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Condition of Disney Wonder


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Has anyone been on the Wonder recently? I have a friend who was on last month. In her opinion, the ship needs sprucing up especially their stateroom and that the ship is definitely showing wear and tear. Hard to imagine since it came out of a dry dock refurbishment twelve months ago. Appreciate any thoughts from others.

 

Thanks in advance!

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Unfortunately, this agrees with what I've heard recently. Friends came back speculating as to what plans DCL might have for the classics. There is a new president of the cruise line in place now--hopefully plans will be made and the classics will see some sprucing up soon!

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I just finished a 5-night cruise on the wonder, sailing from San Diego. This was my first time on the ship since dry dock an I thought she looked great! New carpets throughout, cleaned up staterooms, and some updates to the deck layouts. Yes you can tell it’s a 20 year old ship, but she looks good for her age. :)

 

 

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Thanks!

 

Small sampling but I guess it depends on each person's perspective. I was on the Magic last month. The ship looked great to me, and it was in dry dock the year prior to the Wonder. It's 1+ year away but I am looking forward to sailing on the Wonder again. Hopefully, it will be in good shape then.

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I just finished a 5-night cruise on the wonder, sailing from San Diego. This was my first time on the ship since dry dock an I thought she looked great! New carpets throughout, cleaned up staterooms, and some updates to the deck layouts. Yes you can tell it’s a 20 year old ship, but she looks good for her age. :)

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Me too. It was my first time on this ship, and she did look great. Our stateroom was beautiful, and smelled so good from the cleaning products they used.

We loved it ! :)

 

Patti

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My friend just posted a "Goodbye Disney Wonder" photo on FB after disembarking this morning. She and the rest of the family are platinum cruisers and have done many cruises on the classics. In response to my inquiry, she said the cruise was lovely and the ship is in very good condition. So, for me, that answers the question.

 

Stateroom are continuously under refurbishment--I've seen DCL close a whole section of the ship for work as well as doing isolated unbooked cabins. We've gotten notices a during a couple of cruises about work that would be happening nearby and the hours that would be involved. Perhaps people who report that their staterooms needed work were in cabins that had not been done yet.

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Good to hear--I was dismayed by friend's negative comments. The classics are my favorites!

 

 

there are always negative comments about every cruise and ship, it's often difficult to know whether the people are just nitpickers or congenital complainers..

 

we were on an alaska cruise on the radiance of the seas. We thought it was fantastic!! the crew, the service etc etc

 

a few weeks after the cruise, i read an extraordinarily negative review about the very same cruise, the very same week.

it was as if we were on two different ships.

The reviewer said the crew was terrible - lackluster, never offering service etc etc

it was the polar opposite of our experience.

so i guess the point is you have to take every review with a grain of salt.

 

 

.

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there are always negative comments about every cruise and ship, it's often difficult to know whether the people are just nitpickers or congenital complainers..

 

we were on an alaska cruise on the radiance of the seas. We thought it was fantastic!! the crew, the service etc etc

 

a few weeks after the cruise, i read an extraordinarily negative review about the very same cruise, the very same week.

it was as if we were on two different ships.

The reviewer said the crew was terrible - lackluster, never offering service etc etc

it was the polar opposite of our experience.

so i guess the point is you have to take every review with a grain of salt.

 

 

.

Totally true, and I feel much better having "on line chatted" with a personal friend, frequent cruiser, who disembarked this weekend. She's been on the Wonder many times and says it the ship is in great shape. I'll take that over a first timer who said otherwise any day!

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  • 3 weeks later...

We sailed on the 2017 WBPC trip this past April, the ship looked wonderful, granted they still do work on the ship while underway, I think ALL ships have maintenance going all the time. The new remodeled areas of the ship are wonderful, the Atrium is fresh and new, the Adult areas have been updated completely (even the Cadillac Lounge got some updating), Tiana's Place is great and Animator's Palette got a tech update, Cabanas is redesigned too. Our stateroom (Deck 7 forward) was wonderful, always clean and neat, our room attendant kept things spic & span so I have no complaints about how the Wonder looks. Sure it's a older ship, and there's going to be some age that comes along with it, but it's one of the "Classic" ships that DCL started in the cruising business with and it still shines and looks amazing every time I get on board.

