Tokyo Disneyland
Topic: Kevin Yee Announces His TDR Touring Book

#	Author	Message
31	Bob Paris Mon 4/7/2008 2:24a	"Further, it was not too long ago when Kevin Yee took a cruise and didn't pack anything but shorts and t-shirts. His poor planning prevented him from eating a morsel of food, other than counter service." LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!! This might be THE FUNNIEST post I have read on LP in a LONG time. I am neither a proponent or critic of Mr Yee or his published work. I just thought this was hilarious.
32	Bob Paris Mon 4/7/2008 2:30a	Oh and why I thought it was hilarious was not because I am denigrating Kevin(who has emailed me once or twice over the years - how is your brother in Mandurah mate?)but because the original poster thought this in some way proved hispoint that Yee was not qualified to be a travel writer. Hell, I was in Orlando for close to a month and wore nothing but shorts and a t-shirts EVERY day and probably had two sit down full restaurant meals the whole time!
33	Mr X Mon 4/7/2008 2:35a	Well, it does show something of a lack of preparation and awareness though, strange traits in a travel writer who is supposed to be advising others in how to do this. ;) On the other hand, if he just "went on a cruise" without it being in any way related to travel writing, then it's his own business what he forgot to pack, or whatever consequences there were, except perhaps to write about it online and have a chuckle with friends about it. I agree though, that's just pretty funny. Is this true, Kevin?
34	Mr X Mon 4/7/2008 3:04a	Also, if true I doubt if he much cared about that stuff. It would be easy enough to pick up an outfit in port or in one of the ship shops, if he'd wanted to sample the dining room. Personally, on my one and only cruise I much preferred the buffets myself, in shorts and t's out chillin by the pool with my burgers etc... ;)
35	KevinYee Mon 4/7/2008 7:52p	It's partly true. Here is a paste of what I wrote in my trip report: (and it should be noted that problems like THESE on my DCL trip is partly what motivated me to write a TDR book!!) [begin quote] If the above sounded uncharacteristically positive, it's because I'm girding you for the blistering negatives to follow. There were, alas, just as many things wrong as there were right. 1. The materials sent by mail before the cruise were woefully inadequate. Here's a quote from one part of the booklet they sent before the cruise: Nice Dining Attire: Most restaurants require cruise casual wear. No shorts, swimwear or tank tops, please. A dress shirt or jacket is recommended for men, and a dress or pantsuit for women, at Lumiere's and Palo. Maybe it's just me, but I read this to mean that I'd be fine in jeans and a t-shirt, and in fact all I would have to do is just steer clear of Lumiere's and Palo, whatever those places are, and I could even wear shorts. I didn't want to look up what those restaurants were. I wanted to be surprised. I was sure my plan for dress code was fine. After all, this is DISNEY we're talking about here. As a local, I've seen what people wear to the fine dining establishments at Walt Disney World. Tourists in general don't dress up, and thus I wouldn't need to, either. WRONG! People did dress up. Every night. A t-shirt was woefully out of place. Jeans were by and large out of place too, and I became painfully aware of sticking out in a crowd. This is likely due to my half-Asian heritage and the life experiences that go along with it while growing up. W.E.B. Dubois coined the term "double-consciousness" to refer to an awareness of being both "American" and a person of color. He meant it for African-Americans, but it could be applied to a host of situations, including my own. People with double-consciousness see themselves through their own eyes AND through the eyes of other people. I began to feel that my T-shirts were horribly misplaced at the dinners. Basically no one else wore them; the men were all wearing something with a collar, like polo shirts or print shirts. Though no one said anything to me, I felt increasingly uncomfortable and finally opted out of three of the dinners, electing to just eat the fast food offered on the deck of the ship instead. Frankly, that made me mad. I have no paucity of polo shirts. I could have packed properly if only Disney had warned me with more vigor. It's true I fell prey to my familiarity with Disney parks and the lax dress codes there, but surely I wasn't the only one. My anger was fueled in large part by the enormous cost of this cruise (see below), and here I was, feeling put out by the dress code and substituting burgers for beef tenderloin. I merely burned with rage and vowed to write this up in the comment card at the end of the trip. Alas, the comment card was also woefully short on space to actually write anything. I left my email address, but no one wrote to even ask questions, let alone address my concerns. Is it possible the rage from this embarrassing experience informed some of the negative parts of the review today, some of them still to come? Sure. Let that be a lesson in why you have to work hard in the service industry to never get any detail wrong. You can get 99% of things right, but if that one thing is wrong, it ruins everything else. It turns out that while Palo is a pay-extra restaurant, Lumiere's was one of the three main dining rooms, meaning we'd visit it at least twice just by following the normal rotation through the dining rooms. Here's what would have worked to clue me in during that packet mailed before the trip: Nice Dining Attire. Most restaurants require "cruise casual" clothing: no shorts, swimwear or tank tops (even T-shirts are not common). Polo shirts and muted Hawaiian print shirts are very commonly worn with Dockers-style pants. A dress shirt or jacket is recommended for men, and a dress or pantsuit for women, at one of the three restaurants you'll visit during the normal rotation. I could run through the same review of the formal wear, which is mentioned as "Optional Formal Attire" in the pre-cruise booklet. When they say "optional," do they mean I could elect to go to the restaurant that had the dress-up party or I could choose to visit a different establishment and still get my fine dining cruise meal? Because that's what the verbiage sounds like. But it's not what happens. Everyone, and I mean everyone, dresses up in tuxedoes or something very close to it. What happened to "optional"? I guess this is another night of fast food. A hint for you writers of the pre-cruise booklets: some transparency would help. A lot.
36	SuperDry Tue 4/8/2008 12:19a	<<< Most restaurants require cruise casual wear >>> The term "cruise casual" would have been the warning to me - that sounds like it means something specific. I can't help but be reminded of when George Costanza asked Jerry Seinfeld "What exactly is 'smart casual'?" Jerry responded "I don't know, but you don't have it!" Kevin, couldn't you have purchased a polo shirt on board?
37	Mr X Tue 4/8/2008 12:53a	lol on the seinfeld reference. I agree with SD, it should've been easy enough to pick up the necessary attire, at the very least at the next port of call if the ship prices were unreasonable (I imagine they probably are).
38	WilliamK99 Tue 4/8/2008 1:42a	Heck, I knew someone who had all their bags lost by the airline, and they were able to buy enough clothes to last through their cruise right at the first port.
39	KevinYee Tue 4/8/2008 4:29a	I did think about buying the necessary clothes, true enough. For some reason, though, this was one of those instances where it felt like Disney had crossed the line on the service/value axis. The week was quite expensive (I think $5,000) and I really resented needing to plunk down an additional couple hundred to outfit my family. (you eat with the same family night after night in the dining room, another thing they don't tell you, so you wouldn't want to wear the same thing over and over)
40	KevinYee Tue 4/8/2008 4:32a	As briefly hinted at above, this episode on the cruise ship is a pretty good indicator of a need for independent opinions. The company literature is usually adequate, but not always. The 'culture shock' (and cruising IS a culture) needs some preparing and defining, to minimize misunderstandings like the one that happened to me on the cruise. I had nothing so traumatic at TDL (a week at TDL was about as expensive as a week on DCL, figuring everything together, and my goodness TDL is so much better). But the point is, there were little cultural moments that I would have liked to know about in advance. I'm a fretter :)

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