the_lovely_voyage

We gussied up for the first elegant night and headed down to dinner. We were standing in the atrium on deck 3 in a line that seemed super long and wasn't moving at all, which seemed odd since the dining room was open. We finally realized we were in a line for a photo op and not the line to enter the dining room. Whoops!! To our credit, the two lines were blending together but once we discovered our mistake and scooted over to the correct line, things moved quickly and we were seated shortly after, at 6:13. We quickly noticed that service was VERY slow. It took us about 30 minutes to receive our appetizers, and we finally received our entrees at 7:15pm, a full hour after we entered the restaurant. I'm not sure what the issue was but it was very frustrating.

I really need to figure out how to ask people to take a picture of us without feeling bad about it, because no one wants to see a million selfies:

Elegant Night, American Feast:

The dessert menu that I screen-shotted from the HUB App since we missed dessert:

The first night of the American Feast did bring us the cranberry bread rolls which I love. My husband had the fried oysters and said they were good but it was a small serving. He also had the sea bass ("delicious, well cooked, well seasoned, potatoes pretty decent") and the spaghetti carbonara ("nice a creamy, lacked real flavor other than the egg and cheese"). He did regret getting two entrees but he polished them off. I had the Italian wedding soup for my appetizer and found it to be mediocre and maybe undersalted/underseasoned. I also had the lobster which was good but not super memorable and the shrimp were large and tasty. It wasn't a very filling plate but I do appreciate being able to eat lobster and not pay for it!

My husband's two entrees:

The look of regret at ordering too much food:

We had to skip dessert since we really wanted to see 88 Keys and the service took so long it was almost showtime. We got a great seat on deck 4, and I absolutely agree that this classic style of theatre is way better than the Vista theatre. 88 Keys was an AWESOME show, and I'm so glad we saw it! It was totally worth missing dessert, lol. The lead male singer was phenomenal and the two female singers were fantastic too. My husband loved the choreography and the set design, and was very impressed by the show.

After the show, we found some dessert in the Lido Marketplace to satisfy our sweet tooth (...sweet teeth?). We sat in the Ocean Plaza and listened to Hitsville with Whiskey Business and Tower of Brass. Oh wow they were super talented!! The saxophonist was crazy good. Like, hot damn! We had a blast listening to music and playing cards for a bit before heading to the Punchliner. We saw Michael Issac at 10pm and he was hilarious. I really wish they did more than 30 minutes of a show, I seriously need more comedy and laughter in my life. I'll have to look this guy up online to get another dose of hilarity. We headed to the cabin to read and watch TV after the show and rested up for another day at sea.

UP NEXT: Monday, Sea Day

In my last review on the Vista, I wrote about our first balcony room as a splurge item since it was our honeymoon. I also wrote that while we liked the balcony and were glad we bought it, we didn't think that we would be buying one in the future. We didn't feel like we used it enough to get our money's worth, and we'd be sticking to oceanview rooms. Well, fast-forward to February 2018 when I got an upsell email from Carnival to get a balcony room for super cheap, so I went for it. I'm not entirely sure why but I did- whoops! We had to make a conscious effort to use the balcony but we definitely did use it more than on the Vista and I actually liked our balcony up on deck 6 better since it was further from the water and therefore a lot more quiet. I also felt more safe in this balcony than the previous one. We sat on the balcony for a while and talked about life, as married couples do, and enjoyed our time together.

My husband looking out from our balcony. That water is so unreal!

(Yay Hawkeye tattoo)

Enjoying our balcony!

At 1:40 we headed up to the water park. Well, my husband went to the water park and I camped out in a clamshell on the Serenity deck. While I was relaxing and reading, my husband was doing the hard work of filming his rides on the two waterslides. It took him about 30 minutes to wait in line and ride both rides before returning to the clamshell. The first ride he did recorded fine, but the second one stopped right as he started the ride, which was weird and unfortunate. Guess that means more water park later in the week! My husband said both of the rides were fun, but the Twister (yellow slide) was better. He also said the lines moved pretty quickly. We must've fallen asleep in the clamshell because we were waking up at 3pm and headed to the deli in the lido to grab a quick meal. The deli doesn't have clear lines of where to order, who is next, where to wait, etc., so it was a little chaotic. I had the turkey sandwich on a pretzel roll, which was good, and my husband had the falafel which was just okay. Pro Tip: get the truffle aioli and use it on your fries. That was amazing!

