Trip log, day two. At Sea.
9-Night Alaskan Cruise from Vancouver
July 9, 2019
Personal Navigator – Day 2
Day 2 started out similar to embarkation day, Emily headed out to get in a morning run, and I set out for coffee and contemplation. I settled in to a spot in Crown & Fin with my morning dose of caffeine.
I ended up losing track of time and didn’t meet back up with the family for breakfast in Cabanas until closer to 8 o’clock.
Our morning schedule started off with Cynthia Gibson’s 9 o’clock ‘Black & Brown All Over – the Bears of Southeast Alaska’ presentation in the D-Lounge. The naturalist’s presentations during the Alaskan sailings are have always been enjoyable. The interesting part of Cynthia’s talk was how Alaskans see bears as dangerous and everyone else thinks they are cute and cuddly.
With this being a cruise longer than 7-nights, a Gold & Platinum Castaway Club reception was held in the Walt Disney Theatre.
The reception featured a behind-the-curtain peek at Disney Dreams. First they ran through a scene, then they reset and repeated the number with the curtains up and lights on. Instead of the performers mics, we heard the behind the scenes audio from the theatre tech team as they did their magic.
After the reception, we headed out to deck 4 to enjoy the sights of the Inside Passage and eat lunch. We tried to get the kids to get us pizza from Pinocchio’s, but the Cast Members working the pizza window refused to give the kids more than 2 slices each.
Crown & Fin was the location for our next attempt at trivia, this time around it was general movie quote trivia. The pub was packed by the time we arrived, but we found a spot on the floor to sit play a combination of Scattergories and trivia.
The kids split off before dinner to go to 3D paper crafts, where they made a Disney Cruise ship.
The adults went to the Cove Cafe and enjoyed espresso and the Moka Pot Experience.
Formal night included a welcome reception in the atrium and in a shocking turn of events, the drinks were bountiful, server after server appeared with a selection of beer, wine, drink of the day, and a mocktail.
We found our table in Trition’s which was serving the standard menu tonight. Service started off much better than the previous evening, however the wheels soon fell off and it went downhill.
Once again, service ground to a halt. There are 7 of us at the table and we are all ordering two courses and three people are pre-ordering the night before.
Emily left the table before dessert to get to trivia in hopes that we’d soon follow, but dessert was delayed. Our head server stopped by to see how things went tonight and the consensus was it was still slow. He asked us what time we’d like to be out and he assured us it will be corrected going forward. Honestly, at this point, I am not all that optimistic – I hope I’m proven wrong.
We managed to arrive in the D-Lounge in time to help Emily with the second half of Disney Villains quotes trivia. The D-Lounge was the source for the free flowing drinks. Seriously, a server handed me another glass of wine while I still had half a glass remaining.
We all headed over to Crown & Fin which was dead because it was late dinning and Golden Mickeys started in the Walt Disney Theatre. We joined the kids in a some board games until they got kicked out at 9 o’clock.
Not too long after, we all returned to the room and called it a night. We gain another hour tonight and will be spending the day ashore tomorrow in Ketchikan.
Being of Polish decent, I can tell you that the pierogi appetizer in your photos are clearly Mrs. T’s frozen pierogies. They serve the same ones at Food & Wine festival at Epcot. That’s very disappointing… 🙁
For the prices DCL charges their food should not be bad, yes it is banquet food but having been in catering for years I can tell you no one would have used our services again if our food was bad.
We cruised on the Wonder in June and our dining took forever too. We spoke to the Head server about it and it never improved. Some nights it would be going ok, then it would go downhill at the main entree or dessert. This was our 20th Disney cruise and Imhave never had it be that slow before especially after commenting about the time.
Same slow service on Magic in March. Only 3rd cruise but previous 2 (Wonder and Fantasy), service was fast and efficient. No problems getting desert and coffee with 30 minutes to spare before the show. I wonder if they cut back on staff, that would explain slower service across the fleet (assuming same problem on all ships).