Just back from the 11/22 Magic!

[lsmac]

Hi All,
I am overcome with laundry, mail, emails etc...and this dang room won't stop moving! But wanted to let you know how our trip was a bit...try to get a full trip report out this week sometime.

We had a film crew on board and they were filming a new promo for the Travel channel. Very exciting.

Castaway Cay was awesome...BOTH days! They had snowmen and snow and a huge tree set up there on the second day. And, yes we had Lobster on the second day.

Thanksgiving menu was good: Virginia Ham and Turkey...no lobster. They allowed us to keep the actual menus and they are a great souvenior!

Teen group was "awesome" according to ds. He has about 200 pics of all the kids he "hung" with all week. The one bad part was that some kids from the Lab trashed the "Stack" one night. Spreading honey on the stairway and in the Playstation 2. I did hear that they caught the kids...hope they punished them.

Our servers were ok. Not great, just ok. We had Putu from Granada and Dobrinka from Bulgaria. They seemed more concerned with us putting "excellent" on the comment sheet than providing that kind of service. However, they were very nice to my son, and as a mom, that always earns points.

Our tablemates were awesome! Twin ladies and their roommate from Phoenix. We really enjoyed spending time with them and even ended up hanging with them at the airport on Saturday since we all had late flights.

Movies were: Spy Kids 3D, Pirates of the Caribbean, Freaky Friday, Brother Bear, Veronica Guerin(?), Cold Creek Manor. (that's all I remember)

We had a Premear at Sea of the Haunted Mansion which was cool. They had lightning in the Walt theatre and all the cm's were dressed as house help. The movie itself was ok, but it's no Pirates!

We had mild seas and sunny weather every day. But coming back into Orlando it was cold!

That's all I can think of for now. I missed the Dismeet on Saturday...sorry gang, but we just got busy and I forgot.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will try and answer them for you.

Lisa

 

[Little Twin Stars]

What time did they let you board the Ship, Lisa?

 

[lsmac]

We were on board and eating at Topsiders by 12:05.

 

[Cruisin]

That's too bad about the kids from the Lab trashing the teens club. Why do kids feel like they have to do that stuff?
I hope you are right that they caught them and they should really have to "pay" in some way. They shouldn't be allowed to just get away with it.

 

[AKB]

Great to hear you had a grand cruise!
I'm glad to hear that your teen had a great time in The Stack. We have awhile until we cruise, but my older son will just turn 16 before the cruise. I was worried he may not have much to do.
Thanks for the report.

 

[Cheryl N. WI]

Welcome back Lisa! Glad to here you had a great time. We are on the Thanksgiving Magic cruise next year and after reading about all the Christmas decorations on the ship and on CC I am even more excited to be going then. I hope they will follow this years schedule and have things decorated for next years Thanksgiving cruise also!

Did the ship seem extremely crowded?

If possible could you please post the Thanksgiving menu? Was that night a formal night?

Cheryl

 

[AnnMorin]

I hope you had a great time!!!!
Any word on the golden mickey's? How did you like the new menus?

 

[Favorite Auntie]

You left the ship in great condition for us, thanks! Too bad you took the sun with you though....

 

[Favorite Auntie]

Ann, what happened to your tags??

 

[AnnMorin]

So I dumped them so I could make a statement since it is flurrying right now!! Have a great trip.. (ps you'd be my favorite auntie too )

 

[jlawall]

Thx Lisa for the great update....welcome home!!!

 

[lsmac]

We have awhile until we cruise, but my older son will just turn 16 before the cruise. I was worried he may not have much to do.

AKB, I wanted to respond to this comment to make sure you knew that the kids pretty much just "hung out". I would say out of the entire week they maybe did one or two planned activities. I just don't think the teen program is all that good for planned stuff. but the kids did just fine keeping themselves occupied and at least they weren't the ones to vandalize the area!

Did the ship seem extremely crowded?

Not at all! I never noticed big crowds except at character signings and on formal night. Even at CC the lines moved fast and didn't seem overwhelming. Of course we went to Serenity Bay both days and it was extremely quiet, which I loved.

If possible could you please post the Thanksgiving menu? Was that night a formal night?

I would be more than happy to if I knew how! I have a scanner so if anyone knows how to do this pm me and walk me through it.

I hope you had a great time!!!!
Any word on the golden mickey's? How did you like the new menus?

