Back from Fantasy 6/10-6/17--let me know if your have questions.

SunDevilFanAZ

Mouseketeer
Joined
Feb 28, 2013
back now from our second DCL vacation. We sailed on the Fantasy again and in the same stateroom as before, 8596. Let me know if you have any questions.

Here are a few tidbits I know some are interested in:

Cruise director was Natalie. Nothing special or bad about her.

Cars 3 premEARed on board.

Sweet on you has a large variety with reasonable prices and serving sizes.

Avoid the "Dole Whip" like the plague. There was nothing frozen or yogurt about it.

Servers Daniel and assistant server Mitho were fabulous.

Loved Playa Mia in Cozumel. Grand Cayman dolphin and Stingray City trip was great. Did the sharks and Dunn's river falls in Jamaica. That was by far the worst part of the trip. Not the sharks, just everything else involved with the Jamaica excursion.
 
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Did you experience any of the vibration that people talk about? I know you weren't aft, but you were close to aft.
 


The dole whip sounds so disappointing. I can't decide if I want to try it. Luckily, we will be at WDW before and after our cruise. Even better, we will be at Animal Kingdom, so I can get it with rum. I might risk trying it on the ship. We'll see. We are looking forward to our Fantasy cruise on 8/5. Did the rooms and hard goods look to be in good shape?

Looking forward to trying Sweet on You. I still hate that name. I wish they had just called it Vanellope's. Do you know if they are letting people order/purchase sundaes to the MDR? I know that they were allowing this on the Dream.
 
I'm also interested about your experience in Jamaica. We are thinking about an excursion involving Dunn's River Falls, but would appreciate your feedback! Thanks
 


Not wanting to speak for the OP, but I know when we did Dunn's River Falls for RCCL many years ago, the market at the exit was brutal. It was like trying to run the gauntlet to get out of there without buying something. The falls were really cool, and we are doing it again in August. The sales guys at the market are just pretty relentless. We tried ignoring them, politely saying we weren't interested, and just saying no. We didn't buy anything, but they enjoyed harassing us. Maybe it's gotten better. I didn't feel unsafe or anything; it was just annoying.
 
Not wanting to speak for the OP, but I know when we did Dunn's River Falls for RCCL many years ago, the market at the exit was brutal. It was like trying to run the gauntlet to get out of there without buying something. The falls were really cool, and we are doing it again in August. The sales guys at the market are just pretty relentless. We tried ignoring them, politely saying we weren't interested, and just saying no. We didn't buy anything, but they enjoyed harassing us. Maybe it's gotten better. I didn't feel unsafe or anything; it was just annoying.

Thanks for your input. I'm not sure that we will have too much trouble walking by without stopping. If we want to buy something, we will look for it. We aren't "browsers" and we don't like shopping. I use Walmart Grocery pickup so I don't even have to go into the store at all, LOL. I just generally hate the experience of looking around and finding things. Hopefully not making eye contact or being "distracted by my kids" will get us by. haha!
 
What was bad in Jamaica?
To start, out tour guide seemed like he didn't know what was going on. He couldn't figure out which bus to get us on for a bit. Lots of standing around and waiting. When finally on, for the hour trip out to the sharks he barely did anything other than "teach" us three Jamican phrases, point out one hotel and that was about it. Once there at 9:45, my family got a 10:00 time for the sharks. We were done by 10:20. I had no problems with the actual sharks. It was quite cool and loved that. However, everything from here on out just went downhill.

once we were done, we had to wait until almost 1:00pm to leave. There were only 15 of us on the bus and they spread out everyone that far. Some people's experiences were canceled for some reason. While not the tour guide's fault, we had three rain storms. What that did was hurry along the photographers to try and speed up the shark pictures. While waiting around for a couple of hours, our pics were finally processed. The price was $180 for ONE PHOTOGRAPH or all on a CD. However all were such terrible quality that it was a joke. Half the time the photographers got pics with the trainer blocking out my wife and son so many of the pics were useless from the getgo. Many others you were not able to tell what was in the picture. Downtrodden, I passed on any photographic memories of the experience.

To try and kill time, we were to go look at the iguanas, mini zoo, shops, etc. However most of the animals in the mini zoo were not on display, the shops were a joke and the iguanas were not out either. Basically we spent a lot of time twiddling out thumbs.

Next up was Dunn's River Falls. Things don't start off well when the tour guide gives you the standard speech about the peddlers trying to hock their wares and to keep close to him, keep the kids nearby and try to make it through the stalls. Great....

