My RCL vs. Disney Comparison - After Doing Both

[wake74]

After recently (last Sunday) returning for a week long cruise on RCCI Allure of the Seas, I thought I would do a comparison between that trip and a DCL Wonder trip 2 years ago. Obviously, this is just my opinion, and everyone is going to have a much different perception of the reality. I’m assuming this will be helpful to someone.

 

Background: We have travelled extensively through-out the Caribbean, including the out-islands of the Bahamas, prior to having our son. Both trips, were with myself and wife (both late/mid-30s) and my son, who is currently 5, about to turn 6. He was 4 on our DCL trip.

 

Ship Comparison: With-out a doubt, the Allure of the Seas is a technological marvel. The ship is huge, and has about every gee whiz feature available on a cruise ship. It’s 3 times larger in gross tonnage than the DCL Wonder as a comparison. I would put ship cleanliness about the same, quality of architectural fit / finish about the same. Two rock-walls, 2 flowriders, etc on the Allure. Unless you are on the top deck, you really don’t notice you are even on a ship. Room selection probably more critical on the Allure due to size. It was a long walk from our room in one end of the ship to the kids club on the other at Allure. I would give the nod to the Allure in this category.

 

Room Comparison. We had similar class outside balconies on both, each with a sofa-bed. Hands-down, no comparison, the DCL Wonder staterooms seemed bigger, and better laid out. Our Allure of the Seas had a bigger closet. The DCL Wonder bathrooms with the sink outside the shower / toilet area, made it much easier for 2 people to use at once. DCL Wonder also had small bath tubs which was a plus when our son was 4, less critical now. I also didn’t like the Allure sofa-bed. When out, it came all the way to the desk, making it impossible to walk past the bed, without crawling onto the top of the bed. While it was bigger (like a full size bed), than the Wonder pull-out, I liked the smaller DCL pull-out better for just one kid. If you have two, this would obviously be different. The DCL lay-out with the pony wall, and privacy screen, better allowed for a “division” between the two sides of the room.

 

Over-all Family Friendliness: The entire DCL experience and schedule was set-up to be family friendly, particularly for families with young kids. Shows were earlier, etc. While I would definitely say the Allure was family friendly, the scheduling wasn’t always very family friendly for younger kids. For instance, they made a big deal of the big surprise during the Dreamworks sail-away show about them showing Madagascar 3-3D, only to say it was showing at 11:45 PM that night. This may be my opinion, but hyping a kids movie, and then showing it at mid-night doesn’t make any sense to me. They must have gotten a lot of flack about this as they showed it again on the last day in the middle of the day. DCL get’s the nod for family friendly event scheduling.

 

Kids Club: I would call this one a tie, which was surprising to me. The spaces were both very nice, DCL has one larger room, the Allure had multiple smaller rooms (separate theater, kids room, science lab, etc.). Both had great counselors, friendly, caring, etc. No issues with either. Our son went for a couple of hours each day on both ships. They have a different approach for scheduling. The Allure was more session based, DCL was more free play based. For instance, the Allure would have a 3 hour evening session called “Be a Pirate”. There was a costume design, coloring, etc. leading up them doing a play. It made sense for them to be in the entire session. Our son didn’t like being picked up in the middle, but that is normal for him. He’s more apt to cry at pick-up, never at drop-off. I would say there were significantly fewer young kids (3-5 yo) on the Allure than on DCL.

 

Kids Pool Areas: The size of the Allure kids splash zone is very large. No water slides on Allure. There was no “Mickey Pool” equivalent on the Allure. Meaning, there was no actual pool that my son could stand-up in. All pools were over his head. He’s small for his age. Call it a tie, bigger splash zone on Allure, but no pool for him to stand-up in.

 

Adult Areas: I would call this even, maybe a slight nod to the Allure due to size. The adult zone of the Allure was very nice, with two hot tubs and a pool, and located in the very bow, with a great view.

 

Dining Room Service: Hands-down, Disney was on top. Our Allure of the Seas main dining experience was the one real disappointment of the trip. It was unacceptably bad. Of the 4 nights we tried it,2 were so bad, the head waiter had to finish our service each night, one night was good, one was marginal. Note that we had My Time Dining, so we had different servers each night. My opinion was that the My Time Dining floor (deck 5) got the C-team staff. Extremely disappointing. The dining staff also seemed to have so many tables, they were all overwhelmed. Quality of food was similar on both ships.

