I have to admit it, there have been times when I feel like I'm the only one who wants to blurt out that the emperor has no clothes...

There were things I wasn't happy about on our cruise, and I *can't* be the only one who didn't drink the Happy KoolAid of Blissful Content that was available at the soda machines.

For starters, it drove me crazy that we'd already have a framework of plans (such as Palo reservations or shore excursions) made ahead of time, and then find, upon reading the Navigator, that we were going to miss something we'd really like to see/do. We'd never been on a cruise before, so we wanted to do a lot of different things, and we spent a lot of time trying to reconcile what was happening in the kids' Lab schedule with the daily Navigator and we ended up being heavily scheduled--and still feeling like we were missing out on things!

It was sort of like that scene in "I Love Lucy" where she's trying to work in the chocolate factory and keep up with it but it just gets ahead of her. One friend called our experience the cruise approximation of the "Disneyland Death March"--where you get there at opening, rush to try to do *everything,* stay until closing and are just exhausted. And we felt like that for days!

After spending so much for the cruise, I also felt like we had to be constantly vigilant on the 'nickel and diming' aspect of charging things to our stateroom. Even though we only took one Disney shore excursion, we had no spa treatments or anything really splurgy, the total was still huge.

We turned off our kids' charging privileges, but get this! When my son wanted to buy an arcade card, using his own money, Guest Services told him that he couldn't use cash! When I went down to find out why, they said that he'd had his charging privileges turned off. When I wanted to give them cash for a card, they were very difficult about the process, and it was convoluted--they credited our stateroom for the money in cash and then put the charge for the arcade card onto the stateroom account. Yeesh!

I wasn't happy with some of the photo-purchasing aspects at Shutters either; I bought a 6x8 package for 10 photos, but then some photos only showed up in 8x10 (and we did not have the formal portraits taken). I was pretty peeved about having to buy those separately. (Right, I didn't *have* to buy them, but I wanted the pictures, so whaddya do?)

I found out that it's customary on a cruise to tip your head waiter, your server, and your server assistant, but that just seemed bizarre to me. When you go to a nice restaurant, you leave one tip, and the staff divides it up. I thought it was most strange that there would be such a hierarchy of tipping for wait staff, yet there was no option for tipping the staff in the kids' clubs at all!

Another thing that bugged me was that there was only ONE showing of "Pirates of the Carribean"--at 2 pm on Puerto Vallerta day! Maybe not so many people would like to see it on the big screen, but that was a sore spot for me. ;)

Anyway, that's maybe a start for this thread. Or maybe I'm just a grump. *That* is always a reasonable possibility...

After spending so much for the cruise, I also felt like we had to be constantly vigilant on the 'nickel and diming' aspect of charging things to our stateroom. Even though we only took one Disney shore excursion, we had no spa treatments or anything really splurgy, the total was still huge.
This mirrors our experience on the Carnival cruise we took last year. It's very easy to run up the room-charge tab! Beware the apparently complimentary bottles of water, for example.

I found out that it's customary on a cruise to tip your head waiter, your server, and your server assistant, but that just seemed bizarre to me. When you go to a nice restaurant, you leave one tip, and the staff divides it up. I thought it was most strange that there would be such a hierarchy of tipping for wait staff, yet there was no option for tipping the staff in the kids' clubs at all!
We didn't get this either. On our cruise, the so-called gratuities were prepaid as part of the total package. So why were there little envelopes waiting for us on the last day? The headwaiter/maitre'd was most puzzling of all; isn't the guy's job to see that the dining room runs efficiently? He needs to be tipped for that?

Thanks for posting your perspective.

The headwaiter/maitre'd was most puzzling of all; isn't the guy's job to see that the dining room runs efficiently? He needs to be tipped for that?



We thought the EXACT same thing! That guy did nothing other than come around and give us the VERY canned speech of "We want to provide excellent service" a few times. He didn't even seat us, which is a host's normal job (of course, having an assigned table eliminates that need, I suppose).

My oldest son is a host at a 5-star hotel's restaurant, and he never gets tipped for doing his job.

Thanks for your response, Andrew!

We thought the EXACT same thing! That guy did nothing other than come around and give us the VERY canned speech of "We want to provide excellent service" a few times. He didn't even seat us, which is a host's normal job (of course, having an assigned table eliminates that need, I suppose).

My oldest son is a host at a 5-star hotel's restaurant, and he never gets tipped for doing his job.

Thanks for your response, Andrew!

I've done a Carnival cruise and a Disney cruise. We prepaid the tips on Carnival and were given vouchers which we put into each of the envelopes for the various servers. On the Carnival cruise we chose not to tip the head waiter/maitre' d since it was optional and he didn't do anything for us. The Disney maitre'd though went out of his way for us and even created a special centerpiece on our request for the last night. We chose to give him a tip since we found his assistance over the top.

As for the complainty (new word) topic of this thread, I wasn't impressed by the food on the Wonder. The food on Carnival was just so much better. I was disappointed to find the food just average on DCL. It probably worked out better that it was just ok. We all totally overate when we went on Carnival.

I didn't like the food either. We went on a Norwegian cruise and thought it was so much better, especially the food. DCL was our first cruise so we didn't know what to expect. But I found that some of the staff wasn't accomodating to our needs. On the last day I noticed some of the staff being QUITE nice to everyone that wasn't before but figured they were so nice because they expected tips.

As for the pictures, the tips, the charge cards...thats universal on all cruises I believe. We did some research on a cruise message board about tipping and on some cruises they automatically put the tip on your account. You could contact the cruise line ahead of time to find out how much they automatically charge for tips. It was suggested to us that we ask customer service to remove those charges and get envelopes for the tip. When we went on Norwegian we did that. Pictures are hard to say no to but luckily my husband doesn't take good pictures ;) As for the room charge cards, I found it better the second time to make a budget. On some cruises you could put that money into your account ahead of time when you arrive or you could pay your account daily in order to control spending.

But in all honesty, I wouldn't do a DCL cruise until the kids get older if its worth it. Probably so but there are many other cruise lines that cater to families now and do an excellent job.

Oh I forgot to add this...the Chocolate Buffet on Norwegian is awesome!!!!!

The tipping thing is standard for all the ships I've been on. I've heard mixed things about tipping the cruise staff and kids staff. Some places allow you to tip, other places won't let them accept tips...

It is hard to book in advance ... you never know what else will be going on. Thats why I usually take a massage on a port day, beacuse "at sea" there is too much else going on. We ended up bookign Palo and canceling because we were haveing such a great time with our servers.

Cruising is not cheap, and DCL -- unlike other ships -- doesn't have "on-board coupons" to use during your vacation, which saevs $$ on drinks, photos, massages and gifts.

The hardest thing to remember is you can't do it all -- so don't even try. :) Otherwise you won't be able to enjoy anything....