An honest review of my first Disney cruise

I took my first Disney cruise on the Fantasy from Jan 5 to 10. While this is technically my third cruise ever the previous two I took I was 16 and 11 at the time. I am currently 40 to put that in context.

I'll start off with the good:

We absolutely love the ship itself. The common areas were immaculate at all times. My kids loved the detective game. I guess because it wasn't as hot being a January sailing we never found the pools overcrowded. My one child in particular was enthralled with funnel vision. She loves to swim and loves movies. Being able to do both at once was a dream come true. I went to all three live shows in the main theater as well as a movie in the smaller show. The lives shows were all incredible, especially Aladdin. The lounges were all really nice. My children loved the kids clubs. We went to Palo which was a lovely experience. We never had time to do a number of things offered which I consider a plus. The deck shows were a lot of fun as well. Special mention to the interactive show inside Animators Palete and the clever improve songs during the pirate night show. Enchanted Garden is also a very pretty restaurant. My kids loved BBB, it was one of their highlights for sure.

The mixed bag:

The food was super hit or miss. I am a former professional chef of 10 years so this one hits close to home for me. We had some absolutely delicious food along with some incredibly terrible food. Some of the food was so bad I thought about putting the food in the bad column to be honest. Night one for example the boat was really moving around and I wasn't feeling super hungry so I ordered two apps and a soup. The first app was fried calamari which was among the best I have ever had. The second app was a bruschetta dish which was probably the worst bruschetta I have ever had. That was followed up with a good but not great chilled tropical fruit soup. My wife that night had halibut that was so stiff we could have almost driven a nail with it. Each night was like this for my family with some items being good but most being quite poor. The only reason I didn't put the food into the bad column was Palo was excellent and the buffet at Cabanas was better than we expected. Those churros waffles are to die for. Its really the food in the main dinging rooms that was worse than expected. Considering the fact that a Disney cruise is over twice the price of a RC cruise for example I expected more.

Castaway Cay was also a mixed bad. My wife liked the island more than I did so flip our opinions on both Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay. It was a windy day with decent waves so every single shore activity was cancelled. Every single one. We didn't book any but what a bummer for those that did. On top of that the kids playground in the second family beach area (Pelican Point?) was closed due to a maintenance issue. As such the beaches were insanely busy. I also don't enjoy how packed in the chairs are. I understand why but it was a bit of turn off for me having to constantly be dodging around people going anywhere at all. The food was decent, the signage to find things was good and it was easy to get to anything from the beach area due to the close proximity. My wife and one child did the 5k walk while I stayed with my other child at the beach. They both enjoyed it.

Lookout Cay I enjoyed much more than my wife but it wasn't perfect. The island itself is absolutely beautiful. The beach is probably the nicest stretch of beach I have ever been on. The larger area meant I didn't feel crowded at any point while on the beach. The negatives however were there. It took us 40min from the gangway to get to the beach one way. That is a lot of your day spent traveling. There were not nearly enough kids life jackets on the beach. We spent over 20min looking for one before giving up. We even asked a lifeguard where we could find one. He mentioned just walk along the beach as they restock the lifejacket stands often. This never happned once. He also said go ask at, if I recall the name correctly, Flippers for some but couldn't find it. The signage was terrible to figure out where the various things were. When we got back to the area of beach we were in the lifeguard saw we didn't find one and ended up getting one for us. While that was super nice of him to do it shouldn't have been necessary. Castaway had far more kids in the water yet you could find life jackets all over the place. My wife also said that about 1/3+ of all stalls in the three different bathrooms were out of order in the women's bathrooms which meant lineups at every one.

There was also a surprisingly large number of rude AF adults on board that would just push their way into lines or in front of children during the shows to get a better view for themselves. Fish extenders was also a bust. My wife hand made small Disney themed travel bags for each ground member filled with hand made lanyards and scrunchies. One of out fish extender members gave us two swimming goggles on the second last day of the cruise with the $3 bestway price tags still on it.

The bad:

Nassau was a dump. I'm not a well traveled individual so maybe this is par for the course but I hated how I couldn't go more than 30 seconds without someone trying to sell me an overpriced good or service. We also didn't love that DCL doesn't provide guests with a map that shows were Junkanoo beach was, which was the only place we wanted to go to. We found it but locals aren't exactly thrilled to offer up free directions when they can try and sell you a guide or taxi ride. If we are ever back I'll never set foot on the island again.

The absolute inexcusable worst thing about the cruise however was on the 4th night our toilet broke just before 11pm. It would just flush non stop over and over again. It was incredibly loud and kept my entire family up. I called maintenance immediately who said they would send someone right away. After 30min of constant flushing I called again and they seemed surprised nobody had come yet but said they would follow up and get someone there right away. After another 30min had passed it was now past midnight and one of my two little children is now crying because of the noise and lack of sleep. I walked to guest services and explained the situation. They informed me they dispatched the plumber to the wrong suite twice in a row but would get them to my suite right away. By the time I returned the plumbed was shadowing me down my hallway but it took over an 1h20min after the first call to get this issue dealt with. All DCL did to rectify this disaster of an experience was to call us the next morning and apologize. Terrible customer service there. At least offer a paltry discount of a future cruise we won't likely be taking.

TL;DR The boat is amazing. The food was pretty mediocre. Our toilet broke one night and it took them so long to fix my daughter was crying out of frustration after over an hour of very loud flushing. The private islands are a mixed bag. Nassau is awful. All in all considering the fact a Disney cruise is twice the price of a competitor like RC I expected better than we got. I don't think we will be going on another one past this. Why spend this amount of money on top of another cruise for mediocre food and islands with massive maintenance issues and incompetent guest services staff.