HolySpearit

Great review!!!!

Obligatory "I don't have kids but".....

I'd vote don't do it, if for no other reason that you will likely spend a lot of time worrying if they are ok and that is not a fun way to spend vacation!

Does anyone remember the drink prices around the pool area ?

Is there food available?

We are planning on spending the day at the pool while in Amber Cove.

Thank you' date='

Carla[/quote']

 

We were there in November. Basic mixed/frozen drinks (Pina Coladas, Daiquiris etc) were $8. I believe beer was $5. You can get larger/sharable drinks or more top shelf booze for anywhere from about $15-$30 (for the larger shared fishbowl type drinks)

 

Yes, there is a bar/restaurant that serves food. We didn't try the food so I can't comment on the quality and don't recall the prices. It's called the Coco Cana, you may be able to find a menu online somewhere.

 

Hope that helps!

We spent roughly $500 on our last cruise and got an offer. It's a slightly lower rate than the normal/published rates on the website and reduced deposit.

If you check "my offers" in your account it will show there. We also got an email.

Been a few years but we had one on deck 7 and I don't recall any extensive noise. I'd agree there's some vibration when you get into/leave port but that's it. If it's an early port arrival it may wake you up but otherwise no complaints. Can't beat that aft wake view!

Anyone familiar with Mat Seguin? This is only our second cruise so we arent familiar with anyone but Matey, and he was fantastic on the Victory last year.

We had him on the Magic this past November and no complaints. I'm not one who thinks a cruise director makes or breaks the cruise, but nice guy, not overly annoying with announcements and got the fun going at the parties. You'll have a good time with him!

Ports coming your way! Where in Europe are you heading this year?

Amsterdam and London, should be a good time!

Loving your photos, can not wait to hopefully explore Europe more in the coming years.

Following along, we're doing land based to Europe this year but I'm looking forward to seeing the ports and this cruise is on my bucket list so I am loving reading along! :)

Thank you for the comparison! We've only cruised Carnival up until now but our next cruise is booked with Norwegian. Excited to see the differences.....only have to make it through another 13 months of waiting. :(

Enjoying the review!!!! Alaska is definitely on our bucket list so I love reading about it!

Oh gosh SamFritz. I don't know you and I'm not even a regular on this board but I am so incredibly sorry for your loss, and absolutely heartbroken for you.

We overheard numerous people commenting about how everyone seemed to be friendly and getting along, leading to D and I deciding the cure to any tensions in America is simply to send everyone on vacation a couple times a year. Vote HolySpearit 2020, ya'll.

 

There is a couple of Senate seats open. From a fellow Minnesota resident, I'd vote for you.

Hahahah thank you! I will begin my campaign shortly although I may have to pay some people off to keep my actions in my 20's quiet :o

:DThanks for the entertaining review....we were boarding the Magic as you got off!! Thoroughly enjoyed your 'twist' on it all and laughed the entire way through.....thank you for taking the time to give this honest rendition!! Totally agree with all the SMOKE from and around the casino, I think this was the smokiest cruise ship I have ever been on.......tried to avoid the entire area, but could not get to MDR unless really going out of our way, so we 'suffered' through the fog of smoke!! We did have Dr. E on our cruise, and not to be a 'downer', but couldn't figure out all the hype about him....we found him rather obnoxious and he loved the PA system and announcements WAYYYY too much. He was rather arrogant, we attempted to talk to him several times??? He was trying too hard to be like "Matt Mitchum" who was superb.......and didn't quite 'hit the bar'! You didn't miss a thing and it sounds like your CD was certainly even nicer/better??

We too are in the frozen tundra.....just reading your review brought me back to 'sunny days'.....thank you for that!!

I don't know how to quote more than 2 posts so this goes to the last comment too, but thank you for reading and glad I'm not crazy about the smoke. I figured if I found it that obnoxious as a smoker it would be like....really terrible for the non-smokers of the world. Wish they could find a way to fix it.

We were there on a land trip last year. I agree 2 days is not a lot of time so try to narrow down what you want to see the most. It is fairly easy to see the main sites on your own. Hop on/hop off is a good choice to help you get around the city, we had no problems with it and our ticket included a short river tour as well, which was fun. We made it to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster via the HoHo. Personally, Westminster and The Tower were my favorites. Harrods is fun to see as well.

