Good afternoon all,
My wife and I just got off the Fantasy on 9.24.22 sailing for our long overdue honeymoon (rescheduled 5 times since Oct 2020 on Disney but each kept getting canceled). Here is our review after the sailing and it is not all good. This is coming from my wife, who has just done her 13th sailing on Disney Cruise line since 2002, mainly on all the new sailings and inaugural sailings (hawaii, alaska, greece, med...)
This Sailing had our itinerary changed the day before sailing due to Hurricane Fiona. So instead of going to Virgin Islands and Castaway, it went to Western Caribbean (Cozumel, Cayman, Falmouth, Castaway). Kind of sad since we didnt book that, but we understood based on weather.
The Good:
-Staff: Our assistant server Carlos from Peru was our assistant server and he was the best staff my wife has ever had. He was bubbly, energetic, and attentive. His high pitch voice could be hear around the ship and he was a breath of energy for their staff.
-Live Shows: Both Frozen, Aladdin, and Believe were great as were the staff/cast.
The Bad:
-Cabanas: We found the variety each day very limited. The same few items on 3 spots on each side of the buffet and it didnt change much. A beef dish, a chicken breast dish, a fish dish, and a pasta. The same 3 salads were pre-made and those didnt change, so if you dont like or are allergic to cucumbers, you are doomed to just 1 salad choice for 7 days. We also were annoyed that at least one of the beverage stations were closed and out of order the entire sailing.
-Castaway food: This was just plain gross. The cookies, which they rave about, tasted old and dry. The cookies in Cabanas were better, which is not good. The protein items didnt have much flavor or were overcooked. The "salads" all had cucumber or pickles in them, so we couldnt eat any of them. The "chili" was ketchup with minimal at best seasoning. We had to go to Cabanas to find anything to eat.
-Service in Dining rooms: This was where the sailing failed us miserably. Our first night our server team took over 2 hours before we got deserts due to the poor service. The food we received was luke warm to cold, the server team checked back only once, and then was off trying to handle all the tables in their section at the same time which put everyone behind. We had a couple at our table who were on their first DCL voyage and ordered a special desert to celebrate...which arrived with 2 misspelled words written in chocolate and the cupcake we were told tasted like shortening mixed with one splenda packet. After we spoke with guest services and dining room manager about being moved to better server, we had good experience until our return trip to Animators, the scene of the first issue. The management had decided to put us at a table completely across the restaurant from our serving team and our head server never once came by to help them. Poor service was had again, with cold food, and we even heard our serving team ask another server for help and be ignored. We brought it to officer's attention and guest services attention. The restaurant manager was told to make this better we were told by officer in Food/Beverage, yet he was nowhere to be found the next day and a half unless we went after our dining time to speak with him. He clearly did not care what his bosses had to say and what his actions were doing for our special cruise.
-Staff interactions: This may seem trivial to some, but having grown up on the ships, my wife enjoys speaking with staff and getting to know them a bit. On previous cruises they often would say "Welcome back" to her when they saw her lanyard, yet on this sailing only 1 staff member in 7 days did this for her this time. Often the staff was distant and unsocial. We even saw staff members in uniform working in Cabanas on their personal cell phone while on shift, something the old DCL would never allow.
We felt bad sharing this, but we wanted everyone to know it wasnt the best experience. We have heard and read other reviews from the Fantasy in the past few months and the trend seems to be poor food or poor service in the dining rooms. It seems the promotion of staff to middle management level was done prematurely and the entire ship is dealing with Wish pulling 25% of their staff as well as some not coming back after Covid. Officers told us 60-75% of the staff was new and it was very obvious. We have been in touch with shoreside Disney to share our experience so maybe improvements can be made for other guests to not experience what we did on our honeymoon.
P.S. we had just sailed on the Magic in May for the first Med cruise and the food and service was night and day different. Even with Europe's restrictions and likely limited options for food/items due to supply chain, the Magic beat the Fantasy hands down even with sailing out of a port other than Canaveral.
