Carnival Magic Review- The Whole Story......

This may be a lengthy review, so I will do it in segments so that I don't miss a thing. I will start from the time we left our house on June 14th to the time we arrived back to Virginia the evening of June 23rd. I will attempt to upload photos, but to be honest I am not so good at that.

Itinerary Change - problem or not a big deal?

Cheers or no Cheers - I'll give a complete breakdown of our alcohol consumption and let you be the judge.

Bubbles or no Bubbles?

All those questions and more will be answered during my review of our Carnival Magic 7 day Eastern Caribbean Vacation.

The Beginning.....June 14th at 11pm

My husband, two teenage sons (18 and 15), my youngest sons best friend (also 15) and myself loaded into the Ford Explorer and began our 12 hour drive south from Virginia to Cocoa Beach, FL. Luckily I stopped at Wawa for gas and coffee because my husband realizes he forgot his wallet :eek:.....thankfully we are only a mile down the road. I drove the first leg, about 6 hours and had to pull over to rest stop in SC and grab an hour cat nap. When I awake I know I am not super women and cannot possibly drive, so I wake my husband to continue the journey. Continue the journey my butt....my husband makes it to GA somewhere where we stop for breakfast and he's tired again. So I drive the last 3 hours or so with my 18 year old as my co-pilot.

We arrive in Cocoa Beach around 12 something. I had already made reservations and secured early check-in at the Comfort Inn. Luckily I paid attention to the address because come to find out the Comfort Inn I had made reservations for was in fact a Quality Inn. I had booked a room with 2 double beds and a sleeper sofa to accommodate the five of us. I booked the room at $159 about 2.5 months ahead of time. We check into the room and find a living room of sorts with a mini "kitchenette", desk, TV and sofa. We walk through the pull out door to the bathroom area through another pull out door to the small bedroom with the double beds. To the back of the room was a door to the balcony that faced the ocean....NICE.

We all take a small nap and then head to the beach for a hour or so before dinner. I rented a chair for I think $5 and the boys went into the water. Very beautiful beach. We live in Virginia Beach, VA so we didn't spend too much time down there. We go back to the room, take showers and go to dinner.....at IHOP (everywhere had very long wait times and we were hungry).

Its not until now that I check my email and see that we have an Urgent Update email from Carnival about our upcoming sailing. The email tells us that as a result of a medical debark that has taken place on the current sailing the ships arrival will be later than expected, next update will be sent at 6pm. This email, was sent at 1:13pm on June 15th.

About 15 minutes later I receive the update, sent at 5:5pm. The 6pm update informs that they continue to do what they can to make up time and another update will be provided at 9am on the 16th, and not to proceed to the cruise terminal until we hear from them again. And so we wait.

Its been a very long 24 hours so we head back to the hotel and turn in.

Up bright and early the next morning, I mean come on its sail day! :D We go down and eat at the hotel, breakfast was included......and we wait till 9am.

At 7:52am we receive the update. Due to some issue they were unable to proceed at max cruise speed and will not arrive to Port Canaveral until early afternoon. They continue to advise that due to delay they will be cancelling the St. Thomas port call and we will be provided with an updated itinerary later that day. They provide a $50 credit per person for the loss of the port visit, this was credited to our sign and sail. They continue to advise that all ship purchased excursions for St. Thomas will be refunded as a shipboard credit as well. They advise to arrive to the port between 3-6pm that evening, all passengers need to be onboard by 6pm. Because we are missing lunch they also provide an additional credit of $15 per person.

So we wait.....we check out of the hotel at 11am and proceed to the Kennedy Space Center.....we had nothing better to do for 4 hours. We just drove around because I didn't want to pay to go into the visitors center. We find the beach you can go to in order to the see the launch pads, Playalinda Beach on Merritt Island. It costs $10 per vehicle to enter. Couldn't really see anything so overall a disappointment. The beach area is nice though.

We were part of a Facebook group for the sailing and I learn that we can check-in into the "holding area" prior to 3pm. AC and Wi-Fi, what else are we going to do?! So we proceed to the port.....TRAFFIC was horrible! I later learned that the delay of Magic caused quite the interruption. So we wait yet again, but its okay we are on vacation.

We finally park in the parking garage, the total cost June 16-23 was $136, worth it to us to be able to get off the ship and immediately into our car. We hand over our bags and head to security. We get to security and have to split up because we are in different rooms, one for us and one for the boys. I'll be honest I was not excited about this because I just don't trust the boys to not lose their birth certificates, even if its for just a minute or two. As a reminder we have one child with us that is not ours, he gets up to the processor and she asks who I am and he says "my friends mom". She asks how are they to know he is allowed to go with us, I proceed to take the letter out of my folder and she says "okay, I don't need to see it". Well okay, at least I had it though. We just had a letter signed by his mother with a photo of her drivers license to prove the signature, the letter was not notarized.

Once we get checked in we learn that Sunday and Monday will be Sea Days followed by San Juan, Amber Cove and Grand Turk. Another change was that pull in times to both San Juan and Grand Turk have been moved to early in the morning vice late morning.

We also learn once checked in that you will receive your sign and sail card one onboard, it will be in the mailbox outside of your stateroom.