If you're looking to get out of the city for one of those days and see Stonehenge, Oxford, whatever, I would highly recommend The English Bus. We did Stonehenge with them and it was fantastic.

https://www.theenglishbus.com/trip-finder

Have fun, London is beautiful. We loved it so much we're hoping to go back this fall :D

Thank you for this review! We are toying with idea of doing this ship once she moves to Europe this fall. Never been on Royal so your pictures of the ship are very helpful! :D

This will be a couple of firsts for me - one is that i've not been on NCL yet, all my previous have been with Carnival. second is that I've never been to NOLA and its always been a bucket list item for me to go there. We are going to go and stay a couple of days before the cruise

We are in the exact same boat (pun intended) and leaving about 90 days behind you so please post a review when you come back :D

I too live in the frozen hell that is Minneapolis so to say I’m jealous is putting it lightly. Looking forward to following along!

Over 400 so I'm not even counting at this point yet lol. But still excited, first time on NCL! :D

Thank you for your review. We sail on Magic in 2 weeks. Staying at the Radisson, will check out the Sheraton for next time. Sure wish our cruise had Half Moon Cay, we're going to Nassau and Freeport, been to both before so might just stay onboard. So very sad to see the damage on Grand Turk and can only imagine what San Juan and St. Thomas look like. We're way aft on Starboard side so hope movement doesn't annoy us. I have seasick wristbands that work well, just haven't had to use them in a while. Will definitely pack them. Bummer that they haven't done anything about the thick smoke in the casinos. I enjoy the slots, but last year had to leave early because it was getting hard to breathe. Looking forward to this trip, and your information was very helpful.

Have so much fun! And the Radisson definitely wasn’t bad, just not our favorite :)

One thing I forgot to mention that I figured I would now as your room is in the same general vicinity as ours was: there was a noticeable, not overpowering, but noticeable sewage smell in our hall that lasted the entire cruise. We did not notice it at all in our room, just the hall. We also accidentally/drunkenly (or now since it’s the holiday season we’ll go with “festively”) went down the wrong side a few times and did not notice it at all on the port side so ????? Just something to be aware of but again never had it become and issue in our actual room.

Have a great time on the Magic I am jealous as we miss it pretty badly!

This is such a great posting, and LOTS of good answers in regard to different areas on the ship, etc. I believe someone will be cruising around Christmas time on the Magic, so maybe they will give us their review as well.

 

When I get back from ours the first week in April, I plan to write a review as well.:)

Thank you!!! I can’t wait to read your review! :D

Thanks again for all the input! We ended up booking the Breakaway once she moves to New Orleans. So excited! 400 some days to go haha

I promise you, hit one of those production shows after a good number of drinks one night. Unintentionally HILARIOUS.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS:

Crowds: I know people have complained about crowds on the Magic. We personally didn't find this to be much of an issue. Yeah there were a couple lines we ran into but I was never really to the point of annoyance with it.

The Crowd: I know my fellow passengers and I have a "WalMart of the Seas" rep to live up to, but I had no major complaints with my fellow passengers either. 95% of people were polite. People of all different races, ages, backgrounds etc were getting along. Met a lot of interesting people. We overheard numerous people commenting about how everyone seemed to be friendly and getting along, leading to D and I deciding the cure to any tensions in America is simply to send everyone on vacation a couple times a year. Vote HolySpearit 2020, ya'll.

We did have a couple instances of "can I just get a..." in the buffet line, most commonly at the salad dressing area. I don't know how you forget the most important and delicious part of the salad but ok. Whatever, I let the dude get his ranch dressing.

2 instances in the pizza line of 2 people in front of us, then suddenly 4-5 more people from their group just joined them vs going to the back of the line. I just gave them the stank eye like the real passive aggressive Minnesotan I am.

RANDOM TIDBITS:

- I'm fairly certain Magic is in the process of converting photos to the new digital process. Pixels had what looked like some construction going on. Last day of the cruise, the Fun Hub on deck 5 immediately outside the casino had the computers removed, a Pixels sign went up, and there was workers installing what appeared to be iPad stands. While I am happy about this, I am very curious about why they would ever choose this location. It's right outside the casino and as I discussed, smoke is an issue. I am hoping there is more than one location if this is the case.

