March 7th, 2009 MAGICal Western Caribbean Adventure

The Magic slowly eased away from the pier and headed down the channel. There is something magical about setting sail on a ship; it’s an experience unlike any other and something that you just can’t describe to anyone. It is always so cool to sail by the restaurants and Jetty Park and see everyone watching the beautiful Disney ships go by.

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As we headed out to sea my family went downstairs to get ready for dinner and I went up to the bow for a little while. That is one of the things I love about having the 6:00 rotation, you aren’t so rushed to get to dinner. At about 6 we grabbed our neighbors and headed down to Animator’s Palate. This was our first time not going to Parrot Cay the first night, but it is always nice to try something. The person seating us had a little difficulty finding our table and ended up walking us around the entire restaurant only to discover that our table was right by the door. We were seated at a table of 10, the five of us and a really nice family of five from Vancouver, Canada.

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We met our server Sampong, and our assistant server Richard, and quickly realized that we were about to have incredible service. I cannot say enough about how great these guys were. I have never had my drinks filled faster, had so much bread, or had such service with a smile. They were great to talk to and took incredible care of us. No detail was left unnoticed. We had a great dinner; I had the seafood and avocado wrapper, a salad, and the filet mignon with scallops. I was really slipping on this trip, and kept forgetting to get pictures of my food. We had never gotten to see the full out Animator’s show, very cool. I got two desserts, chocolate cake and the peanut butter pie, had to celebrate being on vacation.

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Little did I know that my birthday was being celebrated tonight. Several servers came over to sing to me, and the head server brought me a birthday button. Now I had three desserts, lol. Sammy, quickly got it set up to take back to our room.

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Oh, so that was you they were singing to. :rolleyes1 Happy belated birthday! There certainly seemed to be a lot of celebrations at dinner.

Great update! Keep them coming.
 
Subscribing so I won't miss a word of your TR! Thanks for such great photos and awesome descriptions. We are sailing in May and look forward to reading about your experience on the Magic :)
 

I'm in!! I just got caught up on what you've written so far! I love how detailed you are and I especially love all the pictures!! :thumbsup2
 
I love your TR & pictures! It brings back so many good memories.
 
Mike, terrific report and pictures! My family and I are sailing in July and can't wait.

Really loved the great magnets you made. Would you mind sharing how you did them? I'd love to surprise my kids and husband with them; they'd get a big kick out of 'em for sure!

Thanks in advance!
 
So the next part of the trip report was supposed to go up tonight, but Statistics is proving to be impossible. I'll have the next part up tomorrow. Thank you everyone for reading. :cool1:
 
Mike, wonderful report so far. You describe everything so well and your pictures are awesome. It seems like we are right there with you! :cool1: Keep up the great job and can't wait for the next update! :thumbsup2
 
I went upstairs to grab drinks for the family, and everyone else went to the theatre to get seats. Jan and Henry started the nightly tradition of sitting in the row behind us, so we talked to them some more.

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The show was great, we got our first taste of Rich Purpura and Ricky Kalmon who we would be seeing several more times throughout the cruise. After the show I said goodbye to my family and headed upstairs to change. I went down to Diversions at 10 for the college club and met Katrina, the cruise staffer who would be with us all week. People slowly trickled in as dinner let out, and I could tell it was going to be a fun week. There were a ton of us from the Orlando area, since there were hundreds of cast members on board, and then several people from up north. After worrying about finding people to hang out with, I was so glad to see that there was a bunch of people my age onboard. The college club social on the first night was just a meet and greet, we just hung out and got to know each other. At 10:15 we headed over to Rockin’ Bar D for Magic Quest.

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I had never gotten to do this before, and it was really fun. For those of you that haven’t had the chance to play, Magic Quest is a game involving teams of four people with a number. The host will call out something that you need to bring up and show her, and when she sees you she calls out your number. The faster you are the more points you get. We split the college club up into two teams and would randomly steal stuff from the other team for the win. I somehow ended up attempting to walk across the dance floor in high heels on a moving cruise ship, oh the things we will do on a cruise. Fortunately no one was carrying a camera. After Magic Quest it was time for Match Your Mate. Tisa, the host of Rockin’ Bar D, was absolutely hilarious, and they had some great people on stage. I would never want to be up there, but I sure love watching it. They awarded a spa package to the winners, and boy did they deserve it. Soul Drive came out to complete the evening. Somehow the girls managed to drag us all up to dance, something that would become a nightly tradition. It is incredible how much the band and the cruise staff enjoy having college students onboard, the moment we came out the band switched to playing modern music, and the cruise staff kept telling us how much they loved having us and to keep coming back. When Soul Drive finished they personally introduced themselves to each of us, and thanked us for coming. I cannot say enough great things about Soul Drive. They are the best band I have ever heard on a cruise ship, and were really fun to talk to. DJ Dan started playing, but everyone was tired from the excitement of boarding day, so we went up to deck 9 to grab some drinks, talked for a while, and then everyone headed off to bed. I spent a while on deck 9, enjoying the beautiful night; there is nothing in the world like nights at sea.
 
You mean there are things to do onboard after 10 PM? :rolleyes1 Glad you got to hang out with some kids your age.

I enjoyed the welcome aboard show as well. As much as I had read of Rich Purpura on the boards, I didn't ever get a chance to catch his show. Oh well, maybe next time.

Great job!
 
Overnight, daylight savings time began, but the Magic was staying on ship time to keep the changes to a minimum. Today we would be one hour behind Key West time. Dad went out for a morning walk and got some beautiful pictures of the ship.

