New DCL App

[sues14]

Hey all! I'm upset by the countdown clock too. I get that sometimes people want to change things up, but to put a boring clock countdown. I think we all want some Disney Magic!

 

[mom2brooke76]

Please go and leave a review for the app and let them know how you feel.so that hopefully they'll fix it. I'm reading in some reviews that people are having issues with the texting now, which is a concern because we have kids. I'd love to have the suitcase countdown too!

 

[kkayluvsdis]

We just returned from an amazing 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy. Just as some added info about the new DCL App- I had constant issues with it during the week. The chat function specifically would only work for short intervals of time. I would have to reset the App completely at times to get it going again. I did visit the "connect at sea" desk a couple times but the crew member working there wasn't able to help much. He did say that the chat feature is currently the biggest challenge and that there were "multiple IT designers of the App" onboard trying to fix glitches in the system. I eventually just put my phone in the safe and depended on "sharing" my husband's phone to communicate with those traveling with us.

-Kelly

P.S. I wrote out an entire post on our embarkation morning last Saturday but it didn't go through- just wanted to let you all know that on the day of our cruise a cute "postcard" of Minnie and Mickey saying "seas the day", "the day has arrived" (or something similar) showed up on the countdown screen of the App. The odd thing, however, was after closing it and going back into the App the cute screen was gone and replaced with the boring blue countdown with just all zeros

 

[csmith1004]

Does the DCL app work with the Apple Watch ?

On our cruise last May messages from the app did show on my Apple Watch as well as notifications of activities I had marked as favorites.

 

[NAB]

Well the alerts of the shows coming up didn't help when your on airplane mode and the clocks are an hour ahead....lol The time doesn't change on the phone so it told me to be in theater an hour later...lol Didn't really affect me since I know where and when I was going but thought it was funny when it did that.

 

[MelSpees]

Well the alerts of the shows coming up didn't help when your on airplane mode and the clocks are an hour ahead....lol The time doesn't change on the phone so it told me to be in theater an hour later...lol Didn't really affect me since I know where and when I was going but thought it was funny when it did that.

I believe you can manually change the time zone on your phone if you want to have the alerts at the right time.

 

[Beth D]

We also just got off the Fantasy Eastern, here's my family's opinion...

We had the app on 2 Apple 5C phones, a newer phone (Android platform), and DS's iPod touch

• For everyone - the notifications in the messaging were very sporadic - occasionally you'd get push notifications, sometimes only when you opened the app, and other times, not at all.
• Android users had more difficulty than Apple platforms (this was much discussed on ship, especially at the pool and in the elevators)
• When you first log on, you have to input your birthdate so the app knows who you are and can give you your chat id #. Apple users had a dial that rolled quickly. DH took 10 minutes to put his birthdate in...
• Filters for daily activities did NOT hold at all. You had to set them everytime. (I really got tired of seeing the nursery and lab schedules after a while...tell me when the bar has my trivia! )
• The app automatically set some favorites for you (your dining rotation - OK, fine, remind me when it's time to eat) and for the nightly show (NO- I don't wanna go see Wishes again!) so you would get notices for that as well.
• I liked going in to view our folio of charges - but sometimes it took a while to update
• I liked being able to suspend DS from chatting if necessary (I didn't, but hey - anything to keep a teenager in line!)
• You could block users from chat
• More Disney emoji's - including Star Wars!

Yes, in order for notifications to work right you had to manually adjust your clock as time changed.

In summary - yes, the new app was much better, but come on - get those message notifications to work!

 

[Lulu27]

This new countdown clock is so sad!!! Bring back the cute suitcase!

 

[Geomom]

We also just got off the Fantasy Eastern, here's my family's opinion...

We had the app on 2 Apple 5C phones, a newer phone (Android platform), and DS's iPod touch

• For everyone - the notifications in the messaging were very sporadic - occasionally you'd get push notifications, sometimes only when you opened the app, and other times, not at all.
• Android users had more difficulty than Apple platforms (this was much discussed on ship, especially at the pool and in the elevators)
• When you first log on, you have to input your birthdate so the app knows who you are and can give you your chat id #. Apple users had a dial that rolled quickly. DH took 10 minutes to put his birthdate in...
• Filters for daily activities did NOT hold at all. You had to set them everytime. (I really got tired of seeing the nursery and lab schedules after a while...tell me when the bar has my trivia! )
• The app automatically set some favorites for you (your dining rotation - OK, fine, remind me when it's time to eat) and for the nightly show (NO- I don't wanna go see Wishes again!) so you would get notices for that as well.
• I liked going in to view our folio of charges - but sometimes it took a while to update
• I liked being able to suspend DS from chatting if necessary (I didn't, but hey - anything to keep a teenager in line!)
• You could block users from chat
• More Disney emoji's - including Star Wars!

Yes, in order for notifications to work right you had to manually adjust your clock as time changed.

In summary - yes, the new app was much better, but come on - get those message notifications to work!

Thank you for the detailed review! You are the first one to mention that you could view the folio of charges in this version, no one thought they had added that! Hopefully more of the kinks will be worked out before we cruise in August.

 

[peter11435]

Thank you for the detailed review! You are the first one to mention that you could view the folio of charges in this version, no one thought they had added that! Hopefully more of the kinks will be worked out before we cruise in August.

The folio view is not yet available on all ships. Only the Fantasy.

 

[Lostboys]

If you want the old app back so that you can still see the suitcase, follow the steps below. I don't know how this will affect the use of the app on the ship, but I only use the countdown clock and don't use any of the other parts of the app, so I'm okay with an older version.

Reverting to the older DCL APP on Samsung phones.

I have done this with a Samsung Galaxy S5. The steps should be similar on other Samsung phones, but I can not vouch for how it works on iphones.
If your phone is set for auto update of apps, you need to disable it or the next update will just replace this with the newer version again.
This involves finding an older version of the .apk file online (I have done this for you) and downloading it onto your phone. First you need to uninstall the current version from your phone and go into your security settings to allow downloads from unknown sources.

Step 1: Uninstall the Disney Cruise Line App from your phone

Step 2: Each phone is slightly different for this step, but you can find a video on youtube for how to do this step for your specific phone if you aren't sure where to find it. Just look for “How to enable unknown sources for Samsung (insert phone model) Basically, you need to click on your settings icon… from settings you are looking for Security… and from the security screen you are looking for the UNKNOWN SOURCES button… and enable it.

Step 3: go back to your home screen

Step 4: Download the apk file from the website I've listed below. Scroll down the page and click on version 1.6.2 from April 13, 2017. (this is the one I used so I can vouch for it ) https://www.apkmonk.com/app/com.disney.cruise.sept_goo/

remember where you download it to.

I downloaded this to my computer and then hooked my phone to my computer and transferred the file from my computer into the download file folder on my phone. You may be able to download directly to your phone if you use your phone for internet.

Step 5: Click on Apps on your phone, and from the apps icons that are on your phone, find the “Tools” icon. Click on that. From that, click on MY FILES, and it should open and show you the apk file.

Step 6: touch the apk file and the option to install it should open. Once installed, if it asks you if you want to update to the newest version, say no.
You should now have the older version of the app on your phone, with the suitcase countdown.
Repeat step 2 from above, to disable the download from unknown sources.

 

[ivanp91]

When you first log on, you have to input your birthdate so the app knows who you are and can give you your chat id #. Apple users had a dial that rolled quickly. DH took 10 minutes to put his birthdate in...

This is a rookie error I once made before I figured it out - on Android, when the calendar comes up for your birthdate, you do NOT have to sit there tapping back month by month. Tap the year on the calendar and you can scroll back to your birth year. Voila!