- Deck 5 is C-O-L-D. Seriously if you're spending time at Ocean Plaza, bring a sweater. I am always freezing but D was also cold and he never is. We had to walk outside to warm up a few times during trivia and talked to 2 other people that were doing the same thing.

- Rode the elevator with the captain one night and accordingly we are basically BFFs, FYI.

- Tiles in the Lido deck can get slippery. Anyone remember 2002's legendary viral video "Scarlet Takes a Tumble"? Almost had a dramatic reenactment one night starring me, but luckily I'm apparently still young-ish enough to keep myself upright. Basically wear shoes with at least some minimal grip vs $1 Old Navy flip flops. Learned that lesson quick!

Overall, I would not hesitate to cruise Carnival again, the Magic again (some day maybe I'll meet the mythical Dr E!), or do this itinerary again. It wasn't perfect but nothing in life is. My suggestion would be go, have a good time, let the small things go, remember you're on vacation and everyone else is too. You look for something wrong, you're going to find it. Focus on the positive and make some memories with your friends/family/significant other/whatever. In the end that's what you'll remember.

Can't wait til the next cruise, and thank you for reading!!!! :hearteyes:

Ok we're finishing up here!

DISEMBARKATION

We chose to do self assist here which in hindsight was probably a mistake. Rayden was knocking on our door at 7:30 to make sure we were awake. Luckily (?) we had already been up most of the night due to the aforementioned movement in the ship the night before so we were basically ready to go. Took the stairs which led to D carrying 100lbs of luggage down 4 flights of stairs but oh well, he got some new muscles from it. Hit a small line but nothing too bad. Customs was quick and easy, probably took about 30 minutes from the time we left the room until the time we were leaving the cruise terminal. No complaints.

POST CRUISE

Picked up our rental at Port Canaveral Enterprise, again no issues at all here, shuttle was already there when we got off the ship. Hang a right when you exit the terminal and the rental shuttles are there.

Straight to Starbucks for a quad shot mocha so I could weep tears of joy at having acceptable coffee again. Stopped at Bagel 13 in Cocoa Beach for some breakfast, it was good and I would recommend it.

We had a room reserved at the Four Points Sheraton in Cocoa Beach. At this point it was about 10:30am. We figured never hurts to asked, called and asked if we could check in early and they said no problem so shout out to them! Checked in and immediately took a very long nap.

I enjoyed this hotel quite a bit. It's modern and somewhat "sterile" if you will. But our room was huge, it's right in the middle of everything, and it was very clean. Parking is $6/night but there's also a ramp so you're not left with a 9 mile walk like you are at the Radisson. Pool looked extremely tiny if that's important to you. We paid about $30 more here than we did at the Radisson and it was absolutely worth it in our opinion, we liked it much better and would definitely recommend it. We will personally stay here again if we ever cruise out of Canaveral again (looks like we might be in 2019!)

After our beauty sleep, we drove up to Titusville and had dinner at the self proclaimed world famous Dixie Crossroads for some dinner. It's so cute! There's shrimp statues! And they have top hats on! And those corn fritters they give you ommmmmmggggg. Our adorable and young enough to be my son waiter (who was very interested in our life in the frozen tundra of Minnesota and shocked anyone would voluntarily live there. I know sir, I know) just kept bringing them and we ate a LOT. Possibly paid for that later but I REGRET NOTHING! Cute place worth a stop if you don't mind a 20ish minute drive.

Flew back home the next morning around noon. No problems dropping the rental at MCO and we were suddenly back home. At least my cat cared for about 2 second that we returned!

Thank you all for the input! Still deciding but now we’re leaning towards Epic, ha! Excited to cruise NCL for the first time no matter where we end up! :)

Love the review! I was wondering if the room stewards know who prepaid gratuities if that made a difference in service?

They do know. He had a clipboard on his cart I saw one day that listed who all was in a cabin, if they were celebrating anything (honeymoon birthday etc), what service was requested, and if tips were pre paid.

As far as impacting service I am not sure. We just cruised the 2 of us so I really have nothing to compare it to. Sorry that’s not very helpful!

And I promise a quick end and post cruise is coming in the next couple days I WILL FINISH THIS!