Share your experience with Shutters!

[ntbubbles]

I've pre-ordered for every cruise (and my upcoming) and I've been very happy. Are they the best photos ever taken - no. I'd compare them to school picture quality - fine for the number of people getting through the line - same as the park photos. The lighting is much better than most taken with my phone (which I would guess they plan on purpose), especially the photos taken in darker areas. And I have gotten a handful of REALLY great ones over three cruises.

We see A LOT of characters. There's also a bit of...if the photographers see you a lot, they know the photos are important to you, so they take more, and more interesting shots. I've actually had photographers seek me out because they know we like the photos. I would say 90% of our photos (in the hundreds, even for a 5 day cruise) are character photos. We only do the background ones if there are no (or very short) lines.

I make a photobook of all my cruises so I know I will do something with the pictures. I don't love the borders like others have said, but I've always found a way to crop them to make it work (either with or without the border).

If, for whatever reason, I didn't like the pics, I'd have no problem cancelling so it seems a no-brainer to not pre-order if I'm considering. Would I do it for a 3/4 day cruise on one of the larger ships? Maybe not.

Man, I’m glad to see this because I thought I was crazy. Or just have a really low bar for photos (possible).

We pre-ordered the photo package on the Fantasy a couple of weeks ago and I am SO happy with the pictures. We got over 400 photos and there are very few “bad” shots. And the lighting and quality is much better than the ones taken with our phones. In fact, I struggled to decide which ones to get prints of to display, and which to include in our photo book, because we have so many good ones. But we did a ton of character meets and some of the backdrop ones, so we definitely did seek them out and see the same photogs over and over again throughout the week.

Anyway, I love the photo package and we plan to do it on our next one as well.

 

[MonaMN]

Can someone confirm when you need to cancel if you purchase in advance but are not happy with the photos?

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Can someone confirm when you need to cancel if you purchase in advance but are not happy with the photos?

You need to cancel by the end of the last full day of the cruise.

 

[DisneyConvert]

We've done both:
Pre-ordered the package and been aggressive about getting pictures there, here and everywhere (great head shots for work or social media). We found the quality and value of the digital package very acceptable.
On shorter cruises w/out our son, we've skipped the whole thing and taken pictures with our phones.
Both have worked out satisfactorily.

 

[monkeydawn]

With 6 year old twins - standing in 30-60 minute lines for each photo op may not be a reasonable expectation and probably won't result in a good family photo.

The longest line we stood in, with the exception of Jack Sparrow, took about 20 minutes, always less than a half hour. The first couple of times I queued up I expected the line to take much longer. Obvious ly YMMV but it sounds like you didnt wait in any character lines so how would you even know how long they really took? We ended up with about 125 photos over a 5 day cruise.

 

[ntbubbles]

The longest line we stood in, with the exception of Jack Sparrow, took about 20 minutes, always less than a half hour. The first couple of times I queued up I expected the line to take much longer. Obvious ly YMMV but it sounds like you didnt wait in any character lines so how would you even know how long they really took? We ended up with about 125 photos over a 5 day cruise.

Same, I don’t think we waited longer than 15 minutes in any of our character lines. The longest was to meet Jack and Sally after the Nightmare Before Christmas showing and that was due to their very limited appearances so the line was particularly long. And we waited for maybe 15 minutes. Photos from that one we’re great (some of my favorites from the trip, actually). My daughter is also 6 and she was totally fine and the photos were great. In my experience, they were very good about getting people through. YMMV of course. I’m sure some CMs are quicker than others. But as others have mentioned, you can always cancel your preorder if you’re not getting good photos.

 

[mom4mad]

We have sailed Disney 11 times. We hate Shutters. They are a disaster. I have actually written to DCL about our poor experiences. The response was they are not Disney employees, but should be held to the same standard as DCL cast members. However, we have been sailing since 2007 and they have always been awful. The only way I would buy anything from them is to get the usb photo package, prepaid, so you can just pick it up and not really have to deal with them. Having said that, the photographers are actually really great and helpful. It is the staff that runs the desk at Shutters that is the problem.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

We have sailed Disney 11 times. We hate Shutters. They are a disaster. I have actually written to DCL about our poor experiences. The response was they are not Disney employees, but should be held to the same standard as DCL cast members. However, we have been sailing since 2007 and they have always been awful. The only way I would buy anything from them is to get the usb photo package, prepaid, so you can just pick it up and not really have to deal with them. Having said that, the photographers are actually really great and helpful. It is the staff that runs the desk at Shutters that is the problem.

Hmmm..... I'll admit we haven't dealt with Shutters a lot on our cruises, but we have purchased packages as well as individual photos on some of our cruises.

Never had an issue with them.