My take on the Disney Destiny... a childless Xennial eldest daughter

We just got home from a 5-night Disney Destiny cruise (Nassau, Lookout Cay itinerary). We were a party of 6 adults – my parents, my sister and her husband, and me and my husband.

First, I’m gonna just do a quick privilege check and let me say how insanely fortunate we are to be able to experience these vacations, AND, even though I have my opinions about this new class of ships (Triton/Wish class), at the end of the day – I was in the sun with gorgeous weather, I didn’t have to cook or clean, and I wasn’t at work. That being said, I am a Type A-ADHD-eldest daughter, so you KNOW I’ve got opinions… LOL

Everyone has different experiences and different expectations, there are things that I did not even know existed until recently (fish extenders, etc.) and things that only later have gotten popular since I started cruising DCL (door decorating, etc.) – but I am no DCL newbie - I was sunbathing on Castaway Cay when it was brand-spankin’ new and I remember when you could turn on your stateroom TV and watch a live stream of INSIDE the bridge (ahhh pre-2001 life). So, these are just my thoughts/observations as someone that isn’t new to DCL (and also a DVC member) and I really hope someone from Disney sees this because I can’t possibly be the only one that feels this way….  [Also, I fully acknowledge that I may not remember how things are for certain things – such as when/if we had to have passports before the check-in at the terminal. I only cruise every 2-3 years, and a lot has happened since I was last at Port Canaveral – so don’t come at me! Ha!]

*** MAGICAL MOMENT ***

In case you don’t make it to the end of my post, I *have* to brag on Disney for a minute before I air my grievances like it’s Festivus.

My husband is not a vacation kinda guy, so he’s DEFINITELY not a cruise guy or into Disney in even the slightest way. He married into this and goes on these vacations solely to appease me. He is a total gear head that works with machines and would happily go to work with the maintenance crew on board instead of sitting by the pool. I inquired about an apprentice program, no dice! Booooooo!!!!

My dad surprised him and was able to arrange a time for him to meet with the engineering leader (Chief Engineer, maybe?) on board! Hubs said he could tell the guy was initially kind of hesitant (expected... these guys have minimal guest interaction), but once he figured out that my husband knew about all the machines, equipment they use, and the engines and how they worked, they clicked and he hung out with my husband for over an hour!!! That meant a ton to my whole family and hubs really enjoyed learning more about the ship from the mechanical/technical side of things and just having some gear head time on board. They didn’t have to do that, but I am SO grateful that they did because it really made it memorable for my husband.

PORT/ARRIVAL:

Port Everglades is no Port Canaveral. Signage is meh… you must have your passports readily available when you first get to the port entrance – I don’t recall ever having to do this at Port Canaveral? Thankfully, I’m neurotic and was checking every time we crossed a state line, as if they might magically jump out of our car on their own, so I had our passports close, but we had driven and that would have been a cluster if it had been tucked away in the bed of the truck because the port entrance was HEAVY traffic in multiple lanes. Everything leading up to travel day said Terminal 2… I had engrained that into my brain. We get to the port; the Disney DREAM is at Terminal 2… Destiny was at Terminal 4. We got no communication about this and there was terrible, nearly non-existent, signage at the port. My opinion of the lack of signage was confirmed when we finally found our way to Terminal 4 and figured out where to go (the port's signage in general is really bad) and the porters asked me at least 3 times to confirm that we were on the Destiny. Apparently, there was a lot of confusion all morning. Also, I missed all the Mickey hands waving good-bye – did I just not see them? Were they not there? I don’t know, but that was always so fun at Port Canaveral!!!

I wasn’t sure how parking would be, so we did arrive earlier than our check-in time, which wasn’t a big deal. I’d rather be early and have to sit around. There were people from DCL walking around, but they were not doing a great job of directing people, just more available if you had a question – the problem is – sometimes you don’t know you should have a question. I remember feeling like we were in the way and that there couldn’t possibly be any way that we should be waiting where we were waiting, but I couldn’t see any other place that seemed like it was where we should be. Sure enough, a DCL employee finally realized that there were a lot of people not where they should be and rather sternly told us (and others) where we should have been waiting. Cool – I’ve got thick skin, I’m not mad about the sternness – clearly the area needed some direction. However, I am well-traveled and was LOOKING for directions/signage and saw none. After we were told where we should be, there was this teeeeeeny tiny little sign ACROSS THE STREET in the little holding area for our time. Not super helpful. Once our boarding time arrived, we were herded like cattle into the terminal (note my sarcasm... it was smooth, just always feels very cattle-herdish, ha!). Check-in process was super easy – I got nervous when the available person was “earning my ears” but she was a rockstar and it was like less than 5 minutes before we were plopped down in the terminal waiting for our boarding group. My husband has a medical device and can’t go through the body scanners, this was never an issue for them, they always took care of him without any hassle, and it never slowed us down – at embarkation or getting back on the ship at ports.

