab n go places which I really liked, always had a long line before they were either out of food and you were waiting for them to make more, or just really slow capacity. And not being able to serve yourself in the buffet (I forget the new name of it so I'll just call it Cabanas) took FOREVER especially at breakfast. All the buffets at the theme parks and on other cruise lines are back open and normal so why are we still doing it this way on the ship? It took twice as long for me to do any breakfast or lunch meals at the buffet because of this.
- The overall vibe of the ship just felt really unfinished and completely off. So many hallways that seemed sparse and not very decorated. There were a lot of areas that seemed uninspired like as though I was in the hallway of a doctors office, not a Disney cruise ship. Even the hallway to our stateroom was just a plain brown hallway with no artwork or any personality at all. The Grand Hall didn't seem that grand. We were waiting for all this "magical" stuff to happen and the best we saw were some twinkling lights in the ceiling that looked like plussed up Party City lightning. Even at the Frozen show was Elsa was all "Let me transform the room" and everyone was waiting for this grandiose transformation, and all we got were a few blinking lights. It wasn't impressive. The higher end restaurants like Palo just seemed dull and boring. Looked like your typical higher end chain steak house. I've seen Ruth's Chris with nicer looking tables and atmosphere.
- I'm not sure why they felt the need to change the design of the stateroom door as many of the previous door decorations we had didn't quite work. This is probably a nitpick, but still, why did DCL feel the need to re-invent things that didn't need re-inventing? Like the name of the buffet. It has been "Windjammer" on Royal as long as I can remember, and everyone just kept calling this one "Cabanas" because that's what people know it as. In fact, you can say that "re-inventing for the sake of re-inventing" seemed to be a theme of this ship. It was like whoever designed it had no experience with their previous product and the things that people liked about it.
Wow, that ended up not being a quick review! I guess I had more to say than I thought! In summary, I'm not sure I would sail this ship again. There were more things I didn't like about the ship than I liked about it. And it upsets me saying that because DCL is my favorite cruise line and I love their product having sailed and more than a dozen Disney cruises over the last ten years. But this ship was a "miss." I really hope the next two ships are not based on this design, or if they are, I hope they are re-designed to fix a lot of the major issues here.
Overall, this was by far the worst designed cruise ship I've ever been on. The confusing pathways, lack of elevators, dead ends everywhere, no real pools or pool deck, and just an overall strange layout of the ship made for a very frustrating experience. For reference, I have sailed on all 5 Disney ships (with a total of 26 DCL sailings), 21 Royal Caribbean ships, 7 Carnival, 3 NCL, 2 Princess, and 1 Celebrity. So I've been on a lot of ships and feel I have a good amount of experience with different layouts of them. I'm also a big DCL fan as well so saying something negative about DCL is not usually my personality.
Here's some Pros....
- Our stateroom (standard balcony) was very nice. Comfortable bed. Lots of storage. Plenty of electrical and USB outlets.
- The Wi-Fi on the ship is a huge improvement. The unlimited package was a huge step in the right direction and I never once felt like it was being restricted, throttled, or anything like that. It's almost sad to say that I felt the Wi-Fi was my favorite features of the entire ship.
- Entertainment was very hit & miss, but what was a hit was very good. Marvel dinner show and the Pirate night entertainment was great... everything else kind of seemed like a miss.
- The best food options were the poolside grab & go, Keg & Compass, and the ice cream shop. Everything else was mediocre at best. Or, I should say not up to DCL standards.
- Keg & Compass was a really nice area, but a shame that two out of the three times we went, it was over crowded and we couldn't get in. We were told to skip one of our main dining room meals if we wanted a better chance of getting in there. Why would someone want to do that?
- Aqua Mouse was fun, although I may prefer the AquaDunk and the AquaDuck more. It was more of a "conveyor with TV screens" than it was a water slide, and the entire structure looked absolutely ugly on the pool deck.
- Kids club area. Disney still does this better than any other cruise line. But I also come to expect that from them. The slide getting down into the kids area was a lot of fun!
Cons... (and I have quite a few!)
- The layout of the ship is a disaster. It is a confusing mess to get anywhere on the ship. Interior and exterior areas. Both were totally confusing. Tons of paths leading to dead ends, other paths, like trying to get from one side of the top of the pool deck to the other, required going down several flights of stairs and then up others, because there is no path to simply walk the top of the outer decks. There was only one entrance in and out of the Heroes Arena which meant if you walked in, went upstairs to the top and all the way around, the only way out was to walk all the way back around the entire thing.
- The lack of Mid-ship elevators made for constant overcrowding of the elevators that were there. Also, the elevators seemed super glitchy. Buttons were hard to press sometimes, and other times so easy to press that people would end up pressing 3 or 4 buttons just by hovering over them. Several times on my sailing I encountered problematic and crowded elevators. And lack of stairs also didn't help this issue. Getting around the ship was just awful and I don't even understand how this was allowed to happen.
- The food was some of the least impressive I've had on all of the five ships. There was nothing at any of the rotational dining that I would say really stood out at all. Some of it was just "okay" and other options, were just outright bad. We didn't do either of the higher end upcharge restaurants (but we did go take a look at both of them) but usually the rotational dining room food has always been high quality, and for this ship it was not. We even had our servers recommend NOT getting some items because they felt it wasn't good and that was the first time I've heard a server say that on a DCL ship.
- Speaking of food, it was also a strange choice that in the Marvel dinning room, none of the food seemed themed in any way. You now have menus from two different Pym's Test Kitchen that are open at the parks, both with clever "larger" food items, and nothing like that at all was on the menu here. Seemed like another missed opportunity to do something fun.
