What Changes Would You Like DCL to Make?

[mcd2745]

You can contact DCL and get the show/theme nights ahead of time. I'm not sure they've finalized all onboard activities far enough out to be able to send the full navigators out before activity booking windows open.

Can anyone get that info...or just concierge?

 

[RedHead0186]

Can anyone get that info...or just concierge?

I think anyone can. Usually concierge guests can get it from Shoreside, but I've also heard of non-concierge guests being able to get it.

 

[cedricandsophie]

Longer cruises, 10 days or more in Europe or even Caribbean.

More places to get soda or have the bars dispense it for free.

Character breakfast.

Entertainment by the adult pool every day.

More benefits for Pearl like free wif and laundry, free cocktails once a day, discounts on bottles of wine, discounted cruises, bathrobes, reception or invite to captain table. I’ve got several bags, some of which I have given away. I don’t need any more. I’d prefer something more valuable. We have 25 plus cruises all but one or two are 7 days or longer. They could definitely afford to treat us better considering we have probably spent well over $200,000 over the years especially when bringing our family with 3 rooms

 

[brentm77]

That's an interesting point. I do know other cruise lines do this (Princess comes to mind) so I'd be curious how they do it.

I think every major cruise line besides DCL lets you book excursions right away. As far as I know, you just take the risk of a change in the exchange rate if you cancel and paid with a foreign currency. When you use the right credit card, there is no added fee, so they just refund it back in U.S. currency and let your card to the conversion at current rates. Frankly, it's not that big of a risk usually, and there is even a chance you will make money (like I did when I changed a vacation package at Tokyo Disneyland and the dollar moved more favorable against the yen). If you don't like the risk, you can always wait until you know you don't want to make any changes.

Let me make more of a case for booking excursions as soon as you book the cruise:

• They are refundable, so you still have full flexibility to think about it and make changes as your cruise gets closer. You also have the ability to just wait and book closer to your cruise (at the risk of an excursion being sold out, which is the same risk you have on DCL).
• The DCL system encourages people to book and hold excursions with no commitment, which isn't good for other customers. Even though the other lines refund if you cancel within a certain period, I think paying something discourages this practice.
• It lets you know earlier if an excursion is sold out so that you can make alternate arrangements or even change your cruise if it's that important to you. With DCL, you are blind as to whether an excursion will be available until very close to the cruise. For our Southern Caribbean cruise, the excursion we wanted did sell out before our window opened, and when I went to book privately, they were fully booked too. On another cruise, DCL showed sold out so I booked an overpriced private version, only to have the DCL one open when everyone just using it as a placeholder canceled their booking.
• It's better for DCL, since it encourages early booking by customers.
• If booking a specific DCL excursion is important to you under the current system, you must participate in the infamous Disney midnight lottery, which is a terrible system, affected too much by technological glitches and luck.

As an alternative to booking right away, I would be fine with a better system than the midnight lottery for booking. For example, a ranked choice selection that assigns excursions 60 days out based on CC status or cabin class. They should use that for boarding times in any case. It's so archaic to get on a website in the middle of the night to try and get a good boarding time, often fighting with underpowered servers, for such an expensive product.