A few weeks ago, my family returned from back to back sailings on the brand new Disney Wish. We sailed on the August 15 (4 night) and August 19 (3 night) sailings. This is part 2 of my trip report, in which I will share my thoughts on the dining experiences onboard the Wish. You can read part 1 (embarkation) here.
Marceline Market
This is the buffet restaurant on deck 11 aft, which is called Cabanas on all of the other ships. Our first experience here was lunch on embarkation day. I didn’t note the time of our arrival, but I would estimate that it was somewhere around 1:30 and it was PACKED. To be expected of course, but I had forgotten that on previous cruises, we had always made a point to either get to the lunch buffet immediately upon opening, or eat lunch elsewhere because of how chaotic it is. I was out of practice. It was nearly impossible to find a table, and the space is shaped like a long, thin corridor that wraps around the back of the ship, which means that huge numbers of people all have to walk through the same narrow space in order to get around which creates a very claustrophobic atmosphere. On the deck plan you can see what I mean about the shape of the space. The gray area is the kitchen, the white area is the guest space:
It is like a tunnel. Just walking was very, very difficult. Pack your patience. The food was great, the decor and theming were great, it’s a beautiful space – we just found it very hard to maneuver to all of the different stations. To top it off, most everything is served by a cast member, which means that getting food takes longer, thus lines form at each station. Well, the lines that form are right in the narrow walkway that everyone is trying to use to move around. The space is just not shaped appropriately to have large numbers of people moving around from station to station – it needs to be wider. I went back 2 other times, at breakfast (just to grab some things to take back to the room), and had the exact same experience. I think one thing that adds to the crowding is the longer distance to the pool deck, where there is additional seating. On the other ships, the outdoor tables on the pool deck begin right there at the entrance to Cabanas, so a lot of people (us included) take their plates out there, thus eliminating the number of people eating indoors. On the Wish, the outdoor seating is not visible or particularly close, so everyone stays to eat in the dining room. If I were to cruise the Wish again, the only way that I would eat here is if I timed it to arrive just as it opened.
Room Service
We ordered room service a lot on this cruise. The menu can be found in the app. I don’t recall the pre-Covid menu well enough to be able to tell if the current menu is much different or not. You still have to call to place the order, you cannot order on the app. Our food always came quickly (usually quicker than the estimate they gave) and the order was always correct. Note that there are some items that have a fee, but they should remind you of that when you are placing the order. I tipped a few dollars cash each time. There is a receipt that you can sign and add a tip to your onboard account, but the person delivering it doesn’t always make that obvious (they could probably produce it if you ask), so I find that cash is easier.
Palo
We dined in Palo for brunch but not dinner. With all of the dining rooms being brand new to us, we did not want to miss a night in the main dining rooms. I was able to get a brunch reservation at midnight EST when our platinum window opened for the 4 night cruise (which had brunch served twice, on both Nassau day and the sea day), but I was not ever able to get one for the 3 night cruise (which only had brunch once, on Nassau day), despite trying at midnight EST and checking the website regularly. Presumably this is because there are significantly more concierge rooms on the Wish than on the other ships, and of course they get first dibs on Palo and Enchante reservations. Getting Palo or Enchante brunch reservations (and cabanas on Castaway Cay) will be practically impossible for non-concierge guests on the Wish, especially on the 3 night sailings.
Brunch was pretty good. After an awkward start where our presence took a while to be acknowledged at the entrance even though we were right in front of 2 CMs (and another guest walked up after us and was acknowledged immediately, before us), we were shown to a booth and greeted by our server. I can’t remember her name, but she was lovely – no complaints there. This was our view:
The dishes are different than the other ships:
The brunch menu:
The brunch menu is very similar to the other ships. The main difference that I can recall are the antipasti plates at the top, which is probably an attempt to make up for the lack of the brunch buffet, which has never re-appeared on any of the ships since Covid. We really, really miss the buffet and hope that they bring it back soon. As platinum guests, we get a complimentary brunch or dinner at Palo, so will probably continue to do Palo brunch without the buffet because we are not paying for it (other than gratuity). If we were paying for brunch, I don’t think we would do it again unless the buffet returns.
I only took 1 food photo which was of my dessert. I cannot recall the name, and I don’t think there was a dessert menu – our server just verbally told us our dessert options. This was a lemon cake and it was excellent:
Festival of Foods
There are some pros and cons to the pool deck food options on the Wish.
