Spring Break Magic - April 2018

Great review!! We are sailing on August 18 and can’t wait. Quick question in regard to leaving the ship- we have a 12:20 flight out of MCO and scheduled to meet our shuttle at 9am- do you think we will have any problems being off the ship within an hour of arriving and getting to the airport in time to check in?

Thank you so much for the informative Magic review. I will be on the Magic April 21. Yes that is in one week! So excited!! So again thank you. [emoji106]

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What a great review!! We sail on her May 25th and even though we are not going to the same ports, I'm saving this thread for the future. You have so much useful info and it was wonderful! It takes a lot of time to write a review so thank you for doing this!

So glad your family made a lot of wonderful memories!

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we have a 12:20 flight out of MCO and scheduled to meet our shuttle at 9am- do you think we will have any problems being off the ship within an hour of arriving and getting to the airport in time to check in?

We were on same trip, we had FTTF (and did self assist) last week, we were off the ship and in our car (parked at port) at 7:06 AM. Those that did self assist without FTTF but had an early flight were next to get get off, but not sure what time they actually left but it was still early. If you do this then you will probably be good, have a car waiting if you are being picked up.

We did have a great time...on and off board.

With regards to the cabin, the noise is really immaterial. You hear some scraping noises after midnight every night as the crew is trying to clean up for the night. Then you'll hear it at about 7 or 8AM as folks are trying to set up for the day...or maybe not at all if you're dead asleep to the world. The noises last less than 5-10 seconds at a time. You may hear it a bit more on the balcony, but it's still not a lot. We loved this balcony and introduced our cousins to it during our trip. They were in complete awe and came to visit us a few times during our trip...I think their next balcony may be an AFT. We actually fell asleep a couple of times while sitting on the chaise lounges.

We are night owls, and I am always up early, so the noise shouldn't be an issue for me :) My husband can sleep through anything, so I'm not worried about him :')

Thank you so much for the information. We just reserved our car service from the port to the airport. We are doing self assist but don’t have FTTP. What a great review cool cruiser gave. Very informative and thought out. Any other suggestions such as the hotel you stayed in would be great to hear about..

Thanks again for a concise, yet informative review. Can't wait till Magic in October, although we'll be doing the Eastern Caribbean run out of Miami.

Thank you for the very informative and encouraging review.

Thank you for your review.

Keith

Excellent review! Very informative!

The Magic was our first “large extended family” cruise. We LOVED it! There were 20 of us, and we all had positive things to say (well, except my parents that are avid Holland America cruisers).

Great review!! We are sailing on August 18 and can’t wait. Quick question in regard to leaving the ship- we have a 12:20 flight out of MCO and scheduled to meet our shuttle at 9am- do you think we will have any problems being off the ship within an hour of arriving and getting to the airport in time to check in?

Thanks! Drazil65 gave you some great information on departing the ship for an early flight. We usually make sure that our flight out of town is later in the afternoon or even the next day depending on the financial impact and benefit. We've never tried leaving the ship early.

Thank you so much for the informative Magic review. I will be on the Magic April 21. Yes that is in one week! So excited!! So again thank you. [emoji106]

Thanks! So glad you found my notes useful.

Thank you so much for the information. We just reserved our car service from the port to the airport. We are doing self assist but don’t have FTTP. What a great review cool cruiser gave. Very informative and thought out. Any other suggestions such as the hotel you stayed in would be great to hear about..

Hi, travelqueen101. I had my hands full this weekend. Had to spend our first weekend home out of town for my kids' State Cup soccer tournament. I'll have post-cruise notes coming soon. Today...if I can manage it.

Thanks again for a concise, yet informative review. Can't wait till Magic in October, although we'll be doing the Eastern Caribbean run out of Miami.

Thanks! Hope you have a great trip the Eastern Caribbean.

Thank you for the very informative and encouraging review.

Thank you for your review.

Keith

Thanks for the kind note!

Excellent review! Very informative!

 

The Magic was our first “large extended family” cruise. We LOVED it! There were 20 of us, and we all had positive things to say (well, except my parents that are avid Holland America cruisers).

Thanks, momof4girls! We loved it, too. We all had a great time.