Waterslide time!

Here's my husband going on the Drainpipe! (Make it full screen for better viewing):

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We grabbed frozen yogurt from the self-service machine and went down to the Ocean Plaza to read before playing two rounds of trivia: TV theme music and 90's music. We did terribly, but no worries, you'll read about our trivia success later in the week! We decided to go to the cabin to relax before getting ready for dinner. I had read on Cruise Critic that the Carnival TV channel options are continuously getting smaller and more limited, and that was very apparent on the Magic. There were maybe 15 channels that were about Carnival stops/excursions/advertising, and maybe 8-10 stations that aired other content, but usually nothing desirable. While hanging out in our room, we were talking about how friendly the staff has been, as is Carnival's standard. Our one letdown so far was our room steward who wasn't very chatty, which was slightly disappointing. We love seeing our room steward in the hallway and sharing small talk about our day or how the trip is going, but we usually just exchanged "hellos" or "good mornings." Other than that, we had great service from our steward and we have no complaints.

Our room steward always made awesome towel animals, starting with the elephant:

June 17th, 2018- Day at Sea

We enjoyed sleeping in a bit and woke up around 8:30 to get ready for our first day at sea. We looked out our balcony in the morning and noticed we were going really slowly, which was weird because we hadn't ever seen a ship move that slow during a sea day. It definitely seemed to indicate something was malfunctioning with the propulsion/engine system. As a side note about our room, 6434, the main overhead lights took a long time to turn on. It wasn't a huge deal but certainly made us think that the lights were broken a few times. The vanity lights turned on fast so we used those a lot so we didn't need to stand in the dark for ~30 seconds.

As we were headed out the door to get breakfast, we found an updated shore excursion list in our mailbox. We had planned to go to the Shore Excursion desk that day to check on our Amber Cove excursion, so this was perfect that the info came to us. We noticed that our excursion was still happening (Yay!) but it was scheduled for the time we had our couples massage booked. The itinerary change moved around the port days, so we had previously scheduled the massage for the afternoon of San Juan, but now that it was on the Amber Cove day, we had an issue. We went to the spa to reschedule our couples massage from 3 to 4 and headed down to breakfast.

Just look at how calm the ocean is!

The Tides aft pool again on our way to breakfast. We saw this view many times over the week since we always walked from our room on 6 aft to the food on 10.

The lido area at 9:30 on the first sea day:

If you've read my previous reviews, you know that we LOVE a good Blue Iguana Cantina breakfast, so we had been looking forward to our huevos rancheros and burritos for a long time before the trip. The time had finally come! My husband got in his line for the breakfast burrito, and I headed to the other counter to get my huevos rancheros. The worker asked me how many I wanted and how I wanted my eggs, which confused me because on the Liberty and Vista, I just said huevos rancheros please and I received my food. I stumbled my way through answering the questions, got my food, and found a seat. Unfortunately the food wasn't as good as I remembered from my two previous cruises so that was a sad start to the day. My husband loved his burrito though, so that's good! We walked around the ship enjoying the weather and sat outside reading for a bit before heading to Trivial Pursuit in the Ocean Plaza at 11. We totally under-performed but we love trivia so we still had fun.

We sat on the lanai (deck 5) for a while reading and soaking up the sun before getting BBQ for lunch. I don't want to give away the best-kept-secret of newer Carnival ships, but since you're reading along, you must be pretty awesome, so I will. If you need somewhere to sit, the lanai is a fantastic place to find beach chairs to lay out and catch some rays while also enjoying some quiet time away from the hairy chest contest or other lido deck games. We probably sat on the lanai almost every day of the cruise, and rarely sat on the lido deck because it was so packed. The BBQ line was shorter than the Vista, which was nice, and it moved quickly so my husband only waited a few minutes before returning with a plate full of food.

Here's a short compilation of the Lido deck (from embarkation day, whoops) and the ocean on our sea day. (Make it full screen for better viewing)

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I really enjoyed your Vista review and was happy to find this one. You do a great job on your reviews! Totally sucks that y'all missed St. Thomas. That is one of our favorite ports, so hopefully you guys will get another chance to go there soon. Thanks for taking the time to post the info and pics from your cruises.