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Today was our assigned day for the character breakfast, but that is way to early for us, although Dad caught the characters on their way into Parrot Cay.

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I woke up around 8:45; I can never sleep on cruises, there is too much fun stuff to do. We decided to catch the Interdenominational service in Sessions at 9. I had heard on the DisBoards that the gentleman in charge was quite full of the spirit, I would have to agree.

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After the service ended we headed to Lumiere’s to meet the gang for breakfast. We were very lucky on this cruise to have incredible servers every time we ate somewhere for breakfast or lunch. We had Gidion and Sadish for breakfast, and they took incredible care of us.

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We were also able to get our own table every time. We enjoy getting to meet new people, but breakfast, being early in the morning and all, is kind of a nice just the five of us time. Today Lumiere’s was featuring the brunch menu, with a really wide selection of breakfast and lunch items. Everyone else had breakfast while I went for an assortment of lunch items. I had the bruschetta, the Lumiere’s burger, and ordered a really awesome dessert, which I am unable to remember. Gidion decided that I should also try the apple beignets, absolutely incredible.

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It was the first breakfast of the cruise and I am already getting two desserts. While we were eating breakfast, we could see the ship passing buoys and maneuvering through the channel, but we had no idea just how close we were. As we walked out into the atrium, we saw that we were passing a ship, we were already pulling into port and it was only 11. We ran up to the promenade deck to watch us maneuver into port.

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It was an incredibly beautiful day, and it was so good to be warm again after some really cold north Florida weather. There was one other ship in port, the MSC Orchestra.

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We were alongside the pier with gangways out around 11:15. The ship was cleared ashore around 11:30, an hour earlier then we had been expecting.

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Captain Thord certainly doesn’t waste any time. We called some family to wish Happy Birthdays and then went upstairs to get ready to go ashore.
 
Mike, I wish we had made the time to have sit down breakfasts, but it just never worked. Anyway, wasn't it the most beautiful day in Key West? I just love the color of the water. Wouldnt' you have loved to get a sneak peak inside that yacht that was docked there?

Another great update!
 
Great trip report and pictures! Looking forward to what's next. Thanks!
It's so nice to see a young man that seems to have such a great relationship with his parents and other adults. I've also always been very close to my parents and have always enjoyed their company, at home or while traveling... still do at 35, and now my kids and husband do as well!:goodvibes
 
Loving this report and can't wait for more. Those apple beignets sound delicious :thumbsup2
 
Today was our one official excursion of the trip, the GPS Walking Tour. We met up in the Promenade Lounge at 12:15 for the excursion, and the crazy British guy came to take us off the ship. I really loved this guy, he had one of the most awesome British accents I have ever heard, so cool. We had only booked this excursion for my dad, no need to have more than one GPS. I ran upstairs to grab something from the room, as the excursion group began proceeding ashore. I met up with the group down on the pier, it is so nice being 19 and being able to take myself off the ship. Disney was doing something really cool, and using two gangways at the aft to eliminate lines. That is what I love about Disney, no detail goes unnoticed.

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Crazy British guy took the GPS electric car group to the store while we waited on the pier for a few moments, and enjoyed the beautiful Key West weather. High 70’s and sunny, it doesn’t get much better than that. A few minutes later we were heading down the pier and to the GPS store. The Magic docks in the Westin Marina Pier, and the store was just across the street from the Westin, not far at all.

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Our neighbors decided to head off on their own to do some shopping, while we did our excursion. Dad headed into the store to get the GPS, and then everyone was given instructions on how to use it. Once we got the GPS’s going, we were let go to explore. The unit would give you specific directions to the next site, and when you arrived it would bring up a video with information on the site. The technology was really cool, and it gave us a set path to walk around downtown, but the tour involved way too many advertisements. The majority of the stops were stores and bars, with the suggestion that you step inside these fabulous establishments. It is a really cool idea, but it would have been nice if it were more of an actual tour. If you are looking for a cheap excursion, go for it, otherwise just save the money and walk around by yourself. No matter what, we had a fun time exploring. We went by the oldest bar in Florida, Sloppy Joe’s, and headed down to Jimmy Buffet’s recording studio, after passing the key lime factory.

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As we reached the gulf front we began wishing we hadn’t had such a big breakfast, as the restaurants looked incredible. The next stop was Pat Croce’s rum barrel, where a free drink was included.

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We relaxed here for a while and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze. We got some great pictures of the ship from Mallory Square, and enjoyed the incredible day we were having.

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I noticed something really funny that the Magic was doing. I was commenting on how funny it was that the Conch Republic flag, since Key West likes to think they are a country, was being flown on all the flagpoles. I looked up at the forward mast of the Magic, where they fly the flag of the country that the ship is in, and both the US and Conch Republic flags were being flown.

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Even the Magic was in on the act, lol. The water was an incredible shade of blue, and it really felt like the Key West I had always imagined. Our one prior experience with Key West was on a gray rainy day, and we never found the downtown area, not a great visit, lol. We strolled through some of the stores and then returned the GPS. We are involved in a game called geocaching, where you use gps coordinates to find hidden containers throughout the world. We pulled out our own GPS and headed down Duval Street to explore some more and find the cache at Mile Marker 0 on US1.

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After grabbing the cache we decided to head back to the ship. We had a great time in Key West and it is now one of our favorite ports. We are looking forward to being able to go back. It had a really nice, quirky, laid-back feel, without the hawking you usually find in Caribbean ports.

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