Post-Cruise Happenings:

It was way cheaper for us to fly home the next evening than fly home direct. Even when you factor in the cost of hotel, meals, and extra ancillary expenses. So we opted to spend some extra time in Orlando because we wanted to be closer to the airport.

My cousin found the Hilton Orlando resort (on Destination Parkway) and it had a great pool and a lazy river. It was ideal because we wanted to slow down and just relax before going home. We arrived at about 10:30AM and started the check-in process. Even though our rooms weren't ready, we were assigned room numbers and were able to walk over to enjoy the hotel facilities. The hotel has a basketball court, volleyball court, corn hole, giant chess, ping pong tables, foosball tables, water slide, pool, lazy river with inflatables, hot tubs, firepit, and a poolside cafe and bar. They even have cabanas available for rent.

The hotel pool area is currently undergoing some updates and renovations. Part of the pool area is closed off and you have to walk the long way around to get to the restrooms, changing area, and cafe/bar. It's not material, but worth noting.

Our rooms were probably available within an hour of us arriving at the hotel. We were actually at the pool relaxing when we received text messages. My cousin and I walked over to get our keys and to take a look at our rooms...and to turn the room AC down to 65 degrees because we love a cool hotel room. The rooms were nicely appointed with fluffy beds, a desk area, an armchair, and a large bathroom. Everything seemed to have been updated recently. Part of our traveling crew were leaving early, so they actually went upstairs (and used my cousin's room) to get ready to depart for the airport.

We enjoyed a leisurely lunch poolside. They have servers walking around to check on guests and to take orders. We ordered Caesar salad, flatbread pizzas, burgers, a couple of kids' meals (chicken fingers and fries), and a Malibu bucket cocktail (made with rum). Everything was pretty solid for hotel food. If you want a larger format pizza, there's a Martketplace cafe inside the hotel that you can order from...they'll make cold sandwiches and salads, too.

Once we had had our fun, we decided to go upstairs, get cleaned up and explore the Universal CityWalk Orlando area about 3 miles away. A short Uber ride later, we found ourselves at a CityWalk much larger than the one we have at home. We walked around to check our options for dinner, took some fun and touristy photos with our families, and found ourselves having dessert first at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium.

It's a dessert mecca. They have a housemade chocolates display, macaron display, fancy desserts display, candy shop, and a sundaes and milkshake shop in addition to the full-service restaurant in the back. We picked up some macarons to-go (they were pretty good!) and we shared a few of their outrageously decorated milkshake jars. They will garnish their milkshakes with full slices of cake, large chocolate chip cookies, and whipped cream piled sky-high. They were impressive. We had a couple of chocolate hazelnut shakes and a Key lime pie shake (garnished with an actual slice of Key lime pie). Both were pretty solid, but be warned, you will be paying about $12 for a milkshake. Even so, both shakes were pretty good and worth the entertainment expense. We're still on vacation...it's fun to have dessert before dinner.

We picked The Cowfish for dinner...with it's amusing selection of burgers, sushi, and more. Clearly, we selected places that we don't see at home...just because we're on vacation and just want to experience new things. There was a short wait, so we took some time and did some shopping at the nearby Universal store.

As soon as we got our text message that our table was ready, we headed over and up the stairs to the patio. Within minutes of being seated, we were treated to a Florida rite of passage...an evening tropical storm. The threat of rain had been present all day with dark clouds littering the sky. There were sporadic drops of rain here and there at the pool, but they would last only seconds or scant minutes at at time. We heard thunder in the distance after being seated. Then there were flashes of lightening. Then the rain started and grew super heavy. And then the wind kicked in. The rain went horizontal, and for about 5 minutes, we were treated to a front row seat of a tropical storm. Super cool for us because we don't get much of this in California. Everyone on the patio got up and rushed inside...except for our table. We took photos and video. The younger kids got a bit scared, but everyone else was in awe.

And as soon as the storm started, it ended just as quickly. The entire patio for The Cowfish cleared out, and we were the only ones left. The staff came quickly to wipe down our table and reset it for our dinner service since some of the table had gotten wet. I think they were appreciative that we decided to stay. We ordered kids' meals, sushi, sashimi, burgers, and snacks. Make sure you read the fine print...the burgers may arrive in sushi form. My son ordered one, and was surprised to get his in sushi form. It tasted good, but he was certainly surprised. We had a fairly decent meal. Did we pay the tourist trap premium? Probably, but the service was good, the food was good, and we got a show before dinner. Vacations are about seeing and doing things together as a family.