Aww that's so sweet! That really means a lot, thank you. I hope you enjoy this review too!

great review and photos!

Thank you! Very happy you're reading along.

Loving this! Looking at the Magic next June out of Fort Lauderdale, it’s an 8 day Eastern Caribbean cruise

I appreciate that! Maybe this cruise will help sway you into booking! :halo:

Sorry to hear you missed the port you were so looking forward to visiting. St. Thomas is our favorite port, we have visited 5 times.

Our second visit we discovered St. John and the beaches. We have gone to Trunk Bay or did some snorkeling off a catamaran each time since.

That all sounds so amazing. We can't wait to get to St. Thomas, hopefully sooner rather than later! It was going to be our first time there and we had an excursion booked to go to Magen's Bay and Paradise Point, which we desperately wanted to go to. :loudcry:

Thanks for your review. I’m new to Cruise Critic.

We were on the same cruise and were equally bummed about St Thomas and agree that the OBC was not enough. I realize it covers the port taxes they didn’t have to pay, but what about my lost embark day including pre paying for Cheers for the lost 1st day.

We made the best of it but had hoped Carnival would have been a little more equitable given it was their own propulsion system issue.

Hey fellow cruiser, welcome to CC! I totally agree about the compensation not being strong enough, and I didn't even think about the lost time on Cheers, that's a good point. The issue with dropping St. Thomas is definitely on Carnival and the higher ups didn't seem to understand the gravity of their decision. I hope you enjoy reading along!

subscribing looking forward to your review

We're on the Magic in August. Loving your review! Great photos!!

Looking forward to your review.

Huge thanks to all of you! So happy you're joining me in remembering this awesome trip! :D

Loving your review! We sail on the Magic in August on the same itinerary.

Thank you, glad you're reading along! Hopefully this helps get you excited for the cruise!

subscribed, were on the Magic in september for the first time. Did you guys have Cheers or just paid for drinks as you go?

Thanks so much! We paid for drinks as we consumed them. We have purchased Cheers/other beverage packages on other lines before and ultimately found that we felt too pressured to drink all the time to get our money's worth, especially on port days and towards the end of the cruise.

I also did some math after our honeymoon on the Vista: We spent an average of $58 per day ondrinks, total between us. The drink package is currently $52 a day per person (when purchased online),so $104 total. We definitely would not have gotten our money’s worth, and we definitely consumed a fair amount of drinks between 4 sea days and 3 port days.

Loving your review, very cute couple! Can't wait for more.

That's so sweet, thank you! I'm happy you're following along!

We just Booked the Magic again today,

Awesome, hopefully this review will get you excited about your trip :)

Loving your review! Looking forward to more!

Thank you very much! I'm eager to put more out today.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for reading along

Great start! I love your reviews.

That makes me so happy, thank you!

Looking forward to your review!

Thank you for reading the start!

I was on the cruise the week after you! I started reading on your blog because I want to read your other reviews and posts too. Keep em coming!

Thanks for reading along on the blog, I'm loving your comments! I hope your time on the ship was just as "Magical," although I did read your comment about St. Thomas being cancelled for you too! :mad:

Great start! I love your reviews. It was your Vista review that almost had me booking a cruise on that ship! I’m sure I said it before, but you guys are seriously the cutest couple!

You are so sweet, I really appreciate that! Thanks for coming back to read another review :D

Great start! Looking forward to more :)

Thanks so much, I hope you enjoy the rest!

The Piano Bar, deck 5 aft:

UP NEXT: Sunday, 6/17, Sea Day

Actually a big fan of the decor in the Lido Marketplace:

If you ever need to hold a conference on the Magic:

Showtime Theater, which is infinitely better than the Vista's theatre:

The "Sail Away" party. Our Cruise Director was "Cookie" and he can be spotted in the band's overhang with the red hat and microphone. Overall, he was a blast!

The fun walkway into the Spotlight Lounge where Punchliner comedy is held:

Entrance for the SkyCourse is up a level from the main deck and near the giant chess set:

Rain in the distance that would push the Sail Away party inside to the Atrium:

Pretty empty Lido deck....it wouldn't stay that way for the rest of the week though!