Walking toward the queue, it looked like the lines we saw for Pandora at Animal Kingdom. No joke, there were about 500 people waiting in line to get a guide to then go down the hill into the falls. Someone came from the bottom and said it was an hour wait to get to the bottom. They turned out to be nearly spot on. There were several of us from our group who were getting quite upset at this point and nearly mutinied our excursion and demanded to get back to the boat. With an hour wait, hour hike and hour drive we were going to be cutting it real close to the 4:45 all aboard. The hour long wait was compounded by our guide not knowing how to play the game with the gatekeepers at the bottom to get his tour group through. The other tour guides were able to sweet talk the gatekeepers and have their entire groups waltz by and into the falls. We stood there and waited. And waited. And waited.

The falls were nothing special to me but I knew that going in. I just hung on and did it for my 11 year old to experience it. The videographers were pushing the sale of the falls hike videos hard. Some were quite pushy to other groups.

Walking through the merchandise stalls on the way out and putting up with the vendors was not a pleasant experience. You were really in there tight with everyone trying to hound you and sell stuff. I am 6'5", 230 and was getting quite uncomfortable. Not to mention what my wife, 8 and 11 year old were feeling. Mercifully, we got back on the bus.

On the way back, our tour guide fell asleep. Icing on the cake.

Back on the ship, we heard from our friends how their tour guide was awesome, explained all about the island, pointed out things, showed them around and such. No joke, ours taught us to say Yaw Mon, No Problem and Irie, told us about a hotel not having windows and pointed out the bauxite mining operation. We saw hardly any scenery worth mentioning. Most of the journey from Falmouth to the sharks was in an incredibly run down part of the island which fails to make it onto most tourist brochures.

All said, we spent from 9:00-4:00 on a tour. We got 20 mins with the sharks and 20 mins of hiking time in Dunn's River Falls (my son and I left the falls at the first out as he didn't want to continue). THerefore, almost 6 hours was spent either driving or waiting around.

I couldn't wait for the boat to weigh anchor and get the heck out of Jamaica. It was a major disapointment.
 
The dole whip sounds so disappointing. I can't decide if I want to try it. Luckily, we will be at WDW before and after our cruise. Even better, we will be at Animal Kingdom, so I can get it with rum. I might risk trying it on the ship. We'll see. We are looking forward to our Fantasy cruise on 8/5. Did the rooms and hard goods look to be in good shape?

Looking forward to trying Sweet on You. I still hate that name. I wish they had just called it Vanellope's. Do you know if they are letting people order/purchase sundaes to the MDR? I know that they were allowing this on the Dream.
Do not get the Dole Whip on the ship. Save your money. I had the rum one at Animal Kingdom. It was tasty but a bit light on the rum.

The rooms and the entire ship were in great condition.
 
Not wanting to speak for the OP, but I know when we did Dunn's River Falls for RCCL many years ago, the market at the exit was brutal. It was like trying to run the gauntlet to get out of there without buying something. The falls were really cool, and we are doing it again in August. The sales guys at the market are just pretty relentless. We tried ignoring them, politely saying we weren't interested, and just saying no. We didn't buy anything, but they enjoyed harassing us. Maybe it's gotten better. I didn't feel unsafe or anything; it was just annoying.
I am 6'5" 230 and did not feel safe there at all.
 
I'm also interested about your experience in Jamaica. We are thinking about an excursion involving Dunn's River Falls, but would appreciate your feedback! Thanks
Darn near any excursion on the island goes to Dunn's River Falls. THerefore you can't escape it. We have Slide Rock up the road in Sedona which is a smaller version so I was not impressed. However, I knew that going in.
 
To start, out tour guide seemed like he didn't know what was going on. He couldn't figure out which bus to get us on for a bit. Lots of standing around and waiting. When finally on, for the hour trip out to the sharks he barely did anything other than "teach" us three Jamaican phrases, point out one hotel and that was about it. Once there at 9:45, my family got a 10:00 time for the sharks. We were done by 10:20. I had no problems with the actual sharks. It was quite cool and loved that. However, everything from here on out just went downhill.

once we were done, we had to wait until almost 1:00pm to leave. There were only 15 of us on the bus and they spread out everyone that far. Some people's experiences were canceled for some reason. While not the tour guide's fault, we had three rain storms. What that did was hurry along the photographers to try and speed up the shark pictures. While waiting around for a couple of hours, our pics were finally processed. The price was $180 for ONE PHOTOGRAPH or all on a CD. However all were such terrible quality that it was a joke. Half the time the photographers got pics with the trainer blocking out my wife and son so many of the pics were useless from the getgo. Many others you were not able to tell what was in the picture. Downtrodden, I passed on any photographic memories of the experience.

To try and kill time, we were to go look at the iguanas, mini zoo, shops, etc. However most of the animals in the mini zoo were not on display, the shops were a joke and the iguanas were not out either. Basically we spent a lot of time twiddling out thumbs.