They start boarding at just about 330pm and sail time was set for 8pm. Once onboard we go straight to our room, to see if ready, and in the hallway we meet our steward, Michael. He introduces himself and asks what time we would like service, morning or evening. Now this is our 2nd cruise, the first was two years prior on Glory, and we were never asked about service and received both morning and evening, so I was a little surprised by the question. Both cruises we were on deck 1 as well. Oh well, I choose evening and we keep it moving. We head to Guys for a late lunch and then just relax until muster drill. Muster was at about 630ish, I think. It starts pouring outside so they move the sail away to the lobby, we did not attend. They open all dining rooms that evening as anytime dining and we proceeded to Southern Lights for dinner at about 8pm. We waited maybe about 10-15 minutes to be seated. Service was slow and the head waiter was not very personable. It had been a long day though so I gave it a pass.

After dinner the boys went to do what boys do and my husband and I proceeded to the black jack tables.

I'll be back later for my thoughts on day one, our drinking and review of Sea Day 1 and 2.

This sounds like a trip of go with the flow or you will break. Can't wait to hear more. This will pass the time until my cruise on July 22nd.

Interesting trip so far. You must have been exhausted after driving the majority of the 12 hours.

Since pre-cruise had its challenges, hopefully the cruise itself turned out to be smooth sailing.

Great start, I love reviews with stories

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Following.

There's the old morning or evening, not offered both.:evilsmile:

Thanks for the review... following

Thanks, I'm following too.

I too am following..

I too am following..

Morning or evening service, so it begins.

Hope Joe will not get nervous with you following closely:)

Following. We'll be on the Magic in just a few weeks.

Following. We'll be on the Magic in just a few weeks.

We're on the same sailing! Our first balcony and first time to buy a spa package. I'm so excited I can barely contain myself!

Following your review!! My BFF and I finished our second cruise on the Magic as of last month. And we are also in Virginia Beach...

Morning or evening service' date=' so it begins.

 

Hope Joe will not get nervous with you following closely:)[/quote'] just curious- our last cruise with carnival was 3 years and we had our cabin cleaned both in the morning and night- if you choose only the morning they don’t come back until the following morning?? No night service to pick up the used towels and turn down the bed and put the towel animals on the bed??

just curious- our last cruise with carnival was 3 years and we had our cabin cleaned both in the morning and night- if you choose only the morning they don’t come back until the following morning?? No night service to pick up the used towels and turn down the bed and put the towel animals on the bed??

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Morning or evening service' date=' so it begins.

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Hope Joe will not get nervous with you following closely:)

I would have immediately called Guest Services to find out when Carnival changed their policy. Their answer would have been they haven't and then I would have Michael speak to them so they can straighten him out.

OP said it was their second cruise. They didn't know any better.

Now they will be better informed.

Great start so far, looking forward to reading more!

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Following along.

You can still choose both even if your steward doesn't initially offer you that option.

 

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As I stated before, this was our 2nd cruise so my expectations were based on Glory, and they were set quite high. I am however a flow with it kind of person, I'm just happy to be on vacation and cut off from technology. Secretly, even more excited to have my kids disconnected from technology (insert evil laugh here). ;p And no I do not purchase any type of internet or Carnival Hub package. I will say though that it kind of irritates me that they ask what you want regarding service if both morning and evening are the "expectation", to me when the staff asks that question they are giving the impression that there is only one option.

My Thoughts (for what its worth)

Honestly, the delay and losing a port did not bother me that much. I would have loved to be on the ship at 1130 as scheduled but it is what it is and I hope the person that had the medical emergency is okay. I have never visited St. Thomas so I don't know what I missed out on....I guess I'll just have to go on another cruise to find out. So for missing St. Thomas we gained $58.64 per person (refund of port fees and the onboard credit given). Two days later we received another credit of $14.43 per person, no idea what it was for and I didn't ask. :) :confused:

Bottomless Bubbles

I purchased for the two 15 year olds at $39.85 per person. Each soda with the added gratuity is $2.88 so the boys would need to drink roughly 14 glasses each. In review of our bill the boys drank 40, so for us it was worth the cost. We did not purchase it for 18 year old, however as the cost is $52.50 and the cost would not have been worth it. Instead we prepurchased a 12 pack of water at $4.50 to be delivered to the room and brought on a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper for him.

Adult Drinking

This cruise we did not purchase the Cheers Program, honestly I thought it just prompted us to drink more to break even and I don't really drink. As I go through this review I will figure out right along with you if we saved money by not purchasing. We did bring on two bottles of wine for both elegant nights.

Day 1, I had the Red Frog Special drink and my husband had the Red Frog Special drink and two Crown and Coke's....Total 44.30.

Overall our cruise is starting off just fine, for us anyways. Lets just say the line at Customer Service was quite LONG that evening!! To each is own.

Still doing laundry.....ugh....so I will continue tomorrow with our two Sea Days!

Thanks for the review.

I was on the Magic last November and we were asked about the stateroom cleaning then. I told my cabin steward I wanted twice a day and he said that would be no problem. The only thing we really didn't like was the nightly entertainment. We used to sail Carnival exclusively but then switched to the big Royal Caribbean ships and we feel the show quality to be much better on those ships. My sister and her family are on the Magic right now. Niece got married on the ship before it sailed.

enjoying the read thus far, cant wait until August to sail with her...thank you

Thanks for reviewing...looking forward to more!