It really was. It almost stopped us from booking the Fantasy’s maiden, but I’m so glad we went ahead with it. It really was awesome and I can’t wait for the Wish.
The pros are that you get to be the first to try the ship and to pick up some unique merchandise. And the cons are the same as for anything new that is released - some rough edges, incomplete work, things not working, etc. Plus, in this case, there is a price premium too.
If you had second seating, you must have seen the free-for-all in the store when it opened! I can't imagine what it was like - only got to see the aftermath an hour later. We felt so sorry for the CMs - some were on the verge of tears. It just amazes me that DCL seemed to have no control over anything. Do you remember the Ducky Williams lithograph signing event? They had one signing session & it seemed like every passenger on the ship was there. Ducky was set up outside the theater and the line snaked back past the stores and back through the atrium. It must have been interfering with other things because a couple of officers showed up and decided to have the end of the line follow them - they tried to loop it back to the store area - sort of the way WDW lines snake back and forth. Well the people in the front saw these end of the line people coming and all h@ll broke loose. We actually saw a fist fight that had to be broken up by the officers. All this while they kept announcing that Ducky would stay until all the lithos were signed. It was truly insane behavior. (For comparison sake - on the Fantasy maiden, the Ducky signing event was done one deck at a time on consecutive days - DCL learned something).It is indeed! But, I am sorry to say, it is entirely accurate. We watched people climbing under tables where the stuff was stored, and carting off cases of champagne and Inaugural champagne flutes. And when we disembarked people were literally loading these cases into taxis or vans right outside the doors of the terminal. They were selling the stuff on ebay before we ever got off the ship! Although we did get our allotted one glass per person, lots of people did not get their glasses or any champagne as people had stolen so much of it before everyone had a chance to have any. We couldn't believe how blatant and selfish these jerks could be!
Also, they just didn't have it together. Many of the servers (ours included) could not speak English very well and couldn't understand what we said. They had clearly not had enough training to get the job done for twice as many guests as Disney was used to on their ships. They just did not know what they were doing. The whole dinner process looked like the Keystone Cops. We had second seating, and for three out of the four nights, we didn't even get out of the restaurants until after 11PM. But, I guess we are gluttons for punishment, because we absolutely do NOT regret being on that cruise
I fully expect the Wish Inaugural to be nearly glitch free, though. We read that by the time the Fantasy Inaugural took place, they had solved the problems (as the previous poster said) and things went very smoothly. We waited for the 3rd or 4th cruise after the Inaugural on the Fantasy, but we are not waiting for this one! We are so excited about the Wish Inaugural!
