Magic 7/8-7/13 ~ We're heading to Canada, eh? COMPLETED: 9/1/12

[Laurie12820]

Hello out there! Welcome to my first official Disney Cruise Line Trip Report! My name is Laurie and I loooooooooooooove to cruise! I am married to Jerry, and I have been able to convert him to a cruise lover as well! We have a beautiful daughter who is just shy of turning three years old. She a big Disney fan, she especially loves this guy ----> . I'm sure my Disney brainwashing has had absolutely nothing to do with that! Here we are on Embarkation Day:

This was our DD's first cruise and our first Disney Cruise. We usually cruise with Royal Caribbean. But, when we saw Disney was going to leave from NYC, we just HAD to book it! We are so glad that we did, because it was a great experience! We took the 5 Night cruise to Canada, stopping in Halifax and St. John. So, here in this thread, I will chronicle our journey on board the Disney Magic! So, sit back and enjoy the trip!

 

[Laurie12820]

Chapters:
Introduction
Embarkation Day Pt. 1
Embarkation Day Pt. 2
Embarkation Day Pt. 3
Embarkation Day Pt. 4
First Sea Day Pt. 1
First Sea Day Pt. 2
Halifax Pt. 1
Halifax Pt. 2
St. John Pt. 1
St. John Pt. 2
Last Sea Day
Debarkation

 

[Laurie12820]

Sunday, July 8, 2012:
Today is the day! We packed up the car last night and we were ready to hit the road at 7:30 am. We were making pretty good time as we had a Port Arrival time of 11:30am. Our ride was pretty uneventful. We stopped in CT for a potty break and we were back on the road. Around 11am we hit the city, and around 11:15 we were in the port area.

This is where I made the first mistake. We drove right by the parking lot entrance . This wouldn’t have been such a big deal if there weren’t a triathlon going on which shut down some streets. It took us about 25 minutes to circumnavigate back to the parking lot entrance .
Once we were up on the parking deck, we waited in a line of cars for about 10 mins. Our view from the line:

There were dogs sniffing the cars before they were allowed into the lot. Once we were cleared we paid the $175 to park for the 5 days, parked, grabbed our luggage and headed to the elevator. We got off of the elevator and entered the terminal around 12:00. We went right to the check in line and waited maybe 10 mins. We were checked in and given boarding number 7 . Lucky for us they were already up to boarding number 15. With that said, we caught a glimpse of Statue of Liberty Minnie, and walked right up the gangway. We had our embarkation photo taken and continued on to the ship. There was a little back up once on deck, but we were announced and welcomed onto the Disney Magic within a few minutes .
We decided to eat up in Topsiders. It was CROWDED. By the time we found a seat, the line for the buffet was huge. I quickly ran to Goofy’s Galley and grabbed myself a salad and some fruit for DD. I got back and DH jumped in line and was back to the table in 10 minutes. Once we finished eating it was around 1:00. Here, DH can be seen locking our car from the ship, lol:

Our staterooms would not be ready until 1:30. We explored deck 9 and 10 and decided it was way too hot to be up there.

Continued in next post...

 

[HermanTriplets+1]

Hi! Great start and looking forward to the next installment! Ever since we got back from ours, I have been addicted to NY-Canada TRs! My kids were in NYC on July 8th (they stayed longer than me and DH) and saw the Magic in port on their way to a museum!

I love this picture because it is the skyline of NJ just below the GW Bridge, from the West Side Drive, and it's very near to where I grew up! Thanks for the !

 

[Laurie12820]

Glad I could give you a smile! I'm hoping to post more this week!

 

[Laurie12820]

We made our way down to deck 6.

A crowd started to form at the roped off hallway. We were waiting patiently to get to our cabin so we could drop our bags. Finally they were letting people into the hallways and we made our short trek to our cabin.

I was excited to have booked a sideways inside cabin. I have read great things about these cabins and that there were more room in these because of the layout. We loved this layout compared to the traditional inside layout. When you entered this room, the couch was straight ahead. The bathroom and the closet were across from one another on the left hand side. The TV, steamer trunk and vanity were across from the bed on the right hand side.