- The pool deck is very strange. No real "swimming pool" just a lot of smaller pools and none of which seemed like your typical cruise ship pool. Almost like a bunch of slightly bigger hot tubs that weren't hot tubs. They were more like a bunch of shallow wading pools with people just sitting in them. Any of the pools deep enough to swim in were so small it was like trying to swim in a bath tub, not to mention difficult to find where they were at on the ship. Most people on our sailing were just sitting around in these shallow pools watching a movie... or looking quite bored.
- Entertainment - While there was some good options like the Marvel Dinner show and the Pirates night, the Frozen dinner show and the Little Mermaid show just left a lot to be desired. Little Mermaid seemed like kind of a mess and the Frozen show was "odd" as I didn't quite understand why neither of the princesses sang any of their own songs, and instead the entire show seemed almost like a parody of Frozen. Compared to the Rapunzel and Tiana dinner shows on the other ships, this was by far my least favorite of the three.
- Service - I always set high expectations from anything Disney and while this ship is new, most of the staff is not when it comes to DCL. Everyone seemed to come from other ships, so I don't understand why the overall service on this ship seemed much worse than any other ships I've been on. Wait staff, cabin steward, even the staff at the AquaMouse just seemed less friendly than I am used to.
- Why are we still social distancing meeting characters? Hasn't this been back to normal in the parks for months now? There are no mask mandates or any other COVID restrictions other than needing to show proof of vaccine and a negative test, so why can't we hug characters again when we can in the parks, and the parks don't require any testing or vaccines. This has to be confusing for those people who book a WDW stay and then a cruise who were just able to hug characters on land but then get yelled at for doing the same thing on the ship.
- Movie theaters - What happened here??? Why are they so small? We tried twice to see a movie, even got there early, and both times the seats were all taken so we gave up trying. The theaters are TINY TINY. They look like someone's home theater setup. I was told they only have about 75 seats each. They build two theaters with half the seats as any other movie theater on the other ships. This seems like a really odd choice and a huge mistake considering one of the marketable features of DCL is to always see the latest theatrical releases on the ship even on the day those films are released.
- Adult spaces. Want to get into Star Wars? Forget it. Reservations only and no one could really tell us how to get one. All the other spaces either seemed small or difficult to get to. I miss just having an entire section dedicated to adult areas. There were some spaces like Cove Cafe we only found once and trying to find it again was just too frustrating to even bother. It's really hidden! Oh! And in the off chance you do get into the Star Wars bar (we peeked our heads in while it was closed thanks to a very nice CM), the whole place actually doesn't feel very Star Wars. The giant screen is very nice, but the rest of the bar looked like any other typical cruise ship bar. Very little theming outside of the giant screen behind the bar.
- Shops seem really small, crowded and cramped. I wanted a magnet and waited about 40 minutes just to get that. I didn't spend too much time in the shops because they were just claustrophobic and none of the merchandise really stood out to me.
- Heroes Area was a strange space. It felt like a budget version of the Skyplex on the Quantum ships. And half the time they just had bouncy castle style things set up like the ones you can rent for $200 for your kids party, or a $25 velcro golf set you can get from Amazon. If you wanted to play basketball, you were mostly out of luck because I rarely saw that space being used as a basketball court. Oh, and is there really only ONE Ping Pong table on the whole ship??? We only ever saw one! Luna also felt like a "budget version" of Quantum's Music Hall. It's like someone from Disney went on a Quantum class ship and said "We should do this... but make it smaller and cheaper." This area was also annoying to get in and out of with only one entrance and exist. Again, the layout of the ship was just horrible.
- Speaking of long lines, the lines for all the food were insane also. The poolside grab n go places which I really liked, always had a long line before they were either out of food and you were waiting for them to make more, or just really slow capacity. And not being able to serve yourself in the buffet (I forget the new name of it so I'll just call it Cabanas) took FOREVER especially at breakfast. All the buffets at the theme parks and on other cruise lines are back open and normal so why are we still doing it this way on the ship? It took twice as long for me to do any breakfast or lunch meals at the buffet because of this.
- The overall vibe of the ship just felt really unfinished and completely off. So many hallways that seemed sparse and not very decorated. There were a lot of areas that seemed uninspired like as though I was in the hallway of a doctors office, not a Disney cruise ship. Even the hallway to our stateroom was just a plain brown hallway with no artwork or any personality at all. The Grand Hall didn't seem that grand. We were waiting for all this "magical" stuff to happen and the best we saw were some twinkling lights in the ceiling that looked like plussed up Party City lightning. Even at the Frozen show was Elsa was all "Let me transform the room" and everyone was waiting for this grandiose transformation, and all we got were a few blinking lights. It wasn't impressive. The higher end restaurants like Palo just seemed dull and boring. Looked like your typical higher end chain steak house. I've seen Ruth's Chris with nicer looking tables and atmosphere.
- I'm not sure why they felt the need to change the design of the stateroom door as many of the previous door decorations we had didn't quite work. This is probably a nitpick, but still, why did DCL feel the need to re-invent things that didn't need re-inventing? Like the name of the buffet. It has been "Windjammer" on Royal as long as I can remember, and everyone just kept calling this one "Cabanas" because that's what people know it as. In fact, you can say that "re-inventing for the sake of re-inventing" seemed to be a theme of this ship. It was like whoever designed it had no experience with their previous product and the things that people liked about it.
Wow, that ended up not being a quick review! I guess I had more to say than I thought! In summary, I'm not sure I would sail this ship again. There were more things I didn't like about the ship than I liked about it. And it upsets me saying that because DCL is my favorite cruise line and I love their product having sailed and more than a dozen Disney cruises over the last ten years. But this ship was a "miss." I really hope the next two ships are not based on this design, or if they are, I hope they are re-designed to fix a lot of the major issues here.
