Magical B2B, Turtles, Sharks, Rays and Medical

[sewut]

DH and I just finished a B2B on the Magic. It began on my birthday and ports were Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Roatan, Belize, and Cozumel again. Included are a birthday, snorkeling with turtles, sharks, and rays, and a visit to the medical center. This won't be a picture review, I don't remember how to do pictures.

It all started back in 2013 when Carnival announced that the Future Cruise Certificate program was being discontinued. They had to be used before Dec. 31 and we had one left. We decided to book the Magic for my birthday, January 11, 2015. A few months later, Carnival announced the new 10 and 11 day cruises on the Triumph. We had never been to most of the ports and doing them B2B seemed like the way to do them to avoid having to fly to San Juan. We hate flying and I always get patted down because of my TKR. We tried booking them ourselves online. We wanted to save money, so we were booking a 4J, the interiors with walkway view at the front of the ship. I got one booked, and then the room suddenly became unavailable for the second leg. I called Carnival for help and they said I couldn't do a B2B because of the Jones Act. I argued with him and he got a supervisor who also said I couldn't do it. I knew it could be done because they was a roll call of people who were booked. They wouldn't book it so I said I didn't want the leg I had booked and they canceled it for me. Now we were frustrated. To make ourselves feel better, we added another week onto this cruise making it a B2B. We finally did get the other one booked with the help of a PVP.

Fast forward to January. We were watching the weather and things didn't look good for the drive to Galveston. We live in Kansas, so it's a 12 hour drive. We decided to go down two days early to avoid the bad weather. I called our hotel, and no problems there. We loaded the van and hit the road early Friday morning. We did run into some freezing rain and a few flakes of snow in northern Texas, but otherwise, the trip was uneventful.

[sewut]

We were trying a new hotel, Comfort Inn & Suites Beachfront. I was closer to the port than the hotel we had been using, and had a park and cruise package. Checkin was easy and we booked the 9:30 shuttle as we are Platinum. The park/shuttle package was $50. Our room was on the 3rd floor and had a balcony view of the ocean. It was raining, so a dreary view. We were tired and just ordered a pizza from Papa's and it was delivered to our room and we devoured it. We crashed after that. We aren't party people.

[sewut]

We just laid around on Saturday. We partook of the hotel's free breakfast, which was good and went to Walmart, which was just down the street, for some last minute things and grabbed a couple of sub sandwiches from the deli there for lunch. It was still raining, so we went back to the hotel. I wanted to go in the hotel's indoor pool but DH didn't want to get our suits wet and have to pack wet stuff in the morning. (?) We walked to Golden Corral next door for dinner. I think we watched a movie on tv and then turned in.

[sewut]

Sunday morning. Cruise Day! It was my 64th birthday (yeah old boring people). We had received and email from Carnival that there might be fog, but there wasn't, just a thunderstorm. We went down for breakfast wearing our Carnival Bon Voyage t shirts. We wore matching outfits most of the cruise. Yeah, we were THAT couple. We lugged our luggage downstairs and put a few things in the van that we weren't taking with us. There is covered parking under the hotel and an elevator. Oh, and all the rooms have balconies. At 9:30, the shuttle showed up and we loaded our stuff along we a family group that was going on Navigator of the Sea. We were dropped off first. Porters were still unloading, so we took our luggage to the drop off ourselves and watched them put the orange FTTF tape on it. Then we went to the other end of the building to check in. We went straight to security where they shook every bottle of water, then up the escalator to VIP checkin. We were the third family to check in. There was an orange sticker on the S&S card envelope prompting the rep to tell me happy birthday. He told us there was a generator inspection and there would probably be a two hour delay. He was right. Thank goodness for Kindles. Finally a rep came and got us and led us on the Platinum Parade. Boarding pictures, up the ramp, and we were onboard! doink the card and Welcome home. We headed to our cabin to dump our carryons.

[Jenny in TX]

We loved the Magic! Looking forward to reading the rest of your review.

[sewut]

We had booked a cove balcony that we had stayed in before. We like this cabin because there is a break in the lifeboats above the balcony. We put our cash in the safe and headed to Cucina de Capitano for lunch. We took a couple of Cokes with us and grabbed cups of ice on the way through Lido Marketplace. While we were waiting for our food, we called our kids and let them know we were onboard. After our delicious lunch, we had to get ice cream cones and send pictures to our DGD12 who cried because she couldn't go with us this time. She loved that she could get ice cream whenever she wanted.