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BartmanLA, we were deck 7 forward too, on the last Alaska cruise of the season! :)

 

No complaints at all here, just like the Magic you can tell she's an older ship, but having gotten off the Dream just a week or so before embarking the Wonder, there was nothing that glaringly stood out as being "worse" in comparison.

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I'm on the Wonder right now, just about at the end of our Panama Canal voyage. My last cruise was the same voyage/same ship three years ago. I agree with BartmanLA that all the newly-Imagineered spaces are wonderful. They've really brightened the areas up, improved flow, and generally kept things relevant and up-to-date. Where I am disappointed is in the basic maintenance of the ship. I am not used to seeing so much rust and have been really surprised that there's not as much scrape-and-paint as I remember from the past. Some other evidence of slipping maintenance are notable (e.g. worn carpets, badly scraped wall furnishings, etc.) as well. Also, some of the brand new chairs in Azure are already suffering from things like piping falling off, tears in the upholstery, and whatnot. Whether Disney cheaped out on the dry dock or guests are just harsher than they used to be, I don't know.

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I disembarked from the WONDER, 2-weeks ago -my 35th cruise. I recall lounging in the adult-exclusive section (The COVE), looking down and briefly marveling at the lack of rust and debris in the water-run-off "gutter" which runs right beneath the side railing. In October 2017, the Disney Wonder is still a beautiful ship and a well kept woman.

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I'm on the Wonder right now, just about at the end of our Panama Canal voyage. My last cruise was the same voyage/same ship three years ago. I agree with BartmanLA that all the newly-Imagineered spaces are wonderful. They've really brightened the areas up, improved flow, and generally kept things relevant and up-to-date. Where I am disappointed is in the basic maintenance of the ship. I am not used to seeing so much rust and have been really surprised that there's not as much scrape-and-paint as I remember from the past. Some other evidence of slipping maintenance are notable (e.g. worn carpets, badly scraped wall furnishings, etc.) as well. Also, some of the brand new chairs in Azure are already suffering from things like piping falling off, tears in the upholstery, and whatnot. Whether Disney cheaper out on the dry dock or guests are just harsher than they used to be, I don't know.

 

Hey! I just disembarked the day you embarked. I was so envious of you 14-day cruisers. Please fill us in on the pros and cons of your vacation.

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Hey! I just disembarked the day you embarked. I was so envious of you 14-day cruisers. Please fill us in on the pros and cons of your vacation.

 

Pros and cons are of course subjective, but here are some first impressions. It was a great cruise, so even though I'm going to list a lot of cons we still thoroughly enjoyed it. I think my wife nailed it when we were filling out the survey last night and got to the question about "value for price paid", and we realized it's REALLY hard to justify the price we paid given how far from truly excellent many aspects were.

 

Pros: Concierge staff, concierge lounge and sundeck, generally happy cast and crew, some meals, some entertainment, ship condition (generally), characters, trivia offerings.

 

Cons: Inconsistent meals (just one example, my daughter and mother ordered the exact same item for breakfast one morning in Triton's and they came out completely different), overworked crew (our cabin steward accidentally took a Halloween costume and some expensive lingerie that my wife had hand-washed and left to dry in a towel on the bathtub--he apparently got quite a talking-to because their stateroom cleaning procedure includes shaking out all sheets and towels before taking them but he always seemed rushed), previously-mentioned deteriorating condition of maintenance (e.g. frayed carpet, damaged chairs, rust), hurried dining room service (we had late dinner and the servers were always in a rush to clear the table, often snatching up dishes as soon as one person was done rather than waiting for everyone to finish that course), lackluster tween offerings (my older daughter was in the Edge and about 90% of the time was "open house", "homework help", or completely unscheduled time), pressure to give excellent ratings on the end-of-cruise survey, extent of blatant cash-grab extra cost activities (high prices for silly pub food in the Crown & Fin stuck out like a sore thumb).