Thanks Ann! As for Golden Mickey's I think the cast told me they debut it on the Dec 6th cruise. I went to the "meet the cast" in Diversions and they said they practice already 3 hours a day for this show and were currently practicing it on these cruises.
As for the new menus, I really found very little that I liked. Don't everyone freak, but I am picky and it really was slim pickings for us picky people. (think I can say "picky" a few more times? There was one meal where I picked the vegetarian selection (forgot what it is called) and when they brought it, I thought I was on Fear Factor it seriously looked like catepillar larvae! Everyone at our table was joking about "If you can eat that in 2 mins, you win a Disney pin".

Favorite Auntie: Sorry to hear the weather turned! We had simply gorgeous weather and even the gentleman that plays Hades was saying it was the first week he hadn't felt the ship moving every day. He also said the week before had been so bad, he was sick most of the time!

At least Colorado is behaving and we came back to mid-50's weather and sunshine!

Lisa

 

[lbgraves]

I have to chuckle at Hade's comment about the ship rocking. We were on that cruise. While it was an experience for our first cruise, I didn't get ill at all thanks to luck or Bonine or both. We were on Deck 7 Aft and some nights the ship would go up & pause before going back down. He didn't let it affect his performances in Hercules or Mousekateer. I was told that the cruise everyone posted about 2 weeks earlier was MUCH worse. It was funny trying to stand in place at the chef station in Parrot Cay for lunch as we were rocking. The pools were really affected too. The Mickey pool was a wave pool & the kids loved it. The Goofy pool was closed for the day because the splash on either side was a few feet above the deck...making it at least 5 feet from the water level.

 

[Bbgrizzle]

I'm so glad you had a great time! Could you give a few more details about the Christmas decorations on Castaway Cay? I will be cruising next December and I'm so excited to see the new decorations! Thanks. Also, do the shows change a little to be more Christmas-y?

 

[lsmac]

Could you give a few more details about the Christmas decorations on Castaway Cay? I will be cruising next December and I'm so excited to see the new decorations! Thanks. Also, do the shows change a little to be more Christmas-y?

Hi Bonnie,
Let's see...When you got off the ship they had set up like a Christmas town with a huge tree, fake snowmen, and many many wreaths. The tram was decorated to look like a reindeer, and there were wreaths and jingle bells hanging from the pylons along the pedestrian trail. On the ship they had a huge tree in the atrium that was simply gorgeous, and several smaller trees throughout the ship that were decorated differently. They were just putting up the gingerbread house. All the crewmembers wore caps and scarfs on CC. I would think that was mighty hot though! They also played Reggae Christmas music which was a bit strange, but fun. As for the shows...no, they didn't do anything with those that I remember being Christmasy. The characters dressed up one night in Christmas garb and you could get your pic with them by the tree. Oh, also on CC, they had a fake snow machine that was running constantly...unfortunately when the photographers took the pics in front of the snowmen and the tree, the fake snow just came out looking like scratches on the film! The pics were horrible!

Lisa

 

[disneykins]

Glad to hear you had a great trip, Lisa. If you figure out how to post your pix, could you also post a teen Navigator? We have the others from Barbs site.
Thanks

 

[lsmac]

Posting teen navs: I sure will try. I may just have to scan them and email them to Barb and Tony. I hope it will scan ok, ds highlighted everything, and then ended up doing none of it! Apparently the "cool" thing to do is just to "hang" and I think that is all the teens do.

Lisa

 

[Keoni]

Lisa, we had APLAPLA late seating. I recall seeing very pretty twins at the late seating. Was this your rotation? If it was we were very close to you.

Write back....

Keoni

 

[lsmac]

Keoni:
we did have late seating but we were on the LAPLAPL rotation and at table 25. So that probably wasn't "our" twins.

Sorry we missed hooking up with you all during the week!

Lisa

 

[hilltopfamily]

Originally posted by lsmac

Our servers were ok. Not great, just ok. We had Putu from Granada and Dobrinka from Bulgaria. They seemed more concerned with us putting "excellent" on the comment sheet than providing that kind of service.
Lisa

"Myboys" has a trip report up with the same comments that I just responded to. We also encountered this when we went July/Aug. this year. Leroy from Jamaica was our server & he kept going on & on about this on several nights. Unfortunately, he was more talk than action when it came to excellence.

Our assistant server, Neela, (though he was just new to the ship at that time) was very sincere in his attention to us & our children, not nearly so obvious in his intentions & he, therefore, was the one who received above the recommended amount for tips.