Disney Cruise Line revised their eligibility requirements for Castaway Club membership. Effective immediately, Castaway Club members must book or sail on at least one eligible cruise within 5 years of their last Disney voyage.
Castaway Club members who do not book or sail on an eligible within the 5 year window will rejoin the program after completing one new eligible cruise.
There was no specific reason stated for this change aside from the statement that Disney Cruise Line periodically reviews the Castaway Club Program and may make updates accordingly. The Castaway Club – Frequency Asked Questions page directs guests to the Castaway Club Terms and Conditions page, which was last revised in March 2023 with the key change:
The Program will continue until such time as DCL, in its sole discretion, elects to terminate the Program (the “Program Term”). Members can only receive Program Benefits during the Program Term and only by the methods set forth by DCL from time to time in its sole discretion. Members may only use Program Benefits during the “Redemption Term,” defined as the Program Term and a period of sixty (60) days immediately following the last day of the Program Term. Membership in the Program will automatically terminate without notice if Member does not book or complete an eligible DCL cruise within the “Activity Period.” The Activity Period shall mean the five (5) year period after debarkation day of the Member’s last eligible DCL Cruise. However, DCL may (but is not required to) extend the Activity Period and/or continue making Program Benefits available to Member if Member does not book or complete an eligible DCL cruise within their Activity Period; such decisions shall be in DCL’s sole discretion.
The full version of the Castaway Club Terms and Conditions from March 2023 can be viewed in this PDF archive. According to Google’s search results, it appears this particular webpage was just indexed by the search engine on December 20th.
CORRECTION – At the time of publication, it was stated the terms and conditions page was not updated as it had a March 2023 revision date at the end at the close of this article. After further review, the March 2023 Terms & Conditions DOES state the 5 year policy. Meaning, the revised eligibility requirement has been tucked away in the fine print for some time.
Interesting. Do other cruise lines have time limits on their loyalty programs? Seems Disney is narrowing their pool of frequent cruisers
Apparently MSC removes people after 3 inactive years. But, as I understand it, they aren’t a company to aspire to be like.
MSC also matches status from other cruise lines, so that could have something to do with it. I can’t think of another right off that will bump you down for not cruising. This is more along the lines of hotel or airline programs I guess. Use it or lose it.
MSC is the only major cruise line that has something similar.
Carnival erased all my previous one but Royal Caribbean as Holland America did
Carnival Cruise Lines doesn’t, very sad for Disney
DCL doubles down on being the worst loyalty program in the industry. Tells us how they really feel about their guests.
I wonder if this means that after 5 years a member has to start from the beginning if they have not booked another cruise to keep them current?
This would really suck. We haven’t cruised DCL through the high school/college years, but planned to come back. As of right now, DCL website still says I’m gold.
Wow. That stinks. We haven’t been cruising for the same reason as Dawn. We plan on coming back to it once college ends for the 4 kids. I hate to think we will loose our tiers because we needed a break from it for a few years.
I’m sad about this. Who this hurts the worst are our children. Our teens are Platinum members because we have taken them on so many cruises. In their young adult life as they start new jobs, get married & start a family, they may not have the means to take their family on a Disney Cruise while they build their lifestyle. This will punish them & me for trying all these years to build their status & leave it to them as a legacy.
I totally agree. My daughter and I have been sailing since she was 3 months old. She’s 19 now and we are Pearl Level. I can imagine a time when she will be growing a young family and may not said for 5 years and her history of growing up on the ships will be erased. It’s heartbreaking.
We are in the same situation. We built our kids’ status while they were growing up, but they lost interest. Now recently married once the kids come they will want to cruise again and were excited for their status
Strange. The benefits of the Castaway Club silver level are so negligible it seems odd to limit membership. Maybe they plan to make the benefits better, but seems unlikely. Disney seems to typically go in the other direction with their consumer loyalty perks.
So what do they consider an “eligible” cruise as that would indicate not all cruises would keep you current? Also if you are dropped and take a cruise to become a member again do you get your old status back or do you start over at step one again?
An eligible cruise would generally mean one that isn’t free/heavily discounted (e.g. Friends and Family type discount, competition win etc). Offers available to the general public would still result in an eligible cruise.
That is exactly what I’m wondering too
This is from the DCL website’s FAQ section:
“About Eligible Sailings Sailings purchased at select fare types (such as media, vendors and Cast Members traveling on business) are not considered eligible cruises for calculating Castaway Club Membership levels.”