 

Specialty Restaurant: Again, DCL was on top. We only went to Chops on Allure. The service was no better than in the main dining room. We went for our anniversary, and it was hardly “special”. Absolutely no dress-code compliance, jeans and t-shirts seemed to be fine. Service was not well trained. We went so long waiting for a wine glass re-fill that we I had to get up and go find our wine bottle that was on ice. While the specialty restaurant name on DCL Wonder isn’t coming to mind, I do recall the experience. It was truly a “special” dining experience with superb service. I thought the service at Chops was like being at an Applebees.

 

Shows: Hard to compare. From an adult stand-point, I would give the nod to the Allure. The aqua show was amazing. The technology involved with putting on a high diving show on a floating ship was very impressive. I would say the kid-focused character shows were on par between both ships. The Ice Games show on Allure was also impressive. The Blue Planet show didn’t do much for me, and our son was asleep 5 minutes in. The move-it, move it parade with all the Dreamworks characters on Allure was also impressive.

 

Character Interfaces: I would say this is a tie, as there were plenty on both. Lines were much shorter on Allure, probably due to fewer younger kids. The scheduling also seemed odd at times, as many of the appearances were later in the evening / night. Most of the time we could walk right up to a character, or were no more than 1 or 2 in line.

 

Crowd / Demographic: I would say these were similar. Kids seemed generally well behaved on both. Met a few obnoxious adults on both, no surprise there. Equal mix of nationalities, etc. We didn’t stay up late enough on either ship to see the late night antics. There were definitely more younger kids on DCL, and more teens on Allure.

 

Summary: I hope these opinions provide some help for someone trying to make a cruise line selection. Either is a great choice, but definitely some differences. Now that we’ve done the mega-ship experience once, we’d probably go back to DCL, at least until our son is older. The Allure dining experience really left a sour taste with us.

 

I’d be happy to answer any specific questions, related to the above opinions. I have no desire to go back and forth with anyone on why their opinion differs from mine, it’s a subjective discussion, kind of like two red-necks fighting over the Ford vs. Chevy.

[rebeccalouiseagain]

Nice balanced review. My son enjoyed both lines very much.

[Stratus22]

Thanks for all of the info. We will be doing both RCCL and Disney in 2014!! Well assuming Disney comes back to NYC in 2014. I have 2 kids, who will be 6 and 3 at time of our RCCL cruise.

[Friend100]

Nice review. Do try the newer Disney Dream/Fantasy if you can ... similar layout to Magic/Wonder, quite a different experience though to us.

[wake74]

Central Park at Night

 

Boardwalk at Night

 

Royal Promenade

[crusinmama06]

Great review! You touched on a negative for RCI and one reason that I don't like the whole "My Time" and "Freestyle" concept - so I have to ask - on Enchantment (the RCI ship that we did do My Time Dining on) - we went straight to the dining room upon boarding and asked for reservations for the entire week. Then after the first night our servers asked if we would like to keep them as our wait staff for the rest of the cruise - which we did. So although we had the "My Time" where we selected our own time - we also were able to select our own wait staff. Was this not an option on Allure?

 

That might have been able to cut down on your horrible service in MTD.

 

I TOTALLY agree with the scheduling issues on RCI. They schedule all of the family parades and movies very late for little ones.

 

I am not finding that to be an issue on NCL which has been a nice change.

[Stratus22]

We are going to sign up for the My Family Time Dining when we hit the Explorer of the Seas. NCI is another cruise we have on our radar. I haven't read too many great reviews about NCI. Of course my thought always is, if they are that bad, they wouldn't be in Business anymore. Our plan is to take as many cruise's out of the northeast as possible. Save's on airline tickets:rolleyes:.

[wake74]

Michelle - We scheduled most of the MTD meal times, and left the others flexible. I suspect we could have easily had the same server each night as we were asked the first few nights if we wanted the same server as the previous night. However, with service as bad as it was, we opted to try a different server / section of the restaurant each time. The one server that had decent service, wasn't available after that at the times we wanted. If we would have gotten her on the first night, we might have been worked our schedule a bit to ensure we had her each night.

 

Each of the 4 different servers we had all seemed over-worked, and more tables than they could comfortably handle.

 

My wife reminded me last night, of one of our other interesting dining observations. The rolls being passed around the main dining room were always cold. I couldn't remember us observing that on DCL. Anyone have this similar experience?

[VikkiGarcia]

Loved the review. Curious on how the bottom line cost was for each? How big was the $$$ difference?

[beccawes7471]

Great comparisons. We are considering DCL vs Allure and have 3 yo and 12 yo. Good insight and those pics are pretty impressive.

[wake74]

Vikki - While I'd like to try to help with that question, that's a tough one, as cruise prices seem to vary so much even on the same ship, depending upon season, when you book it, sales, current alignment of Mars and Venus, etc.