Muster Drill was at 6:15pm (our station was in the Southern Lights dining room) and then we walked around the ship some more. We were told that the dining facilities would all open at 7pm, and that anyone could use either dining room that night or eat in the Lido. We had Your Time Dining but weren't up for a full sit-down meal, so we went to the Lido around 7:30pm to grab dinner. The lines were ridiculous, as they only had one side of the marketplace open, and it took us 20 minutes to get through the line to even reach the food. I'm not sure if staff didn't anticipate this many people going to the Lido for dinner, but seeing these lines felt like a bad omen. After dinner we sat in the Red Frog Pub for a few hours to play cards and listen to music before walking around the ship more then heading to our room to unpack and lay down. As a piece of foreshadowing, thankfully embarkation day was the only stressful one, and the rest of the cruise was a great improvement from today.

We accidentally discovered this awesome staircase near the spa, which we ended up using a few more times because it was so cool:

The cool elevator to go along with it:

We ended up in the atrium and did some people watching. It paid off when we saw this young boy enter the atrium, stare up, and drop his jaw. His excitement and awe at seeing the ship for the first time reminded me of my first cruise and how impressive everything was- I had the exact same reaction. We eventually headed to our room, dropped off our carry-ons, and got ready to explore. While in the room, our checked luggage was dropped off, which seemed really fast but welcomed. We were the chosen ones! After visiting our room, we wandered around the ship a bit more while being 40 pounds lighter and having less shoulder strain.

6434 port aft balcony:

The safe took me an extra second to find so I wanted to highlight it. The mini-fridge was in the cabinet to the left of it. We had Fun Times delivered but they were for the original boarding time plans and the entertainment schedule was for the original itinerary, but we did later receive updated copies.

My husband isn't a big fan of the atrium decor on Carnival ships and thinks they're pretty garish, but I think it's unique:

Exercise section next to the running track:

SkyCourse! We finally did this for the first time and will be reviewed on one of the sea days:

Saturday, June 16th, Embarkation Day!

What a cliffhanger to leave you all on from the Pre-Cruise post (although kudos to you if you read ahead on the blog!)

If you skimmed that last post and didn't read it, I suggest you click back and go through it, because who doesn't love some good drama?

We woke up Saturday morning and realized it's finally cruise day! We also remembered that the hotel doesn't serve complimentary breakfast (Come on, just give us some waffles and cereal...) so we dug into our stash of Belvita bars and cold-brew coffee we purchased the day before. While getting ready for the day and packing up, I received a text and email from Carnival with the heartbreaking news: Due to "an issue impacting our maximum cruising speed," the ship wouldn't be in until early afternoon. Also due to this issue, "we will be unable to sustain the required speed to deliver a four port itinerary. Consequently, we will need to cancel our call in St. Thomas." UM EXCUSE ME? So due to a broken ship, we can't go to the one place we extremely wanted to visit? At this point, the issue has nothing to do with the medical emergency that happened yesterday; it solely revolves around a poorly functioning propulsion problem and that is 100% on Carnival's shoulders. Their compensation? Onboard credit of $65 per person plus a refund of taxes and fees and previously booked shore excursions. Before anyone gets on me, I've read the ticket contract, I know that it says they have the right to change the itinerary with no compensation, I get it. But when a majority of the people we ended up meeting said they booked that cruise because of the stop in St. Thomas, I don't feel like $65 is enough compensation. In addition to this terrible news, the new check-in time is from 3-6pm, four hours after the original start time.

The scene looks like this: My husband is fuming and I'm really sad, and neither of us talked for a few minutes, until I realized that we have a shuttle that's supposed to pick us up at 11:15, but now we can't arrive until 3pm. My husband calls GoPortCanaveral to see what to do, and they said they aren't adjusting their schedule and they'd pick us up at 11:15. I've read enough on Cruise Critic to know what would happen in that scenario: A) we get to the port and they tell us we can't enter that early and to turn around, or B) we get dropped off at the terminal and have to sit outside for 4 hours. Neither of those sounded great so my husband called back and the suggestion was to take the shuttle to the terminal then hang out at a restaurant nearby, such as Fish Lips. I already knew those restaurants were nowhere near the terminal and after a quick maps search, discovered that they were 3 miles away, which was certainly not walking distance and I wasn't about to pay for a rideshare to sit at a restaurant for 4 hours. My husband called a third time and said we wouldn't be taking the shuttle to the pier. So now it's about 9:30 in the morning and we need to entertain ourselves until heading to the terminal. We walked on the beach (spotting the Carnival Magic heading north into port), read, played cards in the hotel lobby, and ate lunch at Longboards again.

