Before a new school year begins, I write all of the holidays and teacher work days in my agenda, and I break the year into three countdowns: first day of school to winter break, first day after winter break to spring break, and first day after spring break to the last day of school. I'd been counting down the days to spring break since January because I could not wait for this cruise!
As I shared in my last post, we spent the first two days of spring break at WDW, and then last Sunday night, we drove to southern Florida because our cruise was leaving out of Miami. We'd only been to that port once before, and we knew with covid testing protocols prior to boarding, the whole process would be much longer than our previous experience. Our arrival time was 12:30; we got to the port around 11:30, dropped off our luggage, parked in the designated garage, and took a bus back to the terminal, putting us in line around 11:55. We stood in line until 12:30, then were shuffled inside with everyone else who had a 12:30 arrival time for more waiting, then covid testing, then more waiting until our results were available. The relief we felt when both of our tests were negative cannot be overstated! We boarded the ship around 1:40, so all in all, it did not take nearly as long as we had feared.
This was my seventh Disney cruise and C's sixth (you may recall that I went on one with my mom back in 2017) and our second on the Magic, which we hadn't been on since 2016. It is a fabulous ship! It is one of the two smaller ships in the fleet, and I've said it before, but I much prefer the smaller ships. The bigger ships can accommodate 4,000-ish passengers, while the small ships can accommodate 2800-ish passengers. Huge difference! And on our cruise, there were only 1700-ish passengers, so even thought the ship is smaller, it felt incredibly spacious compared to our experience on the Disney Fantasy when it was at full capacity. The biggest difference was on Castaway Cay...it was shockingly unpopulated on both the family and adult beaches and we loved it!
Before I share pics, I have to boast a little about the onboard trivia games. I have only ever won a DCL trivia game once, which was on the Dream in June 2018, and I wanted so badly to win again on this cruise! Well, guess what? I won THREE times: Disney Trivia, Pixar Trivia, and Disney Tunes Trivia! Unfortunately, I had to win a tiebreaker question to secure all three victories, two of which were completely bogus, but I'm still thrilled with outcomes! There were two tweens who C and I secretly named Crabbe and Goyle who were in the first two trivia sessions and who miraculously tied my score, even though it was clear they did not know the answers, kept asking which question we were on, were using their phones, and made several questionable comments that made it blatantly obvious they had no clue what they were doing. How, then, did they tie my score of 18/22 on Disney Trivia? CHEATING. Because of covid protocols, papers were not exchanged, but rather everyone scored their own paper. They just wrote in the answers as the host went over them! The tiebreaker for the Disney Trivia session was "In which land would you find the Mark Twain River Boat?" and while I immediately answered Frontierland, they didn't even have answer to give. Thus, I was victorious and C and I got medals. The next day, at Pixar Trivia, Crabbe and Goyle were there again, and repeated their dishonest nonsense, and they once again just happened to tie my PERFECT score! I'm sure they knew that Carl uses his walker with his left hand and that Merida's father's name is King Fergus, right? Since the host didn't see any of their antics, we went to another tiebreaker, which was "How many minutes in length is the movie Onward?" and this time, we had to write down our answers, with whichever answer was closest being the winner. We guessed 115 minutes and the answer was 112 minutes. Their answer? 35 minutes. Thirty.Five.Minutes. For a full-length film. Ridiculous. Needless to say, we walked away with medals again! The third and final victory was hard won because there was another avid Disney music fan who also scored 27/30, so she and I had to go up in front of the crowd and the first person to answer was the winner. The song I won with? The Rainbow Connection! I mean, there could not have been a more perfect song for me! So we are coming home with six medals! C will tell you I answered most of the questions on my own, but he contributed at critical moments and equally deserves the medals!
Aside from my goal of winning a trivia game, I wanted to get some pics in the kids' club because one of my best friends had shown me pics from her cruise and I discovered there was a Slinky slide on the Magic! On the first day, there were open house hours, so I went and took some pics with my Slinky ears and it is just about the cutest little area you can imagine!
As for the rest of the cruise, it was simply wonderful. So relaxing, with two days at Castaway Cay (there was a port day in Nassau, but we did not get off the ship), incredible service, food, entertainment, and a ship that felt pretty empty for the entire time!
Around the Ship
Restaurants
Characters
Food and Drink
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| we were assigned Table 24 on this cruise... |
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| ...and we realized that we were also assigned Table 24 on our last cruise on the Magic back in March 2016! |
Stateroom
Castaway Cay
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| this water! |
At dinner on our last night, we were chatting with the Head Server, who has been with Disney Cruise Line for well over a decade. While we'd spoken with him throughout the whole cruise, it was at our final dinner that we had a pretty lengthy conversation with him, and he referred to us as "serious cruisers." Please understand, that prior to 2014, I had never once had any interest in going on a cruise. Ever! So for this man, with his impressive experience, to think of us as serious cruisers as a result of our conversations? It was pretty flattering because this is a not a title we thought we would ever hold! I will amend it, however, to "serious Disney cruisers" because Disney Cruise Line has spoiled us for all other cruises!
We have another Disney cruise planned for September, on the fifth and newest ship, the Wish, and we're already looking forward to it! Until then, it's back to reality tomorrow and the countdown to the last day of school begins!
Happy Tails to you!
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