We were getting acquainted with our room when we heard luggage being delivered. We were surprised it was happening so soon! I was able to unpack and have everything in its place before our 4pm Muster Drill. Around 3:45 we started to head up to Muster Station F. We were so happy not to have had to wear life jackets! Cassie was less than impressed with the amount of time we had to stand around and the loudness of the ships horn.
Once we were free we headed up to the Sail Away party! This was a blast! There was lots of singing, dancing, celebrating and character sightings! Cassie was dancing along with the characters and having a blat. The ships “When You Wish Upon a Star” horn blasted, the confetti was shot off and we were officially underway.
Link to Sail Away video.

To be continued in next post!

 

[iloverags2]

Looking forward to hearing about your cruise! I'm pretty certain my mom would love a New England/Canada cruise, so I have been anxiously reading reports on them.

 

[Laurie12820]

We loved this cruise. It was great to be able to see some different ports, seeing as we usually cruise the caribbean.

 

[tortoni]

Joining in, we have the same itinerary for 9/2.

 

[HermanTriplets+1]

Looking forward to hearing about your cruise! I'm pretty certain my mom would love a New England/Canada cruise, so I have been anxiously reading reports on them.

We were on the June 17th sailing and I kept on thinking "my parents would love this itinerary", too! The cooler/pleasant weather, the scenery, the nice people of Eastern Canada, the history. It's a good one for all ages, really!

 

[Laurie12820]

We were planning on going down to the room to change for dinner and then head up to see the NYC skyline and Statue of Liberty, but, that didn’t happen.
On the way down to the room we stopped at the secret verandah on deck 7. There were a couple of other people there but we had a good time taking pictures of the skyline and enjoying being on a ship again. We went to the room and got ready for dinner.

By the time we were ready it was time to head to dinner at Lumiere’s.

I was very excited to be dining in Lumiere’s. I love Beauty and the Beast and couldn’t wait to see all of the references. We sat at Table 45 and we were surprised to find that we were sitting alone at a 4 top table. I hadn’t requested this, and we are used to being seated with others on previous cruises. It was a pleasant surprise and we enjoyed our dinners as a family. This is where we met our wonderful dining team; Ana and Richard. They were great.
Tonight was the French Menu. For our drinks we both ordered one of the three signature drinks for the evening. I ordered The Royal.

DH ordered the Cosmopolitan L’Orange. It was a martini.

For an appetizer DH ordered shrimp cocktail, I ordered a salad and DD had the fruit cup. For entrée’s DH ordered the Salmon, I ordered the Beef Tenderloin and DD had the Mac n Cheese. Now, this is where my memory gets fuzzy. I’m not sure what we ordered for dessert……Shame on me! I do remember that DD had a Mickey Ice Cream Bar!

That was not a sad face by any means, I think we just caught her at an odd moment, lol. I mean, who would be sad about eating a Mickey bar?
After the desserts had come out, Neno, our head server, brought us our Anniversary dessert and pins. Our servers sang to us and the dessert was delicious!

 

[taximom00]

Hi there....we were on the same cruise and we introduced ourselves to you in the HOHO bus line! I was with my mom and 13 year old daughter!

Love reading your trip report!

Missing the cruise still so loving to read about our same trip through someone else's eyes!

Maura

 

[Laurie12820]

Hi there....we were on the same cruise and we introduced ourselves to you in the HOHO bus line! I was with my mom and 13 year old daughter!

Love reading your trip report!

Missing the cruise still so loving to read about our same trip through someone else's eyes!

Maura

It was so good to meet you! I've been reading trip reports since we booked our cruise last July, so I figured it'd be fun to so my own! It's so much fun reliving the cruise!

 

[jenseib]

I'm joining in the fun!!

 

[plantman]

There were dogs sniffing the cars before they were allowed into the lot. Once we were cleared we paid the $130 to park for the 5 days, parked, grabbed our luggage and headed to the elevator.

Is the $130 for the at the pier parking, or away from the pier. I checked the pier parking prices and it says it is $35 a day.

Plantman

 

[Laurie12820]

I'm joining in the fun!!

Yay! I've read your TRs while we were planning our cruise! Glad to see you are joining in!

 

[Laurie12820]

There were dogs sniffing the cars before they were allowed into the lot. Once we were cleared we paid the $130 to park for the 5 days, parked, grabbed our luggage and headed to the elevator.