Next up was Dunn's River Falls. Things don't start off well when the tour guide gives you the standard speech about the peddlers trying to hock their wares and to keep close to him, keep the kids nearby and try to make it through the stalls. Great....

Walking toward the queue, it looked like the lines we saw for Pandora at Animal Kingdom. No joke, there were about 500 people waiting in line to get a guide to then go down the hill into the falls. Someone came from the bottom and said it was an hour wait to get to the bottom. They turned out to be nearly spot on. There were several of us from our group who were getting quite upset at this point and nearly mutinied our excursion and demanded to get back to the boat. With an hour wait, hour hike and hour drive we were going to be cutting it real close to the 4:45 all aboard. The hour long wait was compounded by our guide not knowing how to play the game with the gatekeepers at the bottom to get his tour group through. The other tour guides were able to sweet talk the gatekeepers and have their entire groups waltz by and into the falls. We stood there and waited. And waited. And waited.

The falls were nothing special to me but I knew that going in. I just hung on and did it for my 11 year old to experience it. The videographers were pushing the sale of the falls hike videos hard. Some were quite pushy to other groups.

Walking through the merchandise stalls on the way out and putting up with the vendors was not a pleasant experience. You were really in there tight with everyone trying to hound you and sell stuff. I am 6'5", 230 and was getting quite uncomfortable. Not to mention what my wife, 8 and 11 year old were feeling. Mercifully, we got back on the bus.

On the way back, our tour guide fell asleep. Icing on the cake.

Back on the ship, we heard from our friends how their tour guide was awesome, explained all about the island, pointed out things, showed them around and such. No joke, ours taught us to say Yaw Mon, No Problem and Irie, told us about a hotel not having windows and pointed out the bauxite mining operation. We saw hardly any scenery worth mentioning. Most of the journey from Falmouth to the sharks was in an incredibly run down part of the island which fails to make it onto most tourist brochures.

All said, we spent from 9:00-4:00 on a tour. We got 20 mins with the sharks and 20 mins of hiking time in Dunn's River Falls (my son and I left the falls at the first out as he didn't want to continue). THerefore, almost 6 hours was spent either driving or waiting around.

I couldn't wait for the boat to weigh anchor and get the heck out of Jamaica. It was a major disapointment.

:crazy2: I don't even know how to reply to this!!!! I'm so disappointed for you! I would certainly be frustrated with that experience. In your opinion, do you feel that if you had a different driver/tour guide, you could have had a much better experience? I'm not quite sure what you meant by "peddlers trying to hock their wares" on the way to Dunn's River Falls, you have to walk through stalls? What kind of stall? Sorry if these are dumb questions!
 
:crazy2: I don't even know how to reply to this!!!! I'm so disappointed for you! I would certainly be frustrated with that experience. In your opinion, do you feel that if you had a different driver/tour guide, you could have had a much better experience? I'm not quite sure what you meant by "peddlers trying to hock their wares" on the way to Dunn's River Falls, you have to walk through stalls? What kind of stall? Sorry if these are dumb questions!
I certainly think a different tour guide would have improved the experience.

At Dunn's River Falls, to exit the park you have to go through a marketplace of merchants trying to sell their goods to tourists. Nearly all are cheap, touristy junk. You know how Disney parks rides exit into a gift shop? Well this is like that times 100 except if I stuck my arms straight out, I could hit the stalls on both sides. It really is running a guantlet to get out of there. To put it mildly, my wife and kids were not going to be more than 2 feet away from me the entire exiting process.
 
We were on the same cruise. We didn't do anything in Jamaica. We got off, looked around the shops and got back on ship.
I also had the Dole whip and I really enjoyed it. It's not like the parks at all, but still yummy. I think if you go in expecting a pineapple slushee you'd be very happy.
Overall we had a great time. The only thing that went wrong was our Grand Cayman sting ray city excursion. The bus broke down before we got on so we were left sitting doing nothing for almost an hour. No apologies or water while we waited or anything. Just sat in the hot sun.
 
interesting, thanks for the detailed review of that excursion, I've heard mixed reviews but didn't realize the thing about the market being located after the falls.... yikes, we have no desire to go to Jamaica but have thought about going on the western cruise, sorry you have a crappy day, 9-4 is a long time for a port adventure, yikes
 
Was your tour booked through Disney or on your own? If through DCL, I'd be interested to hear how they responded to this.
 
everything else involved with the Jamaica excursion


So sorry that it was such a disappointing day! I went to Jamaica in 1983 and have never returned so yes...had a similar experience :rolleyes: Fortunately it's a great big world with lots of other places to explore! Hopefully if it was a DCL excursion they will respond to feedback.
 

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