One thing that I didn't like.... I had done online check-in as cash, because I wasn't sure if we were going to be putting our charges on a card, or just putting cash on our account when we got on board. We decided to use a card, but I had to go to guest services to do that. Of course, the line for guest services for the first 24 hrs of the cruise was madness.... some things (like adding a payment option) really should either be able to be done online from the DCL app on board OR have some sort of quick service queue where people who need these type of rapid fix things can wait separately. I waited a REALLY long time and was at the counter for literally less than 2 minutes, and that includes the greeting/niceties.

SHIP 1^(st) IMPRESSION:

We got on board and the atrium – sorry... GRAND HALL - was stunning. It was wild seeing Black Panther statue! They did a great job with the area’s look minus the stage area… we loved the whole vibe of Wakanda. The stage area did seem to be really big/intrusive for what we saw it used for…. perhaps that space could have been utilized better?

We always grab lunch at a sit-down restaurant when we embark – my dad went to 1923 because it was right there and we were informed that it was for concierge only. No prob, but again, no signage and crew acted like we should have known? We went to Pride Lands which was the restaurant available for non-concierge. Very impressive entrance into the restaurant and it was absolutely gorgeous – BUT (pardon my DC reference…) HOLY TIGHT TABLES, BATMAN!!! It’s essentially communal dining and it was tighter than a can of sardines. AB-SURD. – more on this later. I am a pretty average size gal and I was having to suck it in and squeeeeze to sit down. Also, I know that no one wants tables and chairs sliding all over the place if the ship is moving, but LAWD.... with tables/chairs being SO tightly packed in, the chairs were really difficult to move across the carpet, which just made things even harder to navigate when you were trying to sit/stand up and get situated to eat.

I heard from others on board there is some scuttlebutt about only having 2 sets of elevators, but I wasn’t bothered by that, it seemed like there are more elevators in each group so there’s either as many, or more, elevators available than previous experiences.

High traffic areas would have also been much less congested if people would use the standard traffic method - stay to the right.. (OK for some passengers it's opposite of how they drive, but mostly to the right! LOL). These kind of things are common sense to me, but apparently not for others.

My biggest takeaway from the ship was that I wanted to say, “I am on the DISNEY Destiny!!! Not the MARVEL Destiny!” They have really stripped a lot of Disney out of this ship in many ways, it was really sad to see. There is definitely a way to incorporate all of it without losing that Disney feel and they missed the mark big time. The only place that felt like BAM! DISNEY! was 1923.

STATE ROOM:

Disappointing is an understatement. We are room category 9-11 cruisers because they’ve always been fine. I have had an inside stateroom plenty of times and I would have fought anyone who said that wasn’t good enough – until the Destiny. Our inside stateroom allegedly slept 3, but the sofa was huge for the room. They would have been better off saying this room sleeps 2 adults with a possibility of 3 for a child and done a loveseat that turned into a shorter bed. The sofa that converted to a full-size twin was madness. It’s essentially obstructing the doorway AND access to one side of the bed. I wear a size 8 US women’s shoe and my shoe fit in the space between the sofa and the wall with about half an inch at top and bottom to spare. I can’t tell you how many times I hit my knees/shins on something just trying to navigate the room – and let’s not talk about trying to get the room service tray back out the door! Drawer/closet space was terrible too. I am a chronic over packer – this is not new for me on cruises – and I have never had an issue with storage – until the Destiny.

There is also not a split bathroom, and the bathroom is a tin can. The tub isn’t a full-size tub and has a glass door. I could not imagine trying to give a child a bath in this tub with the glass door. Also, the drain is in a terrible place, so I managed to close the drain unintentionally with my foot every time I showered.  We have a 1971 camper with a bigger, more functional bathroom than this.

The “beverage cooler” kept our sodas cool enough to not bother us that it wasn’t a true fridge, but it is so hidden, I only found it because I knew there was something in the room for cold storage and my husband drinks a soda that isn't available outside of NC, so we had brought his stash on board, but it wasn’t labeled at all!

SPA:

I had booked a facial prior to arriving, which I was iffy about once I got on board. I was able to let my sister take that appointment and I decided to do the cruise-pass for the Rainforest Room instead ($259 for the whole cruise). My sister and I had also booked pedicures together prior to arrival, with the hopes of also getting our dad booked with us as a birthday gift to him. Fortunately, we were able to make this happen with the help of the spa staff once we were on board. We had a lot of moving parts, and they got us straightened out with ease! My mom, my sister and my brother-in-law all dealt with a lot of attempted upselling during their spa treatments, even after saying they weren’t interested. I enjoyed my pedicure, but oddly, all 3 of us got the same pedicure, but my dad and sister got more services than I did... It was weird, but not a huge deal. The salon staff were a total blast to hang out with while we got our pedis and they were totally in love with my dad and his complete embrace of the girl-dad experience!