 

Disney offers a wonderful product that is largely upscale and impressive, but there are chinks in the armor and notable service/hard product failings that risk them losing their premium place in the market.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Recently off the Wonder from the 14 night Panama Canal transit and I can honestly say that the ship is beautiful in every area! If you think that the ship is in anything other than fantastic shape, you don't understand a thing about ocean-going vessels! All ships require constant maintenance and there will always be areas that are in need of a little work. That's the nature of wood and metal in a salt water environment.

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I'm glad you didn't spot the things I did, RunningTheWonder, but you can't really dismiss my opinion so easily. I think my couple hundred days at sea means I do understand a thing or two about ocean-going vessels. My point was that the constant maintenance you refer to used to occur on Disney, while now they are content to let some things get worn, rusty, etc. It stood out because it was such an obvious decline from years past.

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I think my couple hundred days at sea means I do understand a thing or two about ocean-going vessels. My point was that the constant maintenance you refer to used to occur on Disney, while now they are content to let some things get worn, rusty, etc. It stood out because it was such an obvious decline from years past.

 

I totally get where you are coming from, Iceman. On one of our cruises, the hotel manager asked about the condition of our cabin, and I told him about a couple of issues. I also said that they weren't big things, but that it made me sad to see them being ignored because in years past, that wouldn't have happened. One was a significant area of rust on the inside of the door. This was on the Magic. No, some rust on the door isn't going to make or break my cruise, but it truly did make me sad to see what would have been routine maintenance ignored. A few days later, he saw me and asked whether the issues had been corrected; you could practically see the smoke coming out of his ears when I said, "No." The next day, the repair people were there!

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I'm glad you didn't spot the things I did, RunningTheWonder, but you can't really dismiss my opinion so easily. I think my couple hundred days at sea means I do understand a thing or two about ocean-going vessels. My point was that the constant maintenance you refer to used to occur on Disney, while now they are content to let some things get worn, rusty, etc. It stood out because it was such an obvious decline from years past.

 

Time aboard does not equal understanding. If that logic were true, business travelers could diagnose an airplane maintenance problem. the fact is that I did not see any of you alleged "problems", and I was in every conceivable guest area of the ship, looking for some of the smallest details imaginable. I also have discussed the matter of upkeep of aging vessels with a number of the deck officers and crew. You will be pleased to know that there has not been any significant drop in the number, or assignment of the ship's personnel. In fact, the budget of time and materials for ongoing maintenance increases as time goes on, instead of your perceived apathy. There is no decline in routine maintenance, but there is a shift in what becomes "routine" as any ship ages.

 

Have you any idea what it takes to remove rust from a surface on board a ship? You can't just paint over it, because that will make the deterioration many times worse. You have to chip, scrape, wire brush, and/or grind off every bit of paint that has underlying rust before you can think about priming and then re-painting the surface. That means that if there is rust on the back side of your stateroom door, the entire door would have to be removed, prepped, primed, and painted before being re-installed. Not something that happens during every day maintenance. You are talking dry dock refurbs!

 

Prior to the latest dry dock, there were some areas where the Wonder was showing her age. Most of those areas were addressed in the refitting, but many could not be accomplished in the short time that the ship was out of service. Some moderate repairs were deferred until she was back under sail, and have only been recently been completed. With those projects finished, the focus returns to overall upkeep, and the constant chipping, scraping, and painting, to combat the rust that attempts to turn every ship into a rotting hulk at the bottom of the ocean.

