Pricey but Fun

The Disney cruise is a lot of fun but it is very expensive.  They seem to be more about making money than working with the customer,  Most cruises we have been on have always allowed cancellation of shore excursions as it does not take them much to re-arrange this since there is a large number of people who want to make changes.  Not Disney.  We didn't know they are locked in 3 days prior and could not back out of our trip to Atlantis,  We read so much negative reviews on what a bad pkace for little kids to go on the slides and rapid river run that we wanted to back out of it.  You should read the reviews as there are a couple about kids nearly drowning and very poor life savers who do not monitor the water very well  But Disney would not allow us to cancel.  We were able to down grade to just a beach excursion which was okay but again very pricey at about $100 per adult and $80 per kid.  Nice beach, but treated like a tourist as no easy facilitites available and had to pay for shade umbrellas.

The cruise itself was fun although with 1250 staterooms of 2 to 4 people, you're dealing with close to 4000 fellow passengers and lots of them are kids.  There are chances to meet and greet characters, but the lines can be very, very long and getting private meetings require lots of planning.  The food is okay but not as good as what we find on Princess cruises which we have cruised over 12 times.  Unlike Princess, their buffet is closed through out the quiet times so you can't just drop in and get food,.  You need to know the schedules.  The shows could be a lot more character oriented and children oriented,  The "Believe" show was only the one which had good characters in it.  All the other were somewhat adult oriented which was too bad as we were expecing to be Disney flooded which we were not;  The best show was a non theater show which was the early pirate deck show which had all the characters you expect like Mickey, Minnie, Goofey, Daisy, ...  It's too bad they don't make the shows more kid firendly as that is what we were expecting.  

The kids activities rooms are top of the line so that helped a lot.  The small gym for adult workouts was way too small and didn't have as much equpiment to use such as a rower but I guess you don't go on a Disney cruise to work out.  

All in all though, it was a fun trip.  This is a bucket item trip for most families as the cost is 2 to 3 time that you would pay for most other cruise lines. We were expecting more "Disney" but it is much better than an Aulani stay which we have also done.