My First Ever Trip Report - Inaugural NYC Cruise 05/25/12 & 4 Night NYC Stay

[Ladyshopper]

Well, as I have read so many of these trip reports in the past, I thought I would do one myself. Hopefully people will enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed reading others. I'm going to put lots of pics in, as just worked out how to do it!!

A bit about us:

Me - Jody, age 36
Dom - age 14
Izzy - age 13

We live in England, and did our first Disney Cruise last year to the Mexican Riviera, and we were hooked! I booked a dummy date on board, and soon as this itinerary came out changed it to this, as have always wanted to go to New York, so that combined with a Disney Cruise was like my idea of heaven!

Flew over the day before the cruise and stayed in the Crowne Plaza. Less said about the traffic from the airport to Times Square the better!! After our flight we were fit for nothing except food and bed, so I'll skip straight to embarkation day!

We had got a boarding time of 11, and concierge at the hotel said to get a taxi at 10 due to traffic - he wasn't joking. Taxi driver didn't seem to know where he was going and I think it cost way more than it should, but never mind - we were finally off to see the Disney Magic - except IT WASN'T THERE.

Apparently it was running late from its sail over from Florida, so we checked in (took a while, we were only the ladies second customers and she wasn't too sure what she was doing!). Got our silver castaway cay club lanyards and boarding number 3, then sat and waited, and took a pic of us in the t-shirts I made us:

We didn't have to wait too long before we saw the Magic pulling in - made me quite emotional, and all the crew were out on deck. Must have been fab for them sailing with no passengers.

 

[Ladyshopper]

Captain John had to swing a nifty right turn to get the Magic into its berth, but there she was. Was so cool to see her sail into port, and wave at all the crew.

There was a little while to wait before they started boarding, and I can't remember the exact time, but once they started it went pretty quick. As we could go straight to our cabins we went and left our bags there, then off to Topsiders for lunch.

From there we wandered round, checked out Edge and Vibe for the kids, went to the Dis meet at 3pm in the Promenade Lounge where SeaSpray gave out green leis (how she managed to pack so many I'll never know!) then went to our muster station on deck 4 at the appointed time, before grabbing a spot on deck 10 for the sailaway party.

This didn't disappoint. At 5pm the horn went off, which I love to hear, and then we were on our way. Luckily by this point it had cleared up, as in the morning it had been horribly overcast and the view from our hotel was non-existant due to the fog!

Here are a couple of pictures of the Manhattan vista!

The above pic with my daughter in shows the new twin towers being built. When 9/11 happened I had been in Police Training School less than 10 days, so I remember where I was and what I was doing vividly. After the cruise we went to see the 9/11 memorial, but more about that later!

 

[Ladyshopper]

I also took the obligatory picture of the Statue of Liberty:

After Lady Liberty, it was the Verrazano Bridge, which was still shrouded in fog:

There wasn't much room to spare as we went underneath:

After seeing this we went back in and I did most of the unpacking, as 2 out of 3 suitcases had already turned up, whilst the kids went off to Edge and Vibe, where they stayed pretty much the whole week and I only really saw them at meal times!

Dinner for us was at Lumineres, and we were table number 28. We had been put with another family, another single Mum like me who had brought her mother along, and two children who were the same age as my two. We all got on great, and I hope to keep in touch with them. Our server was Emily and assistant server was Putu, and they were great.

I can't remember what I ate, didn't really take many pictures of food this time (last cruise I did every meal!), but whatever it was it was nice! After dinner I went back to the cabin to find our towel creation - a big apple!!!

I was pretty tired after all that - we were on second seating and don't eat that late at home, plus the travelling from the day before was still catching up with me, so I watched some tv, then went to bed. Kids came in around midnight (they were out later than me every single night, what a saddo I am!!).

To be continued - off to bed now with jetlag, but I will return!

 

[Sereina]

Great start to your TR! Looking forward to more.

 

[disney debi]

Great start! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[sarahsmom73]

Can't wait to read more!!!

 

[Carol36]

Enjoying!!!

 

[JAM113]

Can't wait to read more... It's tiding me over until we cruise next month!

 

[Ladyshopper]

Thanks for the comments so far, I will do some more today. Was in bed for 12 hours trying to sleep off the jetlag, and kids were in bed around 14 hours!! And even after that we're all still tired!

 

[HermanTriplets+1]

Wonderful! Thanks for writing! We leave in .... 9 days! (Canada!)
Loved your sail-away pictures, and actually the weather conditions added a lot of atmosphere to the pictures.
Hope your re-entry to life is smooth, and ... keep it coming!

 

[Coconuts]

Count me in! We are on the 8 night out of NYC on 8/25 so I can't wait to hear how your trip went.

 

[Shazzasmd]

Great start to your report. Looking forward to more.

 

[jegsnakkernorsk]

cute t-shrits!!

 

[Ladyshopper]

cute t-shrits!!

Thank you! I handed them in to guest services with some sharpies, and we got them delivered back with character signatures, so it makes for a great keepsake.

 

[Ladyshopper]

Day 2 - Sea Day

I got up around 8am and went for breakfast at Topsiders (leaving the kids snoring in bed!). After brekkie it was up to the adult pool where I found a sun lounger and did some sunbathing. Unfortunately, despite factor 50 I burnt after a couple of hours, so had to leave.

I had a general wander round, taking pictures, did some fish extender delivering, pressed our clothes ready for formal night.