When we got back to the room our luggage was there, so I unpacked while DH watched dolphins from the balcony. By the time I was done, it was time for muster. After muster we took a nap before dinner. I took a lot of naps this cruise. I'm still recovering from my knee surgery. We ate in the MDR most nights. This night we were near the galley doors. There was an Asian family at the next table, an older couple and a younger couple. The waiter asked the older woman for her order, and she got very upset and spoke in a very agitated way in Chinese, gesturing to the older gentleman. He ordered for the whole table. I guess women are not supposed to order their own food. I felt sorry for the waiter as they treated him like he had made a faux pas. After we had received our desserts, they brought out a piece of cake with a candle and sang "hobby birdday" to me.

After dinner we went to the welcome aboard show. We haven't been to one in several cruises. We were happy to see the dancers were dressed.Not a fan of the outfits they wore the last show we saw. James Dunn was the CD. He asked who was celebrating something this cruise. He told us to fill out a form at guest services after the show and he would announce it on the Morning Show. After that we went back to the cabin.

[sewut]

We loved the Magic! Looking forward to reading the rest of your review.

 

Thanks Jenny, we love her too.

[sewut]

Monday was a sea day. We had breakfast on Lido and watched the Morning Show on the big screen. James said Happy Birthday to me and several others We had a Cruise Critic meet and greet this morning at the Red Frog Pub. We went to that and met a few people that we waved to when we saw them later on in the cruise. We ate lunch after that and then went to Serenity deck and found a couple of lounge chairs. We read and relaxed for awhile and got a little sunburn. I don't know what else we did, but eventually we went to dress for dinner. We dress up, DH in a tux and I wear a gown. DH always gets lots of compliments, mostly from women whose husbands won't dress up. We had anytime dining and this was the first cruise we have had to wait most nights. We got our pager and sat in the lobby watching people get their picture taken. The wait was especially long tonight. We both had Prime Rib and it was very good. The people at the table next to us thanked us for dressing up and we chatted with them all through dinner. We've lived in Alaska and DH was a Seabee in Vietnam, so he always has something to talk about. After dinner we changed into something comfortable and sat out on our balcony awhile before turning in.

[elainmir]

Happy Birthday Late! And I am loving your review! Don't worry my hubby and dress alike sometimes also much to the dismay of our kids! LOL LOL...

[sewut]

Tuesday was another sea day. We slept in and then went to Lido for breakfast. After breakfast we played some mini golf. I like the Magic's mini golf because it's not up high where it gets so windy. When we got done, I decided to do the rope course. I had done it last time we sailed the Magic, but DH wasn't too keen on me doing it with a fake knee. A year ago when we went to Disney World and then a cruise with DD and GKs I could barely walk, but that didn't stop me from doing all the roller coasters. I'm that kind of old lady. So I got harnessed up and did it. There was a boy, about 13, doing it with me and his Dad was encouraging him. I think I kind of shamed him into continuing. His Dad started cheering for me too. DH took some pictures. That harness doesn't do anything for your figure. It kind of outlines your belly. Those pictures aren't gonna be posted on FB. I will print one for my surgeon though. He's not gonna believe what I've put this knee through.

I don't remember what we had for lunch. I liked the turkey on a country roll and DH liked the turkey wrap at the deli. I didn't have any cheeseburgers at all. They're like hockey pucks. Can't wait to try Guy's next year. Oh! I know what we had! Sea day BBQ! We had it Monday and Tuesday. Try to get a table in the shade, you'll BBQ yourself in the sun out there.

We spent some time on the aft deck with our Kindles after lunch. Probably took a nap before dinner in the MDR. We bought some pictures one of these sea days too.

[sewut]

Happy Birthday Late! And I am loving your review! Don't worry my hubby and dress alike sometimes also much to the dismay of our kids! LOL LOL...

 

Thanks. Isn't it fun to embarrass your kids? We cruised with one of our daughters and she hated it. Then we went to dinner on elegant night and she matched us.lol

[sewut]