We extended our stay with a dayroom at the Hilton for the next day. Our flight wasn't until 8PM, so we literally had all day to kill. We spent it sleeping in, having UberEats deliver us breakfast because the hotel breakfast was way expensive, and chilling at the pool. It was such a good idea...and since we were staying at the hotel, the dayroom only cost us an extra $100. My cousins checked out of their room and we all combined into ours after the luggage had been prepared for the journey home.

We asked A Busy Traveler to pick us up from the hotel at 4PM (that's when dayroom use ends). Our driver was the same driver who picked us up from the airport just 10 days before. He was outside and perfectly on time when we walked out with our luggage. We loaded up and headed to the airport for the journey home.

It's worth noting that the Orlando-MCO TSA line can get long. So that's why we we left for the airport 4 hours before our flight...and because our dayroom use was done. Our friends who had left the day before had warned us that the waits and line was long, so we decided to leave at 4PM instead of 5PM. We arrived at MCO at 4:30PM, got our luggage tags and boarding passes, we let the kids do some airport browsing and shopping, before hopping into the TSA line. We're from L.A., so we're used to lines, but we felt the MCO TSA was way longer than the LAX TSA we had experienced a scant 11 days earlier. The MSO TSA was about 30 minutes. So make sure you plan accordingly.

We had dinner at the airport after we had gone through TSA, and by then it was really time to go home.

It was a great vacation. We have never been gone for 11 days like that ever...and it was exciting and fun. We got to see and experience a lot of things together. And I think we're already talking about where we're cruising to next year...Cuba sounds fun.

Hope you've enjoyed the read. Special thanks to the many reviewers that I read to help develop some of our plans. Thanks to Mitsugirly, Jamman, Wildra...just to name a few. Thanks to the help of the folks from the Port boards. Everyone's insightful tips and notes truly made wrangling our traveling crew a lot easier...and helped make our experience truly rich.

I can’t thank you enough cool cruiser. In all my years cruising, I have never seen anyone write such an incredible and thoughtful review of their cruise. I can’t wait to be on our cruise in August. Thank you again so much.

I can’t thank you enough cool cruiser. In all my years cruising, I have never seen anyone write such an incredible and thoughtful review of their cruise. I can’t wait to be on our cruise in August. Thank you again so much.

Thank you for your kind words. After benefiting from so many other great reviews from the aforementioned folks, I just wanted to pay it forward. Enjoy your cruise in August!

This was an awesome review. Thank you so much for taking the time to do it!

Great review! I am looking at the Magic for March of 2019, your review has helped me decide to go for it :)

Enjoy reading your review of the Magic, as I posted my a while back, as we got off the ship the first part of April.

You mentioned the Deli, and I don't think you seemed to care for it, but then everyone has their "own" opinions, and there is nothing wrong with that. We were very impressed with the deli ourselves. My friend got the tuna sandwich, and I order the BLT. I was impressed especially for my sandwich, and this is the reason why. I knew what they put on the sandwich. I then ASK if I could have a slice of pickle. They had to leave their station and get the pickle for my sandwich, and they did it every time! I say that is going beyond the call of duty. As for the fries, you said they were greasy, yes they are, but we, and I noticed others, loved them!:) When I first saw them, I thought they were onion rings as they looked so good. When I ask for the "onion rings", she told me they were fries. Well all I can say is they were tasty. Now if we had them every day, that might be different, but once in a while, we didn't see any problem.

I haven't got to the part of your review of Costa Maya, but we were disappointed, especially I thought the male-con would be like what I had seen years ago, and it was not. The port part of Costa Maya is very nice, and it was neat to see the flamingos as well.

Great review! I am looking at the Magic for March of 2019, your review has helped me decide to go for it :)

This was an awesome review. Thank you so much for taking the time to do it!

Thanks so much for the kind notes.

We had a great time, JenWag...hope you enjoy it as much as we did.