Magic Mediterranean Cruise 10th September 2016 (Complete)

Duck In Blue

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 24, 2010
Hello All!

I am going to have a go at doing a trip report for our recent cruise on the Magic in the Med. I know there is already a great trip report in progress for the same cruise, so hopefully I won't duplicate too much. When I was searching for reports before we cruised there were only a few for the Med so another one may be helpful. It will also help me, as one month on I have post cruise blues so I am hoping remembering will help with those! This is my first trip report so fingers crossed it will be okay and I work full time so updates may be a little slow!

A bit of background we are a couple in our 40s from England, kids are now grown up so we cruise on our own. This was our third cruise, the other two were on the Disney Fantasy (one Western and one Eastern Caribbean). We weren't sure if we would like cruising but love it although we take sea sickness tablets throughout to be on the safe side!

So we booked this cruise whilst on the Fantasy in April 2015 to get the OBC and discount. Living in England, part of the big expense of a Caribbean cruise for us in the airfare so the Med cruise removed a big chunk of the cost for us. We also decided to go for an Oceanview stateroom as opposed to a verandah (which we had on both of our previous cruises) to keep the cost down. Although we like a verandah we only use it for short spells so decided we would try a cruise without it and booked a category 9B, midship on deck 2. But 2 weeks before we sailed I received an email from DCL which was the same one you get when you make a booking or a payment. I couldn't work out why I had received it, then I noticed the deck had changed from 2 to 7 and the cabin number from 2076 to 7624. I presumed at first we had just been moved to another Oceanview bit when I looked we had been upgraded to a Navigators Verandah! My only concern was that this was aft and we had only stayed midship before (on deck 7 funnily enough) but we thought this was to good an upgrade to turn down (if that was a possibility) so we thought we'd take our chances!

We live just outside London and can easily get to 6 airports meaning flights to Barcelona are easily available and relatively cheap. We have been to Barcelona several times before so this wasn't a big part of the trip for us, but we did fly out on the 9th just to give us piece of mind. We stayed just off of Gran Via, it was two stops on the Aerobús from the airport which worked out well. We had dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe and then had relatively early night ready for the big day ahead.

There will be pictures in the rest of the report, we didn't take anything on the first day as we hadn't done anything new.

If you have any questions at all as I go along please feel free to ask. Thanks for reading!
 




Saturday 10th September 2016 - Embarkation Day

We woke up at around at 7 a.m. and as our hotel rate didn't include breakfast we walked a few blocks along Gran Via to a Starbucks at Universitat. As we were going to have lunch on the ship we only fancied something light plus we wanted a PSL! Barcelona is a late city so the street was quite quiet at that early hour on a Saturday.

We returned to the hotel and finished packing. I had selected the 1100 PAT which was the earliest at Barcelona. Originally we had planned to get to the cruise terminal at around 1000 as we were going to try for an upgrade, but as Disney had already given us that we decided we get there for around 1030. The plan was to get an Uber from the hotel to the port but Uber isn't in Barcelona at the moment. Instead we used an app called Hailo, we have it in London to book black cabs and the Barcelona taxis use it as well. You could either request a taxi when needed or book one for a set time. I think we ordered it for 1010 and it turned up early so we were on the way just gone 1000. It estimated a base fare of about €8, which was right plus Barcelona taxis add a surcharge for suitcases (per case). You also set your own tip via the app. When we arrived at the port the driver typed the amount from the meter into his app and we just finalised it in ours. Traffic was light and about 1020 we pulled up at the port and was greeted with this
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Seeing the Magic for the first time was great and finally it all seemed real. There was already quite a large queue waiting to go into the terminal but there was a queuing system set up and we were undercover. After about 10 minutes people started going into the terminal, they let people in batches and we went in on the second batch and went through security. I'm not sure what I was expecting from the terminal but it was better than I thought it would be!
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We were checked in quickly, had our pictures taken and given our Keys, lanyards and assigned boarding number 3. There was lots of plastic seating with some DCL signage around but otherwise not much happening. The picture below shows the boarding queue which we entered when called we skipped having our picture taken in front of the ship background.
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I think boarding started around 1130 and we were called before 1145 and before we knew it we were in the atrium (I didn't take any pictures as we boarded).

I had some US dollars on a currency card that I wanted to have applied to our onboard account for the excursions before they charged the credit card on file so we went straight to Guest Services to have that done. This was a good move as I was seen straight away and when we passed by after lunch their was a big queue.

