Has anyone noticed a change in the quality of service in the MDRs this past year? We cruised on the Fantasy twice this summer, and the Wonder once this fall. We had first seating on all cruises, and we were a table of all adults, 3 couples total for each cruise. Our servers were very pleasant and seemed like they were doing the best they could, but the main glaring issue was that we consistently had empty water glasses and soda glasses every night. Service was also quite a bit slower than usual, and some minor mistakes were made (wrong orders delivered, etc.). All not a big deal, but not up to par with past standards. We always talk up Disney cruises and amazing service to our friends and family, but are now reconsidering. During our last cruise two weeks ago we brought this up to the MDR manager and he said that they did change "procedures" a little bit last year and made it a point to focus on "teamwork" as far as head server, main server, and assistant server overlooking the tables. For example, everyone was responsible for keeping water glasses filled now, whereas in the past it was the assistant server. Now the assistant servers help in bringing out the large trays of food, and the the main server hands it out to the appropriate guest. We think this "group mentality" is causing balls to be dropped, and one person needs to be responsible for all the needs of the table, and delegate as necessary. None of our servers seemed to have time to offer what had been offered in the past such as magic tricks, jokes, and basically just spend a bit of time talking to the table. They were always rushed.
We basically told the manager that whatever changes they made has broken what was working before. We reiterated that it was definitely not a personal server issue, but a systems issue. The manager seemed to really listen to us and said he would take out feedback into account.
Long of the short: has anyone else noticed this decline in service?