Wednesday, Jamaica

Okay, remember this is a B2B and don't judge us for saving a little money here. We didn't do an excursion in Jamaica. We've been there many times and we've climbed the falls, tubed the river and been to Sunset Beach. We waited until the rush died down and just shopped at the port. DH's shirt that goes with my Jamaica print dress was, um, getting a little small. So we got him another one. I got a tie dye sundress to use as a swim coverup. I got a free necklace at the door, so we bought another one just like it, not for us, we don't wear matching jewelry, lol. Remember the DGD12 that cried when we left without her? She's been on two cruises with us. She lived with us until she was 7, and I homeschooled her, so she could go without missing school. Now she and her BFF want to go on a cruise with us. They are saving up for it and so we started collecting stuff for them to give them as encouragement along the way. That's who the necklaces were for. We ended up with 4 Platinum gifts, and two of them will go to them also. They are hanging toiletry bags, pretty nice ones. When we were done shopping, we went back to the ship, had lunch, and had Serenity all to ourselves. We rocked in a hammock for awhile until we both fell asleep. When people started coming back onboard we went down to dress for dinner. We did a little shopping onboard after dinner. I think that was the night I got more charms for my bracelet. That about sums it up for today.

[sewut]

Are you bored yet? We were sure lazy this cruise.

Thursday, Grand Cayman

Today we are going to do something! Shocker! We booked the Turtle Farm excursion through Carnival. We had OBC because we booked Early Saver and there had been several price drops. We don't drink, so we had to spend it on something. We've done Stingray City twice, once with Captain Marvin, and once on jetskis. Our 7 years aren't up, so we don't need to kiss them again yet. We had done the Turtle Farm before the hurricane destroyed to farm, so we decided to see what changes there had been. We boarded an air conditioned bus and rode out to see the turtles. We have our own snorkel gear, so we had it with us. It can be a pain to haul around, but we have gotten snorkel tubes that had one bite grip bitten off, flippers that were torn and didn't stay on, and who wants blow up the vest or put the snorkel tube in their mouth after who knows what has touched them? Our snorkels are dry snorkels and much better for choppy seas. Anyway we saw the granddaddy turtles, the teenaged turtles, and caught some baby turtles for pictures. We had done all that before. Then we went exploring and found the shark tank and sat on a bench in the shade watching them in the underwater viewing area and ate our peanut butter and crackers that we had brought along. We wandered some more and saw an iguana eating lunch. Then we got to the snorkel area and grabbed a couple of chairs on the beach. We got our gear and waded into the water. Near the beach you could stand up and there were some smaller fish. The farther away from the beach that you got, the deeper the water until it just dropped off into pretty deep water. The fish here were bigger and that's where the turtles were. We snorkeled for quite awhile until it was time to dry off and get ready to board the bus. They had an outdoor shower for rinsing off and a restroom with more showers and changing rooms. There was even a handicapped shower. We looked around in the gift shop and then went out the front door where the buses were. There was a little hat shop there with caps and visors for $5. DH got a Cayman Islands cap and I got a matching visor.:D You got a free necklace when you bought a hat.

When we got to the port, we went to two Diamonds International stores to get bracelets for the girls' swag bags, then boarded a tender for the ship.

When we got to our cabin we ordered room service BLT and roast beef sandwiches which we ate on the balcony and then took showers and probably naps:rolleyes: This was second elegant night, dinner, maybe magic show? and bed.

[sewut]

Friday, Cozumel

Today we went to El Cid. We had booked it through shoreexcursions.com. It's a hotel right next to the International Pier. You can see it from the ship, very easy walk. We would've gone to Nachi Cocum, but DH didnt' want to pay for taxi, tip etc. B2B remember? We took our snorkel gear and our pool floats. These are the kind that you open up and they spring into shape. You just have to inflate around the outside. We ended up not using them because the water was pretty choppy, but we put one between our chairs and used it for a table. There were a lot of crewmembers here, using the free wifi. I had brought my tablet ashore and posted a picture of us on FB. Then my daughter saw it and we chatted a little. We snorkeled a little, looking for the plane that is supposed to be there, but didn't find it. We didn't stay in long because it was so choppy.We had free drinks all day and there was a lunch buffet included. It was easy and cheap, and we enjoyed ourselves. I would try to get there earlier next time to get a palapa. It was getting late when we went back. We showered, dressed and hurried to the past guest party. I like to cheer for all the ships we've been on while a sip my kiddy punch. DH goes to make me happy. Then we went to dinner and bed, you know the routine.

[Tannison]

Great review so far. We are cruising the Magic in June so looking forward to reading the rest of it.