The beautiful beach just outside of our hotel:

That little speck on the horizon just right of center is the Magic slowly chugging into port:

After some back and forth about when to leave the hotel, I decided to order a Lyft at 2pm. I've also read enough Cruise Critic to know that showing up right at 3 would be a disaster, so I decided we should get a headstart on arriving to the terminal. It's a darn good thing I did! Our driver picked us up at 2:09pm and we had a good conversation as we headed to the terminal. A few miles away from the terminal we suddenly encountered traffic and it wouldn't end until we hopped out of the car, at 3:13pm. What a mess! Our driver was great and patient and I gave him a nice tip for his time and help, especially since a 20 minute ride turned into a 64 minute "adventure." The traffic at the terminal was crazy, and there were police helping to direct cars where to go. We quickly dropped our bags off and got in line outside. It was instantly hot and we were thankful that port staff were handing out bottled water. It surprises me how many people don't know how waiting in line works, so there was a lot of frustration on my part while standing in line. You move up when there's a gap in front of you, and you don't allow a group of people to cut in line. Ugh. We waited about 25 minutes in line before making it into the terminal, at 3:45pm, and received an updated itinerary:

Saturday- Embarkation

Sunday and Monday- Sea Days

Tuesday- San Juan 8a-3p

Wednesday- Amber Cove 9a-6p

Thursday- Grand Turk 7a-4p

Friday- Sea Day

Saturday-Debarkation

I was less than thrilled to have two sea days in the beginning and only one at the end, I think we lost an hour at San Juan, and Grand Turk was the only port to not get moved around. My husband was still incredibly ticked off and wasn't happy to see the new itinerary. We're given boarding zone 25 and sat and talked to a newlywed couple for about 30 minutes before hearing our number. At 4:25pm, we were walking up the gangway and onto our floating home for the week! To end all of that drama on a positive note, I will say this is the first time in 10 cruises that a situation like this has occurred (although our honeymoon did have the entire itinerary re-written). We stepped onto the Magic and knew we were fortunate to be there and to be sailing off for 7 days of vacation, regardless of the itinerary change, and we were determined to have a good time. All of the port staff we met were friendly and patient, and we tried to give that in return. It wasn't any single crew member's fault that St. Thomas was dropped, and they probably had a nightmare of a time that morning with angry cruise passengers debarking late, so we weren't in any place to add to the frustration.

It was weird boarding the ship so late, and when I kept looking at my watch and realizing it was 4:30 and we hadn't done anything yet, we rushed to the Tides Aft bar to get the party started. We walked up to the bar and my husband leans over to me, asking: "Doesn't that bartender look familiar? Where do we know him from?" when the lightbulb goes on and he answered his own question: RedFrog Brewery on the Vista, where we basically lived for 50% of the time we were on the ship in November 2017 for our honeymoon. Suresh, the bartender, looks up at us and freaks out, exchanging laughs and handshakes, saying he has goosebumps and that he was excited to see us again. Now, I think it's pretty awesome to be recognized by a bartender from our last cruise 7 months ago, regardless of what that says about us. We talked with Suresh for a bit and he made us two mango "Kiss on the Lips" frozen drinks and off we went to see the ship.

We're finally on the ship!

View from the aft:

I am starting my Magic review on my blog, but also wanted to share it here. In case you'd like to follow along on the blog, here's the link to the first post in that review:

http://thelovelyvoyage.blogspot.com/2018/06/carnival-magic-june-2018-intro-and-pre.html

Introduction:

Photo Review of the Carnival Magic sailing from June 16-23, 2018.

