Disney Magic Review

Disney Cruise in need of some Magic

Review for the Mediterranean Cruise on Disney Magic
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medRoswell
2-5 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Jun 2014
Traveled with children

Let me first say that by no means have I been a Disney hater and it pains me a bit to write this review. In fact, I have been a huge fan of the Mouse my whole life being an annual pass holder on both coasts, spending 6 of the last 10 Christmases at WDW and in general finding just about any excuse to spend my leisure time and dollars on Disney products. But the June 7 cruise from Barcelona was not only below Disney standards, it was also well below standards set by just about every other cruise line.

Here are a few of our experiences aboard the Disney Magic that should give some pause to travelers debating paying the extra 30% to travel DCL versus another line. Our biggest issue was that on the third morning of the cruise my 11 daughter was lost. The situation was my daughter went down to Lumieres to get a table for breakfast we were right behind her. The procedure when you are seated is that the host takes your room number enters it into the computer then you are seated. We arrived downstairs 5 minutes later gave our room number and told the host that our daughter had checked in. He told us that no young lady had been seated yet, and showed us to another table. Thinking she had gone to the restroom on the way we sat and waited, no daughter. We asked again and glanced around the restaurant, "no sir, we have not seen her." This was not in our daughter's character to wander off. So we began a search of the other restaurants, back to the room all over, starting to get panicked. After working with Guest Services for a bit my wife asked can you page for her. The reply from guest services was, "we don't have that capability." After 45 minutes I was back in the room getting one of the Disney intercom phones, so they could call if she was found, when my daughter, who had been seated in Lumieres in the back behind a server stand, and finished her breakfast, emerged and saw my wife at guest services. The staff had seated her, was aware that a 11 year old was dining alone, but somehow did not have the competency, intelligence or care to link the information. Furthermore, the following day we heard a page go out for a seemingly similar situation, so guest services was either incompetent or outright liars to us. Also, what about that enter the room in the computer process, they knew she was there. This caused undo stress to say the least, and cost us an hour of sightseeing on the Italian Riviera that day. I pray DCL never has a true case of a lost or abducted child onboard.

To add to that drama, when I returned to the room to get our bathing suits to take with us to the Cinque Terre, the door lock failed, for the second of what would be 5 times during the week. The result that day is we did not get to swim in the beautiful ports of the Cinque Terre. Several other guests had similar issues we learned from chatting around deck. Each time this happened you would first be told to go to guest services to get a new room card, which did not fix the issue. This was followed then by having to wait for maintenance to come and reset the door lock feature. This cost even more time that could have been used to enjoy the sights in port. After the 5th failure, and making a big enough stink, maintenance changed out the lock so the 5th failure was the last.

Cabin Review

As said above, the room was overall well appointed, and was nice when our door lock allowed us inside. The layout was intelligent and you had enough room to walk to the balcony even with the kids bed setup. The main bed was pretty close to the wall, and we all still have the bruises on our shins from running into the bedpost when trying to pass by. Our room also had a strobing light fixture above the bed which seemingly could not be fixed. A nice feature was that we were able to open up the balcony doors between 4 of our rooms creating a nice large outdoor space.

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