“The Program will continue until such time as DCL, in its sole discretion, elects to terminate the Program (the “Program Term”). Members can only receive Program Benefits during the Program Term and only by the methods set forth by DCL from time to time in its sole discretion. Members may only use Program Benefits during the “Redemption Term,” defined as the Program Term and a period of sixty (60) days immediately following the last day of the Program Term. Membership in the Program will automatically terminate without notice if Member does not book or complete an eligible DCL cruise within the “Activity Period.” The Activity Period shall mean the five (5) year period after debarkation day of the Member’s last eligible DCL Cruise. However, DCL may (but is not required to) extend the Activity Period and/or continue making Program Benefits available to Member if Member does not book or complete an eligible DCL cruise within their Activity Period; such decisions shall be in DCL’s sole discretion.”
No word if the Activity Period starts from today, or truly from the last Cruise. Seems a lot of people would get dumped because they paused cruising following the onset of COVID.
The big question is if those of us who are already Gold members will be grandfathered in? I didn’t cruise the past 5 years due to various medical issues including COVID. We were planning to go again next year but will be outside that window.
This is total height of stupid. We have been on board 4 cruises 27 days. Last cruise was 2016 been doing other things now the Great Grand Child is coming good reason to do one. Well now there is not. So RCL and NCL you will get all our cruise business.
Just reached Platinum with our last cruise pre-COVID. We have serious illness in our family and would not cruise with COVID & illness still makes it very difficult. So unfair if we lose our status and don’t get it reinstated. I think I may book one and keep moving it out as far as I can. It says book or sail. Very disappointing.
I’m confused. Does that mean that every CC member gets dropped TODAY if it’s been more than five years since LAST DCL sailing?
I am a bit confused as well. I checked my status which still is gold despite the fact I paused for quite some time. Maybe our next year booking was eligible ? Oh well, another complexity on top of an already extremely complex system
How about all the time DCL wasn’t sailing thanks to Covid? % years as of today or 5 years from the last cruise? a lot of unanswered questions.
Agree. I would assume it would start from this date forward and not be retroactive.
This is really disheartening. We had planned to book a cruise for next year, but in light of our status being removed, we might as well spend our money elsewhere. We were working on our 8th cruise. It may not be as many as others who are losing things in light of covid and other family events, but I really wish disney would have implemented it and allowed a grace period for people to say book a cruise within the next year.
Best guess is that they’re trying to clear the rolls of younger cruisers. Sail with mom and dad and you can achieve gold or platinum status by the time you’re out of high school. That means all of the perks and priviliges of gold and platinum without ever having spent a dime to get there.
I think it is pretty fair. One cruise every 5 years to keep your status. I really don’t understand why someone would think that isn’t fair.
We were cruising every other year until Covid. Our 5 years will be up on June 2024. 2 away from Platinum status. This sucks
Book a cruise lol.. You can move the date as many times as you need too if necessary. Bottom line Disney has the right to change their program and you have the right not to cruise Disney if you don’t like it. I still don’t see how this is a big deal. I read these comments and I just don’t get it.
Let’s see, planned cruise in Apr 2020, covid cancelled, rebooked for 2021, vaccine required, booked for next year, will now cancel since last cruise was 2018. guess DCL doesn’t want platinum cruisers anymore
Let’s see, last sail 2018, booked for 4/2020, covid cancelled, rescheduled to 2021, required vaccine, rebooked for next year, will now cancel. Guess DCL doesn’t want platinum members anymore.
Some of these comments are hilarious. “I’m not going to cruise with DCL if they take my status”… What perks? You are going on a DCL cruise for Castaway Club perks? You are going to let a $50 dinner at Palo (if you are Platinum AND can book it) be the deciding factor? What Gold or Silver perks? A $2 lanyard or $8 bag? Ok… Go to Carnival or MSC… see how you like being nickle and dimed for beverages and everything else. It’s not like REAL perks on other cruise lines… the only thing you are really losing is the ability to book earlier. ‘woo hoo’.
I totally agree with you. The program is not that great anyway and if people would switch to Carnival as I have read in the comments they really aren’t hurting anyone but themselves. Programs change from time to time and I think this is fair. 5 years is a fair amount of time to either book or sail. You are also right in stating the perks are nothing to write home about lol
If the perks are so small (which they are), it begs the question even more why make this change that does nothing to help Disney and makes their loyal guests feel slighted. You don’t have to agree, of course, but you could be empathic.
I initially saw this from a different perspective, data management. DCL potentially has 25+ years of passenger data on servers. Sure, this could be a mechanism to incentivize rebooking to maintain club status. However, I see this as a mechanism to archive and purge potentially 2 decades worth of stagnate passenger accounts on their servers in a data optimization project to help improve the database(s) used by the cruise line. Maybe it is a little of both and maybe it is something else driving the decision.