Pros:
The addition of the BBQ and taco/burrito counters, both of which were very good and a nice option other than burgers, hot dogs & chicken tenders
The quality of the pizza seemed better than the other ships
Having cast members serve ice cream was more sanitary
Cons:
Pizza counter could not seem to keep up with demand
No wraps/salad/fruit options (equivalent to Daisy’s De-Lites on the Magic & Wonder) – I REALLY missed this
Due to design/layout, this part of the ship gets very hot and stuffy – not enough air flow
Inside Out: Joyful Sweets
This is the additional charge sweet shop on deck 11 near Marceline Market. It is nice but nothing special. The decor and theming are nice, but didn’t seem to be as elaborate at the similar spaces on the other ships. They have a large selection of ice cream and gelato, and a small case of baked items. I got gelato and it was great, the others got ice cream and enjoyed it as well. One daughter got a macaron and said it was good.
Main Dining Rooms
Before I describe each dining room, I’ll talk about service. Our dining room servers were great, and we had the late seating at 8:15. We had Sam (server), Naisha (assistant server) and Selo (head server). Sam was fantastic and on par with the best servers from our previous cruises. He was funny, perceptive, efficient, a good communicator, and overall provided us with excellent service. Naisha was very quiet and barely talked, but did her job well. Selo made a point to say hello every night, which doesn’t always happen with head servers so I appreciated that. We were very happy with the service from our dining team. FYI we had the same team for both cruises.
Worlds of Marvel
On our first night we dined at Worlds of Marvel. It is very dark in there (not sure if this is a good or bad thing – probably depends on the person). The dining room is not a large, open space, but has a corridor feeling to it. Here is the deck plan so that you can see the shape:
I am not a Marvel fan, but the rest of my family are and they really enjoyed the experience. Video clips play periodically on large screens throughout the restaurant, and they are loud so your conversation will be interrupted. We enjoyed the food and overall don’t really have any complaints except for entering the space. I will talk about this again later with Arendelle, but there was a huge traffic jam of people trying to enter the restaurant due to the design of the space at the entrance and it took a long time (relatively speaking) to get to our table. Here I have highlighted in yellow the queue spaces for entering the dining room, and as you can see it is 3 long, narrow corridors (which don’t have exterior windows and feel like tunnels). The dining room entrance is the black rectangle at the bottom:
Before each seating, hundreds of people cram in these corridors and it doesn’t make for a very magical experience. To top it off, the “main” corridor in the center (which most people used) goes right through the elevator bank, making it very difficult for people to get on and off the elevators. The line to enter the dining room moved very slowly, presumably because on 3 and 4 night cruises, most people don’t know where their assigned table is and have to be shown to their table by a server which probably slows things down a bit. Our second time here, we even waited a while to try and avoid the rush (probably 8:20-8:25) and it didn’t seem to make a difference. I think this is a poor design choice.
This is the only dining room that I took any photos in.
We were celebrating a birthday, so Sam made a candle out of napkins!
Arendelle
I think this was my favorite dining room. I liked that it was a large, open room (so felt less claustrophobic than the other 2) and I really liked the show.
The food was good as well. Some tables don’t have a very good view of the stage (which is in the middle); we had an okay view. The show starts and stops throughout dinner. The actors we had were very talented, especially the violin player at the end which was spectacular. The corridor to enter the dining room is awesome with the theming and decor – it really feels like you are in the movie.
However, this dining room suffers from the same problem as Worlds of Marvel but even worse: hundreds of people have to funnel through an extremely long, narrow corridor to enter. This corridor has windows but they are frosted so you can’t see though them. The line moves VERY slowly and backs all the way up to the Grand hall. I have highlighted in yellow the area where the line was:
We dined here 3 times, and the last 2 times we purposely waited near the grand hall for the line to go down but by 8:30, it had not so we gave up and got in line and it still took us 10 more minutes to get to our table. This is a poor design choice for an area that will have hundreds of people trying to enter the dining room at about the same time twice each night.
1923
I would like to say that this dining room is the easiest to enter since the doors open right into the grand hall, but there is one very important thing you have to realize: It has 2 sections which do not connect on the inside, so you need to make sure that you enter through the correct door! I don’t remember seeing any signage noting which table numbers go through each door, but there was a CM at the door asking people’s table numbers and trying to make sure they were at the correct door.
I didn’t take any pictures, but here are some official photos from DCL:
This dining room (or rooms) is by far the most beautiful and there are lots of display cases full of animation memorabilia. It is divided into lots of smaller rooms, so it has a more quiet and intimate feeling than the other dining rooms, but the tables are SO CLOSE TOGETHER!!! (FYI the photos above do not reflect this which is not surprising) Many of the tables are only inches apart and the servers have limited spaces to move around. Even when the tables are far enough apart for a server to squeeze through, it is a tight squeeze. I was sitting at the end of our table, and I could have reached over and taken food off the plate of the person at the table next to us. It is comical. The capacity of the rooms in 1923 is not sufficient for the number of cruisers, period. At least there are exterior windows, which are practically nonexistent in the rest of the ship. The food however was great, and this was the only dining room open for breakfast and lunch on both of our cruises.
Up Next: Entertainment on the Disney Wish