Disney Mediterranean Cruise: Day at Sea

Ahh, a day at sea... A great day to relax and reflect... Even on a Disney ship, where there is so much to do this is possible. We were fully planning on spending a lot of time just enjoying being at sea. While we were able to take advantage of the day, it was not quite as relaxing as we hoped it would be.

Lets start off with the night before. I was up late doing some laundry, and noticed that there was a wet spot on the floor near the pull out sofa sleeper. having two small kids who tend to spill things, I didn't think much of it, until I felt a drip land on my head. even at this point I wasn't concerned, we had the temperature in the room pretty low, so it was probably just some condensation from the air conditioning. The room was dark, and didn't want to disturb anyone by investigating, so I just threw a hand towel on the floor to catch the drippings.

The next morning I noticed the sound of dripping water onto the now soaked towel. Since everyone was awake I investigated further. The water was coming from the sprinkler head in the ceiling. At this point I was starting to get a little concerned. The water was clearly dirty, as the white towel now had a distinct rust colored spot where the water was hitting. In addition a room down the hall has a major leak that required severe staff clean up the day before. Before we headed up to Palo for our first brunch experience we called guest services who assured up they would send someone down to check it out.

After returning from brunch (more on that later), and checking on the little ones in the club, it was obvious that no one had been in the room to check the situation. We called guest services again, as the leak had gotten worse. As a group we had planned to go see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides so we vacated the room hoping that the problem would be resolved.

During the movie we got a page from the club, so my wife went to see what the kids needed, and while she did that she stopped by the room to see if anyone had come by. Again no one had, so this time she spoke with a supervisor and finally after we got out of the movie, there was someone in the room checking the leak out. The crew member did not seen worried about the problem, but said that they would need to get into the ceiling to fix the problem. As you might expect the leak had gotten worse. We headed to the pool.

At some point during the next couple hours things got bad in our room. The sofa got soaked, as did a lot more of the floor. My wife spoke with the supervisor Jakob, again, who told us that he would get back to us soon. He eventually was able to get us a new room, just a few down from our current one, and he told us that he was going to be talking to headquarters about what else they would do for us.

When we got to the new room we had a little surprise waiting for us. Jakob had sent down a package with a note saying that they were sorry for the delay in responding to our requests. The package was a miniature suitcase (probably a jewelry case) that was obviously a stateroom gift for the Eastbound Transatlantic cruise, there were also Mickey and Minnie Pook-a-Looz. They also gave us a pretty nice stateroom credit to hold us over until he got word from HQ.

The room was OK, but it was obviously left empty because it was a little beat up, an not up to paying guest standards. The furniture needed some love, and there were some fixtures in disrepair, but everything was dry, so we were happy! We would be in this room for the last two days of the cruise.

Outside of that excitement we had a pretty good day! We spent some time by the pool, saw POTC 4 (the 4th time my daughter had seen it) as I mentioned before, and just enjoyed being on the ship. It was a fully booked cruise, so it was pretty crowded, but we never felt it got to crazy, except for the line at Topsider's Buffet.

Now about Palo Brunch... This is one of those things that everyone raves about! I have never heard or read a bad, or even so-so review about brunch at Palo. I really wondered how it could possibly live up to the hype. Well to be honest... IT DID! I was shocked by just how much food they had on the buffet! All of that plus made to order brnch entrees as well? It was great! I had the Chicken Parmesan, and it was the best I had ever had. It was cooked perfectly and served on top of a Parmesan Risotto... I liked it so much I have been having cravings for a month! I tried to recreate it a couple nights ago, but it wasn't close... There were two things that disappointed me though. First the Midori Champagne that I ordered wasn't as good as I hoped, and we were so full after our main course that we didn't have room for dessert! Oh well something to look forward to the next time!

So despite the headache of the leaky ceiling, we still had a great day at sea. While they were slow to react to our problem, once they did, we were taken care of. Jakob was awesome! He made it his personal mission to take care of us during the ordeal. He met us up at the Mickey Pool to give us our room keys, and frequently checked in to see how we were doing. A few days after we got back from the cruise DCL let us know that to make up for our "lost sea day" we would be getting a credit to use on a future booking. All in all I think the issue was handled well. And rest assured that we will be putting it to good use!