So I've been using Rails in production for a few years now, and its pretty good. I'm sure there are better options for a number of specific domains. I also use Dropwizard(because I need to use a few java only libraries) and dropwizard is in no way better than rails, except in the number of requests per second it can handle. It is a pain to set up compared to rails, the docs are terrible, it forces you to use maven and they refuse to help you with gradle. There are very few Stack Overflow answers, and thats a problem, because Dropwizard offers few sensible defaults, its configuration all the way down. And generally, the lack of livereload makes web development a pain in java.

Can't speak to Play though.