 

I can tell you that we spent a lot of time pondering doing DCL again for this most recent trip, and it was about $1,500 more for the week we wanted (June 9-10 departure). It seems we waited too long, and didn't want to book at the last minute, so any option this week, when we booked it in March-April (can't remember when) was pretty expensive.

 

If I remember correctly, our upfront cost for the Allure was about $5k for the three of us for an outside balcony, and DCL was about $6.5k for that week when we booked for roughly the same room category.

 

Luckily, we cashed in a whole lot of Marriott Rewards points to cover a good portion of the upfront cost.

 

I don't think that exactly answered your question.....

[Italy52]

Vikki - While I'd like to try to help with that question, that's a tough one, as cruise prices seem to vary so much even on the same ship, depending upon season, when you book it, sales, current alignment of Mars and Venus, etc.

 

I can tell you that we spent a lot of time pondering doing DCL again for this most recent trip, and it was about $1,500 more for the week we wanted (June 9-10 departure). It seems we waited too long, and didn't want to book at the last minute, so any option this week, when we booked it in March-April (can't remember when) was pretty expensive.

 

If I remember correctly, our upfront cost for the Allure was about $5k for the three of us for an outside balcony, and DCL was about $6.5k for that week when we booked for roughly the same room category.

 

Luckily, we cashed in a whole lot of Marriott Rewards points to cover a good portion of the upfront cost.

 

I don't think that exactly answered your question.....

 

We did a price comparison between DCL and RCI for 5 people total and opted for RCI due to cost --- our difference was about $2,700 and that is booking for 2013.

 

We chose Freedom of the Seas and we cashed in Hilton Honors Points to cover some of the costs --- got to love those reward perks. :)

 

Karen

[Italy52]

Thanks for the review, I appreciate it very much. Would love to take DCL but the price differential is too much.

[Keith1010]

Excellent writeup and thanks for positing.

 

Keith

[CSHaydt]

Thanks for posting this. We just got off the Disney Dream and i have to give them a 10 across the board and we are ready for another one but cost is getting me to look at other cruise lines and RC is the one i think we would probably do. Thanks for doing this comparison - this is why i joined to hear how they size up.

 

You should really try the Dream - it is AMAZING!!!!!!! esp. the aqua duck!

[Jimnbigd]

Note that Disney ships do not have a casino. The casino is one reason RCI ships cost less than Disney.

[2CuteKiddies]

Dining Room Service: Hands-down, Disney was on top. Our Allure of the Seas main dining experience was the one real disappointment of the trip. It was unacceptably bad. Of the 4 nights we tried it,2 were so bad, the head waiter had to finish our service each night, one night was good, one was marginal. Note that we had My Time Dining, so we had different servers each night. My opinion was that the My Time Dining floor (deck 5) got the C-team staff. Extremely disappointing. The dining staff also seemed to have so many tables, they were all overwhelmed. Quality of food was similar on both ships.

 

wake74: How was the dining service in terms of kid-friendliness? The reason I'm asking is because we had a very bad experience in the MDR on a 4-day Monarch of the Seas cruise and have a 7-day Mariner of the Seas cruise coming up in February (paid for by my parents). I told them about our Monarch experience. We were concerned that it's a RCL-wide issue, but they said it was probably due to the cruise being a 4-day and that a 7-day cruise would be better.

 

What was so bad for us? Our daughter was 3 1/2 at the time. We thought there would be basic kid-friendly accommodations, like kid's menus for drawing, crayons, and straws. There were no kid's menus with crayons available. They brought her a drink in an adult glass (wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, tricky for a 3 year old) and it took them a long time to track down a straw when we asked for one. Also, whenever she made a sound (not screaming or anything, just a normal 3-year old talking) we got glares from the other tables. We never went back to the MDR again.

 

Thanks for any insight that will help us on the RCL cruise! We're doing the Disney Dream in October and have NO concerns there! This time we'll have 2 kids, a 5 year old and a 10 month old.

[wake74]

I certainly don't have too much positive to say about the RCL MDR dining experience just due to the poor quality of service received. However, I'll try to address some of your specific questions:

 

1. Kids Menus - They had kids menus, but no crayons. This was just absurd. Give a 5 year old a menu with mazes, and coloring areas, but not have any crayons. When I shared my opinion on this topic, the server said that they only have crayons in the kids club. However, they did go find him one broken crayon. We brought our own the other nights.

 

This was indicative of the kids experience on RCL for me. Some great things, like the showing of Madascar 3D but then showing it at mid-night, but not a lot of logic on the execution. Kids menus without crayons for instance.

 

2. Straws - No problems there that I recall, so we must have gotten them, as we would have requested them. I think we even got covered kids cups and straws if I remember correctly in the MDR. There were always straws available in the other restaurants / cafes.