We headed up to Cabanas for lunch (sorry no pictures of the buffet) and grabbed a table outside which was always one of our favourite places to sit on the Fantasy so was pleased to find it on the Magic too.
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After a rather large lunch we had a walk along deck 9 towards the front and the adult area to get our bearings onboard
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As I mentioned this is my first trip report and my first post with photos and it's taken a bit of getting use to (this post has taken me a disproportionate amount of time to write)! I have also discovered I can only put 10 photos on per post (and the reason there is 8 is I put 2 on in error and even though I deleted them it won't let me add anymore)! So I will continue in a new post soon as I have a lot of photos from embarkation day!

 
Thanks for the likes so far, it is encouraging!

We continued forward along deck 9 until we got to the adult area. I'd known from reading other reports and posts that the adult area on the Magic was far smaller than that of the Fantasy so it was kind of what I was expecting. We did miss Satellite Falls, although the water is cold we like the fact you can either enjoy the sun or shaded areas included facing forward. The only place in the adult area to enjoy the sun were those loungers by the pool which we were discovered were very hard to get!
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We headed into the spa to look at the gym (not for me :rotfl2:) and the Rain Forest Room. Again, this is something we have done on both of our Fantasy cruises and really enjoyed but, after reading up on the Magic version before we went, had decided we wouldn't do or certainly not get a length of cruise pass. Also, this was a port heavy cruise and we had excursions booked in all of them so we weren't convinced that we would get adequate use out of the pass. We went in and looked around

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and came out a bought the length of cruise pass! Although it is very different to the Fantasy version, it felt so relaxing when we walked in that we just succumbed and decided we could fit it in.

We continued walking around and popped in to Edge during it's open house (something we have never done on the Fantasy)

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When we went back out on deck there were some flamenco dancers on the stage with a few people watching as they waited for their rooms to be ready
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We continued our exploration of the ship as we were waiting for 1.30 p.m.FullSizeRender 5.jpg
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From deck 9 we headed down to deck 4 and had a wander round there walking through Shutters first

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Taking in the atrium

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then along to the Walt Disney Theatre

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before heading back along the deck and looking at the terminal building

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Then at about 1.25 p.m. we headed to the aft elevators and headed to deck 7 to wait for our room to be ready.
 
Thanks for following, hope you find it useful and if you have any questions just ask. It's a great cruise!

What hotel did you stay at in Barcelona? It sounds like from your post you'd recommend it. We'll need a place stay before and after cruise.
 
What hotel did you stay at in Barcelona? It sounds like from your post you'd recommend it. We'll need a place stay before and after cruise.
The hotel we stayed at was okay but if you are planning on doing a lot of tourist stuff then it was a metro ride to get to most places (or a long walk). We booked it as there was a special on eBookers and it was considerably less than other hotels of that category. There was nothing wrong with it but I'm not sure I'd recommend it, might be better trying Linet's hotel!
 
They took the barrier away just before 1.30 p.m. so we didn't have long to wait. There were far less people waiting to get to their rooms than we have had experienced when staying mid-ship on the Fantasy (may have just been timing more than anything) but, as others have commented, we did find the aft lifts far quieter than the midship ones.

We were really keen to get in the room and see the upgrade that Disney had given us! Stateroom 7624:

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The room itself felt very similar to the one we have had on the Fantasy although it was set up the other way round! It was the Navigators Verandah that was different
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When looking out from the room it did look like that there was a window on the verandah, but when you were actually leaning on it looking at overboard it really wasn't any different to the regular verandah we had experienced before.

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We were delighted with the room and didn't find staying aft a problem at all. I can't say that we particularly noticed any more motion, although when the ship was moving at speed you could here some noises that I don't remember hearing before (kind of like a metal clanking). Aft is handy for a lot of things such as Cabanas it was Senses, the theatre and adult area at the front took the longest to get too. We would happily stay in that location again.

One of our cases had arrived so we unpacked that and met our stateroom host Glenlyss (or Glen) who was really friendly. She said she would keep an eye out for the rest of the bags and while we were waiting we thought we'd check out the AquaDunk if there wasn't a big queue.

There was only one person in front so we gave it go. I'm glad I did it, but I didn't do it again! I had a bit of drama too as the lifeguard made me take my necklace off before I entered the tube. For some reason I put it in my swimsuit pocket and when I came out at the end it had gone (you move pretty quick down that tube!). Fortunately, the lifeguard at the bottom helped us locate it so all was good in the end.
 

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