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Review: Do You Believe in Magic? June 1-8

peanutzmom
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peanutzmom

peanutzmom

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Background: We’re a couple in our early 50’s who have cruised over a dozen times in the past 30 years, mostly on Carnival. We had three less-than-stellar cruises in a row (Carnival in 2019, Royal Caribbean in 2021, and MSC in 2022). We thought maybe we had just “outgrown” cruising and should do more land vacations instead. But when we started planning a vacation for this summer, airline prices were so crazy! Since we live in Florida, we don’t have to fly to take a cruise, so we decided to give a Carnival cruise one more try. And we’re glad we did!

 

The cruise wasn’t perfect (what ever is?), but it was much better than the previous three cruise (for the most part), and overall we really enjoyed ourselves. I’ll try to boil it down to our “Hits” and “Misses,” but if you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask. Now that we’re back to Real Life, it might take a few days to get all of this review written, but I’ll start today with Embarkation and First Impressions.

 

Embarkation:

Miss- the Port of Miami is just a hot mess! Traffic is bad, signage is bad, trying to get to the terminal to drop off luggage, then to the parking garage, then back to the terminal to check in is frustrating and time consuming. That’s not Carnival’s fault, but it’s still the truth. We’ve sailed out of Miami for the majority of our cruises, and  it just gets worse and worse.

 

Hit-  Carnival Check-In was quick and easy! We are Platinum and grabbed the earliest check-in time, which was 10:30. The priority lounge was not very crowded and was a pleasant place to wait, and I think the entire process from when we arrived to when we actually set foot on the ship was less than a half hour.

 

First Impressions:

Hit -  The ship was nicely decorated and laid out in a way that never seemed to feel crowded. I had heard that it was looking run-down, but we found the interior of the ship to be clean and in good repair. Other than a lot of rust on the exterior, the deck areas also looked good. 

 

Our cabin was in a really great location - a balcony at the very forward of Deck 8, right against the bridge. It was perfect for us - as the very last cabin in the hall, we never heard people walking back & forth or talking in the halls. We only had neighbors on one side of us, and we rarely heard them. 

 

When we stopped to drop off our bags, we met our Cabin Steward, Martin. I asked if we could get an ice bucket, and he made sure I had fresh ice every day. He was, IMO, the perfect level of steward interaction - he greeted us every day when he saw us in the hall, he was quick to help the couple of times we needed something, and he otherwise left us alone. Our cabin was cleaned once daily around mid-morning, after we headed out to the deck on sea days or after we left the ship on shore days. That worked perfectly for us.

 

Miss - Our balcony was a little worn looking and rusty. But that didn’t keep us from enjoying it every day!

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peanutzmom

peanutzmom

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I realized I should have started with the most important information! This was a Carnival Magic cruise out of Miami, 8-Day Eastern Caribbean. The ports were St. Thomas, St. Martin, San Juan, and Amber Cove.

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nancy1031 Holiday Sharing Rare

nancy1031

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Love your review- the format is great- sailing on the Magic in Oct- 6 day cruise- not a fan of port of Miami too much traffic and congestion so I let someone else do the driving whether it be uber or the ship shuttle- Am looking forward to more of your review!

 

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KKB Great Review Rare

KKB

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Looking forward to more of your TR--we have the Magic booked for March.

Interesting you found the Allure not that great...we loved it, tho that was nearly 15 years ago.

MSC Divina--yep, I feel you. 

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peanutzmom

peanutzmom

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47 minutes ago, KKB said:

Looking forward to more of your TR--we have the Magic booked for March.

Interesting you found the Allure not that great...we loved it, tho that was nearly 15 years ago.

MSC Divina--yep, I feel you. 

We were on Allure right after cruise ships started sailing again post-COVID. I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. It wasn’t horrible (MSC definitely was horrible), but we paid quite a bit more than we usually pay for Carnival cruises and everything was just average. Also, the staff wasn’t very pleasant and acted like they were doing us a huge favor every time we interacted with them. The best part was the shows - they were amazing!

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KKB Great Review Rare

KKB

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42 minutes ago, peanutzmom said:

We were on Allure right after cruise ships started sailing again post-COVID. I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. It wasn’t horrible (MSC definitely was horrible), but we paid quite a bit more than we usually pay for Carnival cruises and everything was just average. Also, the staff wasn’t very pleasant and acted like they were doing us a huge favor every time we interacted with them. The best part was the shows - they were amazing!

Interesting.