 

3. We didn't experience any "stink eye" from any of the passengers for bringing in our son into the MDR. However, he is well behaved, and generally pretty quiet. We did allow him to play his DS (with-out the volume) if our meals went long, which they usually did to the very poor service received. See note about head waiter having to finish our service on more than one occasion. I'm not talking about just expediting our food, but physically having to go get it himself.

 

We'll probably go back to Disney (likely try the Dream) for our next cruise, until our son gets old enough to enjoy some of the other mega-ship activities available on the Allure.

[2CuteKiddies]

Thanks for the info. We'll be better prepared this time! We'd been on a Carnival cruise prior to this one where the dining room experience was very kid-friendly, so we were caught off-guard with the RCL experience.

 

I agree with you about the execution of the kids experience. The Adventure Ocean program was great and they did some really neat activities, but then the dining room was terrible for younger kids. She wound up eating pizza most nights because we weren't going to the dining room, but then the buffet didn't open until late, so that was the only thing open.

[nanwel]

Thank you for all the info.

I am taking my grandkids on Allure at Canadian March break - have been on Disney Wonder 3 times (always had to take the same ship due to timing) kids loved it, but 3 adults are ready for a change - kids will be 7 & almost 9, then.

If things are scheduled so late - will we be be better with later dining? Can kids go to the MDR for 2nd seating?

Cost is more on Allure - partly because I booked an Aqua Suite, but usually book 2 rooms on Disney, so cost became similar.

Kids can swim like fish - pool will be better than on Disney for them, they do not like never having a proper swimming pool, but will miss the slide.

[wake74]

Nanwel - We didn't want to schedule the late dining, as our son is traditionally in bed around 8:30 at home, and is even more tired usually when he is on vacation in the sun all day.

 

No worries about bringing kids to the 2nd MDR seating. My gut feeling is that the MTD staff up on the third dining floor was the C or D team staff, and the better staff was on the lower floors.

 

I'm sure your kids will enjoy the pools. There was always a bunch of kids in that age group in the circular jet pool thing.

 

Have fun!

[nanwel]

Thanks for all the info - I am sure we will have fun - always do when we travel together! This is part of their xmas present - I make up travel books with info on where/when/what they will be doing at spring break - in a bag with a new swim suit & some summer clothes etc. then we spend an evening making cr door decorations before the trip - sure hypes them up - but Grandma gets to send them home then!!

[ducklite]

Nice review--my only criticism is that you compared a brand new massive ship with an older mid-sized ship. Of course the smaller, older ship won't have the same level of technologies and as many activities.

[crusinmama06]

I certainly don't have too much positive to say about the RCL MDR dining experience just due to the poor quality of service received. However, I'll try to address some of your specific questions:

 

1. Kids Menus - They had kids menus, but no crayons. This was just absurd. Give a 5 year old a menu with mazes, and coloring areas, but not have any crayons. When I shared my opinion on this topic, the server said that they only have crayons in the kids club. However, they did go find him one broken crayon. We brought our own the other nights.

 

This was indicative of the kids experience on RCL for me. Some great things, like the showing of Madascar 3D but then showing it at mid-night, but not a lot of logic on the execution. Kids menus without crayons for instance.

 

2. Straws - No problems there that I recall, so we must have gotten them, as we would have requested them. I think we even got covered kids cups and straws if I remember correctly in the MDR. There were always straws available in the other restaurants / cafes.

 

3. We didn't experience any "stink eye" from any of the passengers for bringing in our son into the MDR. However, he is well behaved, and generally pretty quiet. We did allow him to play his DS (with-out the volume) if our meals went long, which they usually did to the very poor service received. See note about head waiter having to finish our service on more than one occasion. I'm not talking about just expediting our food, but physically having to go get it himself.

 

We'll probably go back to Disney (likely try the Dream) for our next cruise, until our son gets old enough to enjoy some of the other mega-ship activities available on the Allure.

 

Crazy that they told you no crayons! We were given crayons every night on the RCI Enchantment (just got back)

 

We had MTD and requested the same dining time and same servers every night. They were awesome! Sorry you didn't have the same experience!

 

They couldn't have been more accommodating to my girls!

[rebeccalouiseagain]

I had a good experience with service on my last RCI cruise.

 

Having said that, I do find that on smaller ships you do get better service as a rule. Or should I say- more intimate service. I think it is important to do traditional dining if you want to get good service. This is true of all the lines. Or like Cruisinmama did- reserve the same time and table each night.

 

One of the things I like about the traditional dining is that the staff sees you coming and knows what you drink etc. They know what the kids like and they have a more personal experience.