What's wrong with some of these reviewers?

[deanimal]

I read this thread and I had to laugh. It's been almost a year since I've checked this forum, and the same discussion is still going round and round. It's also the reason why I left the forum; there's a small percentage of people who take the "critic" part of cruise critic far too seriously and I was just tired of it. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and its great to be able to hear the good and the bad, but there's a difference between informing and just plain grousing miserably.

When I read a negative review and the person complains about the ship, the food, the staff, etc, that's fine, but when they go on to slam the ports, the weather and all kinds of other things that the cruise line has no control over, its pretty obvious that its not going to be a balanced opinion.

Another thing I see here often is cruise fatigue. The voice of experience is great, but I've found that many people who've been on a huge number of cruises get so caught up in the comparisons that no cruise will ever match up to their expectations. Even my own parents are the same way; they'll get back from a cruise that sounds amazing to me and my mom will say, "well, the food wasn't as good as Celebrity, I liked the room layout better on Royal Caribbean, the spa wasn't as good as Princess, etc". For those of us who view their upcoming cruise as a trip of a lifetime that they may only get to do once its a real downer.

And lastly (I'll end my rant soon, I promise), its one thing to say that something was wrong, you tried to resolve it and it wasn't addressed to your satisfaction. Its another thing to say that something was wrong the first day and you did nothing and let it ruin your whole cruise. So you just spent the whole week stewing and composing your complaint comment in your head instead of trying to resolve it?

The only good thing I got from reading some of the complaint comments was that when a person ended with "and I'm never cruising with them again" I could think, "good, that means your curmudgeonly self won't be on my cruise then!"

[MESH]

I have given travel presentations for the past decade and written travel articles for our organization.

 

When I give a presentation, I always tell the people you need to investigate what you want from a cruise line. If you want to gamble -- Disney is not the line you are looking for. If you are a Disney fanatic, you will love the Disney Cruise line.

 

Too many people have expectations and do not do basic research on what the target group is of each of the various cruise lines.

 

Although we love Disney cruises (16 and 17 coming up), we also enjoy Celebrity cruise line for cruising in the Med.:)

[kath00]

Well, we are back from our 8n cruise on the Disney Wonder over the Holiday week. We had a really nice time (substantially better than the 2n cruise in January) but there were still many of the same issues with the ship that we found on the 2 night. I wrote a thorough review if anyone is interested in reading. I also kept a "live from" thread on the DISboards if anyone wants to read a detailed day by day. The live from thread really helped me put my thoughts on paper that day instead of weeks later...

 

CruiseCritic Review: http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=94273

 

DISboards live from thread (hopefully ok to post here):

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2845338

[VillaHappy]

Kath00, thanks for taking the time to post your review links. I am trying Disney for the first time in March, and really appreciate the time you took to report back on your experiences with Disney. :)

[kath00]

Kath00, thanks for taking the time to post your review links. I am trying Disney for the first time in March, and really appreciate the time you took to report back on your experiences with Disney. :)

 

Glad I could help! :) I wrote quite the novel on that Live From thread! LOL. Internet is minimal so posting while on the ship was quite an experience... but I used what I wrote as my own trip report in my diary at home so I now have something I can keep forever for myself also. :)

 

Katherine