Is the $130 for the at the pier parking, or away from the pier. I checked the pier parking prices and it says it is $35 a day.

Plantman

I'm sorry! I'm not sure what made me type $130. Maybe it's because I wish we had only paid $130. We indeed paid the $175 at the pier. Sorry for the confusion!

 

[plantman]

There were dogs sniffing the cars before they were allowed into the lot. Once we were cleared we paid the $130 to park for the 5 days, parked, grabbed our luggage and headed to the elevator.

Is the $130 for the at the pier parking, or away from the pier. I checked the pier parking prices and it says it is $35 a day.

Plantman

 

[Laurie12820]

After dinner we saw that Minnie was doing a meet right outside, so, we hopped in line to meet Minnie. This was Cassie’s first character experience. We didn’t think she’d be afraid, but, we went with her anyway. Minnie was so excited to meet Cassie and she “commented” on our Anniversary pins! Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of this because we didn’t have our camera on us and we didn’t like the way the professional pictures came out . We then went to check out the gift shops as they were open now and we bought a Stitch doll for Cassie. We also stopped at Guest Services to add our Disney gift cards to our onboard account . After, we headed to the theater to see the Adventures Away show. We enjoyed the show, but, we were tired after a long day of traveling. So, we went back to the room and called it a night.

 

[Laurie12820]

This morning we woke up around 7:30am. One of the downsides to an inside room is not knowing what time of day it is or what the weather is like. I woke up a few times overnight wondering if it were morning already! Once we were showered and ready to go we went down to Parrot Cay to check out the breakfast buffet.

The breakfast was okay, but the food seemed to be on the cooler side.
After breakfast we went to the shops again to look at everything again as they shops were very crowded last night. As soon as we walked into Treasure Ketch, I saw it and instantly fell in love with it! A DCL Dooney & Bourke bag.

With it having been our wedding anniversary yesterday, Jerry decided to buy it for me! When we left the shops we decided to peek in on the Princess gathering. Cassie really isn't into the princesses yet, so, there was no real need to go. Which was good because this line was MASSIVE! People line up half an hour before the start time!

We looked around the ship a bit more and ended up on the pool deck. It was cool and very foggy.

Not a pool day for us! We decided to get lunch while we were up here. Today we tried out Pluto's Dog House and Pinocchio's Pizzeria. We got chicken tenders, vegetable pizza and cheese pizza. All three were yummy! It was around Cassie's nap time so we started to head back to the cabin. While we were walking past the gazebo we saw Mickey leaving his meet and he stopped to wave at Cassie. Jerry was able to snap a quick picture, it was great. Cassie was so excited!

Once Cassie was up from her nap, it was off to Flounder's Reef Nursery for her and Palo's High Tea for us. Cassie ran right into Flounder's without even looking back!

That was a relief for me, now, I could really enjoy tea time!
We went up to deck 10 to Palo. There were only two other groups in there at the time. I, of course, forgot the camera again ! You'll have to use your imagination on this one! As soon as we were seated our server Andrea came over to us with a tea menu. I looooooooooooooove tea . Jerry, not so much! But, he was a trooper and came along for the ride . We both ordered the Oolong tea; it was the one Andrea had suggested. While we waited for our tea we were brought a plate of finger sandwiches. There were two each of salmon, ham, egg salad, cucumber and one other one that is escaping me. Our tea came and Andrea told us to let it steep a bit; he'd be back to pour it soon.
As promised Andrea came back, he poured our tea and off he disappeared again. He was back soon, this time he brought some freshly made scones, cream and jam . We had the choice of a plain scone or a raisin scone. Jerry chose the plain, I chose the raisin. They were DELISH! As if we hadn't had enough to eat, Andrea brought out a tiered serving tray with desserts ! There were gingerbread pyramids, éclairs, chocolate covered strawberries, kiwi & blueberry tarts, strawberry tarts and a mango tart. We, of course, finished every last bite of those and I finished a few more cups of tea. On the way out we were admiring the wine cellar and saw a very different type of bottle. We asked the host what it was and he told us it was Grappa, an Italian spirit. He said it was very strong and that if we were coming back to Palo for dinner we should try it! I thoroughly enjoyed the high tea experience. Jerry liked it to, but, he's not a tea person. I'm sad to hear that Disney is doing away with tea .