The Cruise:

Checking out St. Thomas was high on our priority list so in May 2017 we booked a 7-day Eastern Caribbean on the Carnival Magic for June 2018. This itinerary included 4 stops: Amber Cove (Dominican Republic), St. Thomas, San Juan, and Grand Turk; it also placed a sea day on either side of the 4 ports. My husband and I haven't been to any of those ports so we were very excited to explore 4 new places! We were originally booked in an oceanview on deck 7 forward overlooking the “secret deck” but I received an upsell email a few months before the cruise to get a balcony for a small price increase. I snagged it and we ended up in 6434, a port aft balcony (that’s left back for all those non-ship readers). We’ve never had a room close to the elevators and stairwell but it ended up being awesome and not too noisy. As you’ll read in the Pre-Cruise section below, we were thrown a very unexpected and frustrating curve ball the morning of the cruise that lead to a few timing and itinerary changes. It definitely wasn’t the way we wanted to start our trip but we still had a great cruise.

Who We Are:

We’re newlyweds! My husband and I got married in October 2017. We are both originally from the Chicago area but are living and loving life out in Iowa (Go Hawkeyes!). We're also recent first time home-owners and were looking forward to relaxing on this cruise after all the craziness of moving. We are in our mid-20s, and this was my 10th cruise and his 6th. I began cruising with my parents in 2007 and introduced my now-husband to ship life in 2015. It’s very safe to say that cruising plays a huge role in our life and we’re always looking for the next adventure.

The Equipment:

Some of the photos were taken on our Sony a5100 mirrorless digital camera, a little gift we bought ourselves since we knew we'd want to properly document our cruising adventures in the future. We also have a YI 4K Action Camera for videos and some of the pictures, including waterproof casing and head and chest mounts to get some awesome footage. The rest of the photos were either taken on an iPhone 7 or a Samsung Galaxy S7.

This Review:

This review will cover our pre-cruise experience and the cruise and ship itself, including menus, Fun Times, and lots of photos. Of course opinions will be peppered throughout but I think that I’m fair enough that the negative opinions get outweighed by the positive experiences. I don’t want to tell you “how it is,” but only give insight and explanations of the things we encountered, struggled with, and loved. That's not to say there aren't some negatives we encountered (which will be covered), but let's all take a second to realize that it's hard to complain when someone else cooks and cleans for you 7 days in a row. Oh and floating on the ocean while basking in the sun instead of working is a pretty nice benefit too.

Pre-Cruise:

We always fly down to Florida the day before a cruise in order to mitigate weather issues and airline delays, so we drove from Iowa to the Chicago area on Thursday night before making our way at 5am to the Midway Park Saver lot on the morning of Friday, June 15th. They charge $12 a day to park in a lot across the street from the airport and this was our second time using it. We haven't had any issues either time and would recommend it to any readers in the Chicago area flying out of Midway. We arrived to the lot, grabbed a spot, and walked over to the airport (they also have a free shuttle if needed). My carry-on bag got selected for extra screening because of my iPad, but once they checked it out, we were good to go. We waited at our gate for about an hour before boarding started, and our plane left on time with no issues (yay!). We almost exclusively fly Southwest (because I'm cheap) which allows passengers to pick their own seats when they board. Imagine our surprise and delight when we saw seats in the exit row that were open. Extra leg room, here we come!

Happiness from the exit row! Also, we strongly represent the Iowa Hawkeyes whenever we travel, so this won't be the last time you see our black and gold pride:

After the brief 2.5 hours on the plane, we landed at MCO (Orlando) and headed to pick up our bags. I bought a Fly, Snooze, Cruise package from GoPortCanaveral, which was our second or third time using their company. The package includes: transportation from MCO to your hotel, hotel stay, hotel to the cruise ship, and cruise ship to MCO. We met at the designated spot in the transportation area and our shuttle was there within 10 minutes of us stepping outside. The passenger van was fine, although the air vents in the ceiling were all broken so there was constant and non-directable freezing air blowing on us for 45 minutes. I'm basically a cold-blooded animal and would live under a blanket and heat lamp if I could, so it was a less-than-comfortable drive because of that. We arrived at the Hilton Oceanfront Cocoa Beach around noon and they had a room ready for us. After dropping off our bags and freshening up, we headed downstairs to one of their restaurants at the hotel- Longboards Tiki Beach Grille. There were a ton of options on the menu and it was hard to choose, but the food was great. We ate under an umbrella and took in the warm and salty air; it was perfect and made me very happy (as the aforementioned cold-blooded reptile-type). While eating lunch, we received an email from Carnival letting us know that there was a medical emergency on the current sailing of the Magic and they needed to make a medical debark, resulting in a later arrival time into Port Canaveral. Of course I was concerned about the passenger with the medical emergency, but it didn't seem like the ship would be in too late, we were still 20+ hours out from the scheduled arrival. The email also said we'd receive more information in about 5 hours, so at this point all we could do is wait.