DINING:

I am a huge rotational dining fan – but I was nervous about the tight squeeze of the tables. Our first night was Worlds of Marvel. Fear confirmed – it wasn’t just Pride Lands. This is just how it’s going to be. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Get to our table – our servers are so sweet. My dad is a military brat who can make friends with a brick wall in 3 minutes or less, so our servers are going to get to know us regardless of how thin they are stretched. It’s both a blessing and a curse to having a charismatic family. Based on my “research” before our cruise and attempts to scout out the new ship, plenty of others have observed the inexperience of servers as DCL has rapidly expanded – and this was definitely evident with our Assistant Server. He was very nice, but we rarely saw him. Our Server was doing a lot of drink refilling and was running around like crazy. She didn’t seem annoyed (you can typically sense if it’s abnormal or a personality issue) – it was just an issue of more work than there was time and perhaps duties/responsibilities have shifted as their ships have changed. We met our Head Server briefly. He did seem genuinely interested in making sure we had a great experience and was very kind to us (we had a terrible experience with the Head Server on our 1^(st) cruise in ’99 so it’s nice to see the bad guys weed themselves out and Disney has maintained high expectations for this position)

Worlds of Marvel was fun, though I miss the OG Animator’s Palate. They did do a great job of creating a similar experience with the engagement from our “hosts” Rocket and Baby Groot. The trivia questions were only on the 1st dining time, not the 2nd, which was weird... it was something to do while we waited for our food. I thought the menu options were fine and had enough variety for everyone.

I have seen some people online report bad experiences at 1923, but this was my favorite of the 3 restaurants!! The tables are more spread out so you don’t feel so crammed, the artwork on the walls is amazing, and the 20’s vibe is spot on. The menu was pretty good – it had basics on there that seemed pretty diverse for different palates.

The show at Pride Lands was SO great. OMG! My sister’s favorite Disney movie is the Lion King, so lots of nostalgia for us, being able to sing along to all the songs, the artists are so committed to the performance (no surprise, although it's not like the artist's rendering on the DCL website), so it’s great!!!! The space is aft, so the entire back of the restaurant has a silhouette of the savannah in front of the windows on it and it’s sooooo beautiful! They only do the show on the 1^(st) night you’re there, so if you have a 2^(nd) night there, it’s much quieter. The food options here are the most culinary/culturally specific and I didn’t think they appealed to a wider palate. Although many of the food items were basic things that were listed as something that sounded “exotic”, but was basically mashed potatoes, it was hard to figure out what to eat because of that and the spices, etc. used just weren’t my favorite. This restaurant is SO packed into the space, it was difficult to enjoy because it was so cramped.

Also, some people are just unaware and rude... which is emphasized even more in tight spaces. The table next to us was RIDICULOUS at 1 of the restaurants. The daughter wanted the mom to color with her, so the mom had the daughter come stand next to her at the end of her table (instead of mom going to where the daughter was sitting, which was less intrusive), which then blocked that path for servers. She didn't clue in, even after FOUR servers had to stop (carrying a full tray of food) and ask the daughter to move. The mom just had her scootch over, they passed, and then had her come right back. Of course, the crew just dealt with it, but it was so rude!

Marceline Market was great – the food both meets basic buffet food AND kinda boujie buffet needs simultaneously. The hours weren’t super great (I know they’ve got to turn over, but not opening for lunch until 12 is meh…). Mickey’s Festival of Foods had INSANE lines at peak lunch time, but the food was very good! Donald’s Cantina definitely lived up to the hype!!! My husband said the BBQ was amazing. I do wish hours there were longer/different, but ya know...

Room service menu is quite limited – but to the TikTok mom that made a video about the room service chicken sandwich… GIRL. YOU WEREN’T LYIN’!! What voodoo magic is in that thing?! You can keep your Mickey bar… just bring me one of those every day, please! I want that not-chicken chicken sandwich!!! I also ordered the cheese plate. I love a good charcuterie board, and I didn’t expect gourmet or anything, but when it arrived, there was 1 red wax wrapped baby cheese, a chunk of bleu cheese, a handful of cubed/sliced cheeses that were unidentifiable flavor-wise, 10-ish red grapes rolling around, and the “cracker selection” was 4 packs of Zesta crackers. I literally LOL’d.

My parents had brunch plans at Enchante, but the menu was so shellfish heavy that they cancelled due to my mom's shellfish allergy. My parents, sister and her husband went to Palo and enjoyed it, as we always do, we opted to do the regular rotation that night, otherwise we would have missed 1923 completely on the cruise and that was the one I really wanted to go to.