I do understand that people are upset. I do not understand how it is a big deal. We are pearl. The benefits are really negligible. 5 years sounds like a very fair amount of time to me to cruise with a company. Loyalty goes both ways.
I agree the benefits aren’t much, but they at least ACKNOWLEDGED that we have spent a fortune and a significant amount of time with them. I think that is what makes it so shocking – to cancel our history together when it costs them so little to continue. My first response was “are you freaking kidding me?” What all about the “you are family” and “welcome home” messaging?
I completely agree with you, Cherie.
I 100% agree with you. It was so nice to have cast members recognize your many sailings and loyalty with the designation on the Key to the World card and/or your lanyard. This change is just so completely pointless and so very disappointing.
Does the 5 year clause take into account cruises cancelled by Disney, i.e. cruise cancelled because of hurricane Ian September 2022 to give you time to book another. Luckily we just just finished a reschedule cruise from that cancellation and hadn’t sailed since 2019. So I guess we just squeezed through. We, like many, did not know of recent change of policy in March. Just lucky I guess.
We have our fifth disney cruised booked for next year. However disney prices and poor experience on the Wish in May made us rethink disney recently. This lack of loyalty from them just adds to it. We sailed a 3 night on Royal last weekend to try it out. It wasn’t bad just different and something we still enjoyed. We are now going to cancel the disney cruise we have booked for next year and sail 2 with RC instead. We are imcredipass AP amd DVC nut we have to say Disney is pushing us out between pricing, poor service, poor quality over the past couple years. We are holding on to DVC a bit longer tobsee what happens but at renewal will reduce our pass level and no longer cruise Disney. It’s sad as we used to love it all so much
Declining by degrees.
Are they trying to drive guests away?
I mean when does this start. We were booked 12/2020 covid, rebooked 5/2021 covid, 8/2021 covid. Then for the next 12 months minimum services cancelled-same price. Perks of club is already crappy except for the early booking dates.
Here is the important information from the Terms & Conditions:
Yeah but my last cruise was 2018 and I usually go every two years. 2020-21 Covid. Couldnt go in 2022. Now at end of 2023, are they going to knock off the pause year? I’ll book for 2024 for sure and I’m eyeing the Treasure in 25. They should clarify whether the Covid pause is added.
I still do not understand ; when should we notice any change ? If already implemented, we should surely notice a new status or lack of ?
This is all down to greed, forcing loyal customers to book with them. But what do you really get as a perk top tier a $30 meal and a photo package. The rest a tote bag if lucky. I’m a platinum member, and really don’t feel special when we sail with Disney. I’ve sailed with all the Major companies they let you keep your tiers. I’m top with MSC as they match you with who ever you have sailed with and wow what perks you get with them. Disney are clearly starting to punch above there weight and eventually they will self implode. They charge top $ and they also have jumped on the covid band wagon, service and food gone down hill
The real perk is booking activities early
The perks are subjective, but I would agree the tiered early booking windows for new sailing and cruise activities is the perk that is the most beneficial to us.
Marketing 101 = Do NO Harm to your customer base or it will cost you in the end…
I just had an issue with my gold castaway club being reflected in my booking so I started researching this change. My last cruise was the summer of 2016. I ended up contacting Disney and found out the reason was because I changed my name after my divorce in 2021 and my cruise history was under my married last name. They changed my name in their system and reinstated my benefits. So I don’t know if there was a grandfather clause but I am happy to have my earlier booking dates.
I have gold status because of the cruises my parents took me on as a kid. I’ve been looking forward to taking my own family on a Disney Cruise, but my last cruise was in 2013 so I’m well outside the activity period. I’m planning to book a summer 2025 European cruise as soon as they are announced. As of now I still have active gold status, but I was worried about losing it before the booking opened for Europe (which I think is supposed to be announced very soon), so I sent a message to DCL asking if they would extend my activity period so that I could use my gold status when booking for Europe 2025. They got back to me today and said that they are “unable to extend the validity of a Castaway Club ID at this time”.
I know this is an old post now, but I’m wondering if anybody is in a similar situation and has had any success in getting their activity period extended? I know it might be a long shot, but they did say in the terms and conditions that “DCL may (but is not required to) extend the Activity Period and/or continue making Program Benefits available to a Member if the Member does not book or complete an eligible DCL cruise within their Activity Period.”. If anybody knows any “magic words” to say to get DCL to extend their activity period I would love to know what worked for you.