We were on second seating, so I told the kids were told to come back for 6.30pm. I didn't do many of the shows this time, just enjoyed the general atmosphere of the ship. We had our photo taken with the Captain, it was so nice to speak to him as he is English like us, so he told us where he lived etc. Took other pictures too before heading to Animaters Palette (I corrected my report for the first day, as we were in Lumineres and not Animaters, I shouldn't have typed with jetlag!).

I love how smart the servers look on formal night. Here are pictures of the kids with Emily and Putu:

I had the vegetarian lasagne, Dom had roast chicken, and Izzy had pasta with marinara sauce (she requested this most nights as didn't like the look of anything, and they were more than happy to make it - in fact when she did order something different they still brought her the pasta out as well!). For pudding we had sweet temptations, which was a selection of 3 mini puddings.

As was the pattern for most of the holiday I went back to the cabin after dinner, then went to sleep not that long after. Towel animal of the day - a dog:

We were also left a special gift of a minnie mouse statue of liberty clock which was cool:

I should add we were in an inside cabin, and it was one of the sideways ones on deck 6 which have the steamer trunk as extra storage. These were great, and felt so much more spacious than the other sideways cabins, would definitely opt to have one again.

 

[Aurora's Mommy]

The above pic with my daughter in shows the new twin towers being built. When 9/11 happened I had been in Police Training School less than 10 days, so I remember where I was and what I was doing vividly. After the cruise we went to see the 9/11 memorial, but more about that later!

Thank you so much for your trip report. Unfortunately, I remember vividly, too. We had just got back from WDW the day before, thank goodness because otherwise we probably would have been stuck in Florida with no flight home for a couple of days. But, unfortunately (again), because we were back from vacation, my DH was across the street from the WTC that day. He was absolutely fine, but it is going to be a long time before he can go to the memorial. I will likely ball my eyes out when I read your post about your visit, and I will stop now because this is a happy trip report .

Again, thanks, and looking forward to reading more!

 

[Ladyshopper]

Day 3 - Sea Day and Character Breakfast

I woke early and got up at 7.15am. Although it was our character breakfast I knew I wouldn't last that long, so headed to Topsiders for a "light" breakfast! It was very windy out on deck and the waves were still rolling - we were sailing through sub-tropical storm Beryl, although Captain John had altered our course the previous day so we were further away from it. Walking round the ship on Saturday night the swimming pools looked like they had wave machines in them. We had all taken Bonine every day, so weren't effected at all.

I then walked round and took some pictures - I love taking pictures of the ship when it is so quiet in the morning.

The adult pool next to Quiet Cove.

The family pool

The Mickey Pool

Mickey slide and splash area

The secret deck on deck 7 aft. This is one of my favourite places on the Wonder and Magic. Spent a lot of time there on my cruise last year, but this year I only made it out there once and it was too hot, so had to retreat into the shade of deck 4!

Went and woke the kids up about 9, then we got to Parrot Cay at 9.45 for our character breakfast. We posed with all the characters, although I won't bore you with all the pics and just put one up!

Next came the funny hats out of napkins. Our servers were fantastic at this - last year we only saw minnie ears and peter pan hats. However, Emily and Putu gave everyone on our table different hats, and here are ours:

In case you're wondering, I am the statue of liberty!! I thought that was very inventive.

The rest of my day was spent much the same as yesterday - sun-bathing, wandering, taking pictures and doing some washing! After my first cruise last year I said I was going to do more of the activities, but I'm afraid to say I didn't really. However, I was very happy chilling out, doing lots of reading, soaking up the atmosphere etc and the kids loved being at Edge and Vibe and if they're happy, I'm happy!

Both kids had a choice to move up/down - Izzy could have gone to Vibe, but I didn't want her hanging out with 16/17 year old boys (she is boy mad!) so I told her she had to stay in Edge, but she didn't mind and had a fantastic time. Dom could have chosen Vibe or moved down to Edge, so he tried both and decided on Vibe and again, he had a great time. I am fairly relaxed with them as they are pretty sensible kids. I said they could stay out at night for as long as there was activities on (this applied more to Izzy than Dom) and that I wanted her to walk back with her brother or a friend. My other rule was that they could stay out late BUT they weren't to be grumpy for port days - see how that panned out when I get on to the Disney World Day!

Anyway, back to our day. We went to see the Villains show at 6.15pm which was really good, then went back to the cabin and got ready for dinner, which was in Parrot Cay. Emily had put a special order in for me of vegetarian curry, and had done enough for the whole table. It was lovely, although a little spicy, but I still ate lots!

As usual, back to the cabin after dinner, and towel animal of the day was an elephant:

We had also been left another gift of a special drawing of Dumbo flying over the statue of liberty. I didn't take a pic and its still in my suitcase somewhere, but it was very nice.

 

[Ladyshopper]

Thank you so much for your trip report. Unfortunately, I remember vividly, too. We had just got back from WDW the day before, thank goodness because otherwise we probably would have been stuck in Florida with no flight home for a couple of days. But, unfortunately (again), because we were back from vacation, my DH was across the street from the WTC that day. He was absolutely fine, but it is going to be a long time before he can go to the memorial. I will likely ball my eyes out when I read your post about your visit, and I will stop now because this is a happy trip report .

Again, thanks, and looking forward to reading more!

I'm so glad your DH was ok. I'm suprised just how emotional I felt seeing everything there. We visited the preview centre and also the church and saw all the displays, and I lit a candle and felt quite choked up.

 

[youthfulwarriormom]

My DD, Julia, had a great time at The Edge with Izzy. It seemed like a fun group.

 

[SeaSpray]

Hi Jody! I'm enjoying your trip report, as if I was not also on the trip!! I'm loving reading someone else's experience of the same cruise. Excellent pictures, too!!