My wife and I just got off the Fantasy on 9.24.22 sailing for our long overdue honeymoon (rescheduled 5 times since Oct 2020 on Disney but each kept getting canceled). Here is our review after the sailing and it is not all good. This is coming from my wife, who has just done her 13th sailing on Disney Cruise line since 2002, mainly on all the new sailings and inaugural sailings (hawaii, alaska, greece, med...)
This Sailing had our itinerary changed the day before sailing due to Hurricane Fiona. So instead of going to Virgin Islands and Castaway, it went to Western Caribbean (Cozumel, Cayman, Falmouth, Castaway). Kind of sad since we didnt book that, but we understood based on weather.
The Good:
-Staff: Our assistant server Carlos from Peru was our assistant server and he was the best staff my wife has ever had. He was bubbly, energetic, and attentive. His high pitch voice could be hear around the ship and he was a breath of energy for their staff.
-Live Shows: Both Frozen, Aladdin, and Believe were great as were the staff/cast.
The Bad:
-Cabanas: We found the variety each day very limited. The same few items on 3 spots on each side of the buffet and it didnt change much. A beef dish, a chicken breast dish, a fish dish, and a pasta. The same 3 salads were pre-made and those didnt change, so if you dont like or are allergic to cucumbers, you are doomed to just 1 salad choice for 7 days. We also were annoyed that at least one of the beverage stations were closed and out of order the entire sailing.
-Castaway food: This was just plain gross. The cookies, which they rave about, tasted old and dry. The cookies in Cabanas were better, which is not good. The protein items didnt have much flavor or were overcooked. The "salads" all had cucumber or pickles in them, so we couldnt eat any of them. The "chili" was ketchup with minimal at best seasoning. We had to go to Cabanas to find anything to eat.
-Service in Dining rooms: This was where the sailing failed us miserably. Our first night our server team took over 2 hours before we got deserts due to the poor service. The food we received was luke warm to cold, the server team checked back only once, and then was off trying to handle all the tables in their section at the same time which put everyone behind. We had a couple at our table who were on their first DCL voyage and ordered a special desert to celebrate...which arrived with 2 misspelled words written in chocolate and the cupcake we were told tasted like shortening mixed with one splenda packet. After we spoke with guest services and dining room manager about being moved to better server, we had good experience until our return trip to Animators, the scene of the first issue. The management had decided to put us at a table completely across the restaurant from our serving team and our head server never once came by to help them. Poor service was had again, with cold food, and we even heard our serving team ask another server for help and be ignored. We brought it to officer's attention and guest services attention. The restaurant manager was told to make this better we were told by officer in Food/Beverage, yet he was nowhere to be found the next day and a half unless we went after our dining time to speak with him. He clearly did not care what his bosses had to say and what his actions were doing for our special cruise.
-Staff interactions: This may seem trivial to some, but having grown up on the ships, my wife enjoys speaking with staff and getting to know them a bit. On previous cruises they often would say "Welcome back" to her when they saw her lanyard, yet on this sailing only 1 staff member in 7 days did this for her this time. Often the staff was distant and unsocial. We even saw staff members in uniform working in Cabanas on their personal cell phone while on shift, something the old DCL would never allow.
We felt bad sharing this, but we wanted everyone to know it wasnt the best experience. We have heard and read other reviews from the Fantasy in the past few months and the trend seems to be poor food or poor service in the dining rooms. It seems the promotion of staff to middle management level was done prematurely and the entire ship is dealing with Wish pulling 25% of their staff as well as some not coming back after Covid. Officers told us 60-75% of the staff was new and it was very obvious. We have been in touch with shoreside Disney to share our experience so maybe improvements can be made for other guests to not experience what we did on our honeymoon.
P.S. we had just sailed on the Magic in May for the first Med cruise and the food and service was night and day different. Even with Europe's restrictions and likely limited options for food/items due to supply chain, the Magic beat the Fantasy hands down even with sailing out of a port other than Canaveral.