 

Next time you are aboard ship, chat up one of the Steering Committee officers, and ask them about the "average" day of maintaining the ship is like for any one of their crew members. Maybe you'll come away with a better understanding of what they really do, and find that nobody is "content" to let any real issue go unresolved.

 

Oh, and as to the dining room staff making you feel rushed...Our table was always one of the last out of the dining room. Our second seating rarely ended before 10:15pm, and occasionally went later. We were never rushed, or were in any way made to feel that we needed to leave. Instead, we were cheerfully served up until the time that we noticed that the room was nearly empty and we had more things to go and do!

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Time aboard does not equal understanding. If that logic were true, business travelers could diagnose an airplane maintenance problem. the fact is that I did not see any of you alleged "problems", and I was in every conceivable guest area of the ship, looking for some of the smallest details imaginable. I also have discussed the matter of upkeep of aging vessels with a number of the deck officers and crew. You will be pleased to know that there has not been any significant drop in the number, or assignment of the ship's personnel. In fact, the budget of time and materials for ongoing maintenance increases as time goes on, instead of your perceived apathy. There is no decline in routine maintenance, but there is a shift in what becomes "routine" as any ship ages.

 

Have you any idea what it takes to remove rust from a surface on board a ship? You can't just paint over it, because that will make the deterioration many times worse. You have to chip, scrape, wire brush, and/or grind off every bit of paint that has underlying rust before you can think about priming and then re-painting the surface. That means that if there is rust on the back side of your stateroom door, the entire door would have to be removed, prepped, primed, and painted before being re-installed. Not something that happens during every day maintenance. You are talking dry dock refurbs!

 

Prior to the latest dry dock, there were some areas where the Wonder was showing her age. Most of those areas were addressed in the refitting, but many could not be accomplished in the short time that the ship was out of service. Some moderate repairs were deferred until she was back under sail, and have only been recently been completed. With those projects finished, the focus returns to overall upkeep, and the constant chipping, scraping, and painting, to combat the rust that attempts to turn every ship into a rotting hulk at the bottom of the ocean.

 

Next time you are aboard ship, chat up one of the Steering Committee officers, and ask them about the "average" day of maintaining the ship is like for any one of their crew members. Maybe you'll come away with a better understanding of what they really do, and find that nobody is "content" to let any real issue go unresolved.

 

Oh, and as to the dining room staff making you feel rushed...Our table was always one of the last out of the dining room. Our second seating rarely ended before 10:15pm, and occasionally went later. We were never rushed, or were in any way made to feel that we needed to leave. Instead, we were cheerfully served up until the time that we noticed that the room was nearly empty and we had more things to go and do!

 

i think the rushed feeling or lack thereof is a function of whether you're in first or second seating...

i've done both and the dining room staff is clearly under tremendous pressure during first seating to be ready for second, while far more relaxed during the second....

 

.

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Time aboard does not equal understanding.

 

Agreed, but neither does chatting up a ship's officer. There's no way on an internet message board that either of us can establish legitimate credibility. Everything you said about maintenance matches what I also know to be true. Where we differ is in our observations--you found the Wonder to be pristine, while I saw evidence that Disney isn't taking care of her as well as they used to. Why you find yourself unable to acknowledge my point of view is puzzling, but unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

 

As for being rushed at dinner, we were in the second seating and usually some of the last people to leave. My wife and I didn't feel rushed, but my mom did. She was often the slowest eater at our table, and she felt uncomfortable when the serving team swept up everyone else's plates, the bread and butter, etc. while she was still enjoying her meal. One night she commented to me that it certainly didn't feel like fine dining; I agreed with her that Disney main dining room meals are NOT fine dining! But they are pretty good banquet hall dining experiences, and once she shifted her expectations then I think it didn't bother her as much.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hey! I just disembarked the day you embarked. I was so envious of you 14-day cruisers. Please fill us in on the pros and cons of your vacation.

LOL! You've misread my post. Looks like we were on the same cruise. I, too envious, booked the 14-day Panama Canal for 2019.

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