Sitting out at the Longboards Tiki Beach Grille:

We treated ourselves to gelato at the hotel and it was pretty fantastic:

After lunch we hiked half a mile to Publix for pop and Red Bull to carry on the ship. It was a little toasty outside, but we can't really complain when we're in Florida in June. Upon returning to our hotel, we watched TV and took a nap before waking up to eat dinner. There were huge storms rolling in so we cancelled our previous plans to walk to dinner down the beach and ordered a pizza instead. While we were waiting for the pizza to arrive, my husband went to the hotel bar to get a few drinks and said it was crazy there because only one bartender was working. Seems like a poor plan on someone's part for a Friday night. While we were eating pizza and watching TV in our room, the storms took out the TV signal for a long time and we were left feeling pretty confused why a hotel would purchase satellite in Florida given the climate. We received an update from Carnival that provided little-to-no actual information (so not really an update). The email simply said they will continue to try to make up time and to not head to the terminal in the morning until we hear from them at 9am. We kept our fingers crossed that all would work out and we'd hear good news in the morning.

Spoiler: we didn't.

An artsy photo to sum up our dining experience:

UP NEXT: Saturday, June 16th, Embarkation

The picture does not say that shows occur every hour. 9:30 show ends at 10. Next show is at 11:30...and nobody stuck around for an hour and a half.

 

The Freedom picture you posted clearly shows there are shows at 7:30, 8:30, 9:30, 10:30 and sometimes 11:30. There are two performers and they alternate show times. So yes, when the 8:30 show gets out at 9 in the punchliner, there is another show at 9:30.

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Our shows on the Magic last month definitely weren’t two hours apart (nor are what the picture above shows...which actually says shows happen every hour). For the Magic, our shows we’re almost always 10pm and the 11:15, so that leaves about 45 minutes from the end of one show to the start of the second. The last night was 9:45 and 10:45, so an even shorter wait time.

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I was just on the Magic two weeks ago and we were allowed to stay in the venue between shows. I would definitely recommend showing up early (like 20+ minutes) to get a seat though. It filled up quickly and we had to stand at the bar for one or two shows.

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On this sailing and also incredibly disappointed. St Thomas was the main reason we chose this itinerary and was going to be the highlight of our cruise. I totally understand the medical emergency was no one’s fault, however someone in administration made a poor choice about which port to cancel. I knew there’d be a significant lack of sympathy on these boards. Fingers crossed the rest of the cruise is extra awesome.

Ramokk, math says we only get $65pp....

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The environment is crying right now. Please use reusable bottles or cups.

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Do you remember (or have any photos) of the scotch and whiskey prices? That's what my husband drinks and we were trying to remember. Our last cruise we did the drink package and thinking of not purchasing it for this next one.

I don’t have any pictures, sorry! I’m going on the Magic in 9 days and will create an updated drink menu post and can link it here!

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We marked “honeymoon” on ours in November and received a $50 spa gift card from our room steward and we reached out to John Heald and received chocolate covered strawberries and a ship on a stick.

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If you have YTD on the hub app you can schedule your time and they will buzz you when your table is ready. This is a new feature for Horizon.

This sounds exciting!

Do you have a link to a news article or post where I can read more about this?

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Here a quote from my November 2017 Vista Cruise blog:

“We were told that for $200, we could get 10 pictures on our phone, those same 10 on a USB stick, 2 large printouts, and a canvas photo. That's outrageously priced. We were also told that we could buy a digital photo on our phone for $15, and printouts started at $20.”

I know that doesn’t fully answer your question but I hope it’s a start!

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Thank you! I’m doing this itinerary in June so this is fantastic!

I am a little concerned that Amber Cove was missed due to wind. Does anyone know if that’s common? (Example: I know Grand Cayman has a higher chance to get skipped due to weather and water conditions)

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