[sewut]

Saturday, sea day

This was a happy day, I didn't have to pack and I didn't want to cry when the waiters sang "Leaving on a Fun Ship".:D Since I had nothing to do, I played a little trick on our cabin steward. Our steward was Marti. He was hard for me to understand because he smiled and nervously laughed while he talked. I wear hearing aids (which I forgot to take out and wore in the pool at El Cid :eek:) so I rely on lip reading and I couldn't read him. Anyway I took my pajama pants and put rolled towels from towel animals in the legs. I bent one to look more natural. I used the robe and pillows for the body, and a silver fringed evening wrap made great hair. I left it lying on the bed and the lights out when we went to dinner. When we came back, Marti was doing his nervous laugh thing. He had seen us leave, so when he opened the door and turned on the light it surprised him to see someone on the bed. He had a good laugh over it. I made another one the next week. It was sitting on the toilet and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. The assistant got surprised with that one.

I can't think of a thing we did today that was worth telling. We just enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to pack. Well, I did anyway. DH wouldn't have any idea how to pack.

We did get our B2B info tonight. We got In Transit cards to use if we wanted to get off and wander around Galveston. They would get us back on the ship. There was a letter telling us to meet at 10:30 in the lobby the next morning.

Edited January 30, 2015 by sewut
additions

[sewut]

Great review so far. We are cruising the Magic in June so looking forward to reading the rest of it.

 

You'll love it. Thanks for reading.

[sewut]

Sunday, Transition Day

We slept in as long as we could. There was a lot of balcony door slamming that woke us up. This happened all week long. There was also a smoker a couple of cabins forward of us that made me go inside a few times. We put on our Stay Calm and Cruise On t shirts today. People comment on them a few times and we could share with them the giddy truth that we were cruising on (and they weren't) ;);) We ate a leisurely breakfast and made our way to the lobby at 10:30. There were about 20 or so of us. A Carnival rep collected our S&S cards and doinked them all for the last time. She gave them back to those of us who wanted them. ( I have a couple of photo albums that I put a picture of the ship, our boarding photo and our S&S cards in.) Then she passed out our new cards and led us off the ship, through the empty baggage area, and up to customs. We handed him our passport and customs form and turned around and went back the way we came. When we were back onboard and had doinked our new cards we were offered a free drink at the lobby bar while we took turns getting our picture taken holding a banner that said Cruise. Enjoy. Repeat. (This would be my boarding photo for my album) Then we were free to enjoy the ship for a few minutes. I camped out near the shore excursion desk which opened at 11:30. It was only about 20 minutes until the first guests started boarding. When the desk opened, I was the first one to sign up for the Behind the Fun Tour. I had wanted to do it the first week, but we had more OBC the second week. We ended up getting a check in the mail for $5.24 from our first leg. That won't be the case for the second leg. (notice last word in title)

We had lunch at Cucina del Capitano again. We were the first ones there. We had to wait for them to seat us. We called kids again while we waited. We're such creatures of habit. Then we had ice cream again. DGD12 called us 3 times before sailaway. We watched sailaway from our balcony to the banging of new door slammers. No nap today. They slammed closet doors too. We had dinner in the MDR, and didn't go to the show this week.

[sewut]

Monday and Tuesday, sea days

We didn't do anything new this week on sea days except I went down the slide, the blue and yellow one. I could not imagine getting up gracefully after knee surgery without help. :rolleyes:

I can talk about pizza today. I liked the old pizza, before Pizza Pirate. I had it a couple of times and it just wasn't good. The crust makes big bubbles that burn, I talking black, on the bottom, and make sauce-less areas on the top. Not that the sauce is that good, because it isn't. One day we snagged a table in the shade behind the towel hut on Lido. The deck was wet and I was wearing flip flops. I went to get us pizza while DH held the table. I almost fell on the way over there. I got two plates, two pieces on each plate. I went very slowly on the way back, avoiding the wet places. Oops, almost fell again and lost a piece of pizza. I couldn't find any busboys to clean it up (of course it landed upside down) and I couldn't pick it up because my hands were full. I ended up letting DH have two pieces and I just had one. It wasn't worth going back for another piece.

Another thing I can talk about here is laundry. Being Platinum, we get 3 bags each on a 7 day cruise. I don't think we used all of them. I always ask for bags the first day because we usually have laundry to do when we board because we drive to the port. Some days I send two bags. After doing the BTF tour, I learned it's better to sort the laundry rather than put all different colors in one bag. I was under the impression that your clothes were put into mesh bags and washed with everyone else's laundry. I asked on the tour and was told they use smaller machines for guest laundry and that only laundry from your cabin goes in a load. So if I was doing a dark load, I would only send 1 bag of dark items, if I was doing light colors, which we had more of, I would send 2 bags of light colors. I had no problems with colors running. Marti would always have my things back the same day and I would tip him every time.