We sailed Celebrity Edge July of 2021 & it was AMAZING--1/3 full didn't hurt!

But service & food were outstanding. 

Crew seemed glad to be back.

Sorry to hear Allure wasn't the same.

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Frank12

Frank12

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21 hours ago, peanutzmom said:

I realized I should have started with the most important information! This was a Carnival Magic cruise out of Miami, 8-Day Eastern Caribbean. The ports were St. Thomas, St. Martin, San Juan, and Amber Cove.

That is a great itinerary!

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peanutzmom

peanutzmom

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OK, I’m back! Thanks for everyone who has been following along! Tonight I’ll discuss entertainment, the decks, and the crew & other passengers.

 

Entertainment: We don’t really partake in daytime entertainment, like deck contests, or trivia, or Bingo, but there was plenty of that on Sea Days for those who enjoy it. We spend our Sea Days hanging out on the deck and our Port Days in the ports. So, I’ll highlight the Hits and Misses of evening entertainment.

 

Hits - Lady & the Vamps, the band in the Ocean Lounge Deck 5!! They were hands-down our favorite entertainment on the ship, and we spent a couple of hours listening to them every evening that they performed.

 

The Casino, where we turned $75 cash plus hubby’s $25 platinum free casino tokens into over $200 on the roulette table. I know that’s small potatoes to real gamblers, but to more than double our money and enjoy a couple of hours in the casino made us happy!

 

Flick in the main theater was our favorite of the main theater performances. It was engaging and held our interest throughout.

 

Misses - Pretty much all of the other shows in the main theater. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t as good as previous shows. Most of them focused on a couple of people singing, and there were six or fewer people on stage at any one time - singers and dancers combined. We remember the larger Vegas-style shows with 10-12 dancers, plus a couple of singers, with multiple set and costume changes. These shows seemed more watered down.

 

The Piano Bar with Kenny G. - he was a nice guy with a decent voice, but 90% of what he played was Elton John or Billy Joel. We would walk by and joke, “Wait, did he just play Benny & the Jets? We haven’t heard that yet!” as we heard it for the tenth time. And it wasn’t’ because that’s all people requested - he’d pull a handful of requests out of his jar, read through all of them, pull out the one or two songs he was comfortable with, and throw the rest away. He would also kind of deflect when people called out other songs by doing a quick “Baby Shark” or “Chicken Dance” to divert everyone’s attention.

 

Decks: We spent a lot of time on the decks on Sea Days. Our favorite thing to do is to find a lounger, read a book, nap, and generally chill out.

 

Hits - The Serenity Deck was great! It was never over crowded - we could always find someplace to sit up there. Our routine was to head up right after breakfast (around 8am) and get a clamshell by one of the hot tubs. We’d bounce between the clamshell and hot tub till it was time to get cleaned up for lunch. After lunch (and usually a post-lunch nap), we’d head back up around 2:30 or 3:00 and sit in regular loungers in the sun to get a bit of a tan. We never had an issue finding someplace to sit. We also liked the variety of types of seating, both on Serenity and the other decks. There were loungers, couches, tables & chairs, whatever you might want. Even the non-Serenity deck areas seemed to have enough seating for whoever wanted it.

 

Misses - None, really. We found the layout of Magic to be good as far as deck space goes, even with our fully booked cruise.

 

Crew: This was all HITS! The crew was polite and pleasant, very attentive, and always working. Common areas were constantly being cleaned, food areas were constantly being refreshed, and cabin staff was always working hard on the cabins. We visited Guest Services a couple of times, and they were quick to aid us. 

 

Passengers: Again, mostly HITS! For a full cruise, there wasn’t any drama that we saw. Passengers were generally polite to each other and courteous. Kids were kept under control and mostly well behaved. We’ve been on many cruises with much worse passenger interaction!

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SASA13

SASA13

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On 6/11/2024 at 9:14 PM, tradewinds traveler said:

We are doing the same itinerary in November.

We are doing this in August.   Can't wait 😉

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SASA13

SASA13

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On 6/12/2024 at 9:08 AM, dallasdan said:

We are doing this same itinerary on the Magic in August.  Our first time out of Miami.

We are on the same sailing 🙂

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peanutzmom

peanutzmom

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1 hour ago, Bhern05 said:

Was the aft pool adults only?

We didn’t use either pool - we stuck with the hot tubs on Serenity - but I’m 99% sure we saw kids in all of the pools and hot tubs that weren’t on the Serenity deck at one time or another.

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