Disney Cruise Line
Before the Trip
At the time we booked our trip with Disney Cruise Line and the Expedia Cruise Outlet, we were blissfully unaware of Disney's two past delays in launching their highly anticipated ship.
Apparently, the first of two Disney ships, the Disney Magic, was originally scheduled to set sail in January of 1998 but due to construction delays at the Fincantieri Shipyards in Venice, Italy (due to lack of materials and a delay in the construction of previous ships),
this was pushed back to April 30th, 1998. More delays pushed this further back to June 30th, 1998.
As the days progressed, and we began to read about the delays in construction, we couldn't help but worry.
But construction progressed smoothly and Disney made it a point to send out a press release every time anything happened with the Disney Magic,
so soon we were reading news reports about the ship setting sail for the first time, undergoing tests to make sure it was up to Disney standards (tests it reportedly passed with flying colors),
crossing the Atlantic, being christened, etc.
All the while, we were trying to complete our transaction with the Expedia Cruise Outlet.
This required faxing signed consent forms and re-faxing them when they failed to get the first copy.
June came and went. Then July. The ship had its inaugural on July 30th, right on schedule.
We watched all the Quicktime videos. We read the reports. Our relief that the ship was finally sailing was
quickly overcome by worry that 1) our tickets had not yet arrived and 2) the reviews weren't all that good.
Disney had promoted the cruise line as an experience for children, families and adults, alike. Castaway Cay, in particular, was supposed to be very adult oriented.
The ship had an adults-only club district called Beat Street, an adults-only pool (one of three pools), and an adults-only restaurant,
but reports were coming in that this was entirely insufficient to satisfy the adult passengers.
Reports were coming in that (the adult activities were) entirely insufficient to satisfy the adult passengers.
There were little mix-ups and problems during the inaugural cruise, nothing that can't be written off as first-cruise jitters, but for a company like Disney, it was a big embarrassment.
They quickly went to work to resolve some of these problems.
Nervous about our tickets not yet arriving, I called up Colin, our very helpful agent at the Expedia Cruise Outlet.
He was able to tell us details of the trip, but he didn't have the tickets yet.
He was waiting for Disney to send them over, so he could then send them to us.
August 1st came and went. Still no tickets. With our trip beginning on August 24th, my wife and I were on the verge of panic.
Around the 14th of August, my wife got a call from the mail room at the Expedia Cruise Outlet.
Apparently, they had sent us the tickets and the package was returned to them.
You see, the Expedia Cruise Outlet's computer system has no way of addressing a package for Canada.
So, what they do is write in "Woburn, MA" as the destination address (the hometown of the Expedia Cruise Outlet).
The mail room then has instructions to cross that out and write in, by hand, the actual mailing address of
"Montreal, PQ". On this occasion, where our ticket package was concerned, someone forgot to do this.
The package was Fed-Exed to us and arrived on August 18th.
This is where we first discovered the little issue of an 8 hour lay-over on our return trip between Orlando and Montreal.
A direct flight between the two cities would have taken no more than 4 hours.
It was way too late to do anything about it.
The tickets and trip information was quintessential Disney.
Everything was bundled together in a little paperboard attaché case made to look like a valise.
Inside, the documents were color and printed on high quality paper. We were presented with a small, spiral bound information booklet (the Disney Magic Passport) which,
although lovely, proved to be very useless and confusing in the end.
It is seperated into 6 sections, "Ports of Call", "To Do and Sea", "Exploring the World", "Charting Your Course", "Before and Aft", and "At Your Service",
but finding anything in it (particularly through the use of these sections), is an exercise in futility.
The tickets were all bound together in nifty little booklets. Forms necessary for the trip were all included with clear instructions.
We were also provided luggage tags which would allow us to send out luggage ahead so we wouldn't ever have to wait at a baggage carousel.
The tags were a little flimsy and they had me concerned (what if they got torn off in transit?) but they survived the whole trip.
It was all very well presented.
We packed, and got ready for our trip.
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