[sewut]

Monday and Tuesday, sea days

We didn't do anything new this week on sea days except I went down the slide, the blue and yellow one. I could not imagine getting up gracefully after knee surgery without help. :rolleyes:

I can talk about pizza today. I liked the old pizza, before Pizza Pirate. I had it a couple of times and it just wasn't good. The crust makes big bubbles that burn, I talking black, on the bottom, and make sauce-less areas on the top. Not that the sauce is that good, because it isn't. One day we snagged a table in the shade behind the towel hut on Lido. The deck was wet and I was wearing flip flops. I went to get us pizza while DH held the table. I almost fell on the way over there. I got two plates, two pieces on each plate. I went very slowly on the way back, avoiding the wet places. Oops, almost fell again and lost a piece of pizza. I couldn't find any busboys to clean it up (of course it landed upside down) and I couldn't pick it up because my hands were full. I ended up letting DH have two pieces and I just had one. It wasn't worth going back for another piece.

Another thing I can talk about here is laundry. Being Platinum, we get 3 bags each on a 7 day cruise. I don't think we used all of them. I always ask for bags the first day because we usually have laundry to do when we board because we drive to the port. Some days I send two bags. After doing the BTF tour, I learned it's better to sort the laundry rather than put all different colors in one bag. I was under the impression that your clothes were put into mesh bags and washed with everyone else's laundry. I asked on the tour and was told they use smaller machines for guest laundry and that only laundry from your cabin goes in a load. So if I was doing a dark load, I would only send 1 bag of dark items, if I was doing light colors, which we had more of, I would send 2 bags of light colors. I had no problems with colors running. Marti would always have my things back the same day and I would tip him every time.

[sewut]

Wednesday, Roatan

One morning at breakfast, well just about every morning, DH got to talking with someone at the next table. They were discussing what excursions they had planned. We had been to all these ports before and had our plans made before we left home. Roatan was planned to be a lazy beach day. That's why I packed the Papa Bear big suitcase with the two floats. I had pictured laying out in the water on my float, roling over now and then so that I would burn evenly. We would walk over to the free beach and it would be a free day. Well, this guy DH talked to was doing the underwater scooters in Roatan. We have done them in Cozumel before. They were fun and we had booked them another time, but the water was too rough and we did dolphins instead. Well DH kept looking at the shore excursion channel all week and he finally decided to do the scooters again. Now I had wanted to go to Little French Key in Roatan, but he had shot that down because of the cost and we knew we wanted to do the BTF tour. So now we are doing the scooters again which cost way more.:confused:

Okay, 48 hours just came on, and it's about a cruise ship. I'm stopping for now. I'm sure you understand.

[PathfinderEss]

Enjoying your review, looking forward to more.

[sewut]

Enjoying your review, looking forward to more.

 

Thanks for reading.

[sewut]

Roatan continued

We found our group at the top of the hill and waited awhile for the last two to show up. Why don't they have some shade to wait in? Then we were led to the bus and rode to the boat. On the bus ride, the guide split us up into groups and gave us wristbands so the photographer knew who went with who once we were underwater. We boarded and took off. They had snorkel gear to use and explained the whole procedure of getting on the Bio Observer Submersible Scooter (B.O.S.S.) There were milk crates under our seats to stow our stuff. The bench we sat on did not protect our things. While you are off the boat, others may sit on your bench and drip on your things. Forget dry shoes and clothes. Our group snorkeled first. It was fun to watch the scooters under us.When it was our turn, we deflated our vests and everone got loaded and we stopped a couple of times going down to equalize the pressure in our ears. The button to make the scooter go forward hurts your thumb after awhile. I had trouble steering mine. I don't remember them being hard to steer in Cozumel. I spent most of my time trying to catch up to my DH. At one point, one of the divers took my camera and took pictures of us. When we got back on board, we were handed a paper cup of water. They had packages of cookies and juice boxes also. When we got back to the dock, they took us through their office where there were t shirts for sale. In front of the store were several children trying to sell trinkets. We boarded the bus and went back a different way so we could see more of the island. We did a little souvenir shopping and got back on board the Magic. We got sandwiches from room service, showered and rinsed off all our gear. Dinner in the MDR, and back to the cabin.

Edited January 30, 2015 by sewut

[pe4all]

Enjoying your review! Waiting to see the "medical" part - though your "leg" hint gave me a pretty good idea what may be coming! Quick question: do you mind me asking how much El Cid cost? Looking for something different to do.