ADULT SPACES:

These spaces SEEMED so cool when I was scoping out the ship before our cruise! I was totally stoked to spend a lot of time there while we were on board. One problem… I guess everyone else was too, we were never able to get a seat in any of them to enjoy them!!!! Also, the way they have these spaces open in the middle of the ship, we noticed families in there with young children quite frequently. The only thing Disney did was put very small signs “18+ guests only” which people could just walk right by. I was very disappointed with this aspect of the larger class ships. We previously cruised on the Fantasy and did not have this experience because the adult areas were more secluded from other areas on the ship. The Marvel comedy show was standing room only – it didn’t live up to the hype, IMHO, but it was very popular – do it more than once!! We went to 2 different trivia things – the questions were so obscure, it wasn’t even fun. I don’t even think Siskel and Ebert would have gotten more than 15 out of 20 of the movie quotes, and that's being generous. The highest score was 12/20 and these are trivia champions in their hometown! My brother-in-law knows every random sports fact and figure you can imagine and knows the answer to every trivia question they ask during games, etc. on TV and he got 7 out of 20 on the sports trivia. People were just annoyed when they left both events… it doesn’t need to be on a 3^(rd) grade level, but this wasn’t a MENSA cruise either.

CHARACTERS/PHOTO OPS:

This was one of the biggest disappointments for me. There are a ton of appearances of the OG Disney 5, which is great, but I also have like 20+ pics of me with them… Black Panther had quite a few photo ops (obviously), but other than that, I was really disappointed!! Chewbacca and Ray came to the cargo bay twice which was awesome (I hated the pics the first time, so thankful for a re-do!). You had to take pics with both of them, I asked for one with just Chewbacca and was told no (*gasp*), but they said he could give me a hug. The Type A/eldest daughter/absolute Star Wars nerd in me was like “OK, a pic would have been quicker… but whatever, I’ll never turn down a chance to hug one of my childhood heroes… thanks!” Of course, it’s just another photo op that I gladly purchased like the sucker I am.

There were a lot of cool special effect photo op chances, but they were only offered once, so if you couldn’t make it, you were just out of luck. There was a lightsaber photo time with a jedi background– a lot of families were bummed because they only had 1 light saber!

Princess & Disney character sightings were almost non-existent outside of the OG 5 characters. Some parents I talked to were upset because at the Royal Tea only Moana, Rapunzel, Flynn Rider and Belle were there. Given it was almost $300 per kid, I would have been beyond mad. We think Tiana may have been sick because she was there the 1^(st) night for pics and the last night of the cruise but was a no-show for tea. The Royal Gathering also only included Moana, Belle, and Rapunzel. Spiderman seemed to be walking around a lot and had a handful of photo times. I was REALLY disappointed that there were no Frozen characters for photo ops, especially considering Frozen is one of the shows on board.

Pirate night did end up having 2 photo ops with Jack Sparrow (initially only 1 time was listed and later a 2^(nd) time appeared), Captain Hook and Smee also had times on pirate night. I am neutral when it comes to pirate night – I’m really just there for the fireworks. The 80’s rock band they have now was actually pretty good for the few songs they played….

The movie options were kinda eh also. We did get to watch the latest Fantastic Four movie (if you're into mid-century modern anything... GO! You'll be amazed!). The latest Avatar movie was playing, but who the heck has time to watch a 3+ hour movie and see anything else?! The other movies were Lilo & Stitch (2025), Freakier Friday, and Thunderbolts. Even Funnel Vision seemed like kind of odd hodge-podge of movie choices too, compared to previous cruises.

WI-FI/INTERNET:

I know, I know.... relaaaax... you're on a cruise.......... remember my anti-vacation husband mentioned above? So anyway, I had planned all along to do the streaming wi-fi plan for 2 devices. He really wanted to use his iPad for this. We only had the DCL app on our phones. I wanted to use my laptop for my device because I had a few work related things I wanted to be able to access. I am pretty tech savvy and I could not figure out how to do it. The line at guest services was so long so no, I did not go back and ask about it. We just both ended up using our phones for the streaming wi-fi. I'm not sure if the device has to have the DCL app or what? (Would love to hear from anyone that figured this out!!!) Next cruise we'll need to do this again so I've got to figure it out - I connected the devices to the guest wifi and then tried to go to the site it was directing me to for internet and it wouldn't load no matter what I did. I was following the directions but nothing would work to connect to these devices that we wanted to use. Also, the DCL app messaging doesn't work if you're connected to the wi-fi streaming on that device. So that was kind of annoying to figure out after I couldn't find anyone and my mom was like "I've been sending you updates all day of where we are...." Fortunately, everyone had iPhones, so we just iMessaged instead.

Overall, it seems that from reading other cruiser's experiences, maybe these larger/newer ships are best for families and the smaller ships are better for adults. Either way, the magic of Disney is letting your inner child out, and my inner child was definitely bummed.