8/23 7 Day Eastern Magic Cruise About This Page:

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EVERYONE starts off with WOW, INCREDIBLE, UNBELIEVEABLE, SPECTACULAR...... Well, now I know why [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

The trip met and exceeded our expectations!
We flew into the Orlando airport after circling Daytona for an hour because of storms in Orlando (typical for this time of year). Staying at the Hayatt in the airport was the best thing for us to do. 3 Kids and 8 pieces of luggage, not including the carry on's we each had.

You disembark the airplane and take a cart right up to the Hyatt. Dinner at the hotel restaurant, put the bags outside the room by 7:00am, breakfast in the lobby restaurant, met with Disney 'Blue Jacket' members for painless check-in for documentation, and board the 'Disney transportation buses' for a 45 min. ride to Port Canaveral!!!!

Security check at the terminal. (Looks just as the pictures show) Many Many desks to check you in, took 15 min at the most.Now it's time to wait for them to call us to board the ship at 11:30. We were catagory 3 and first ones on the ship. (no waiting in line)

We went right to Sessions to meet with our concierge reps Maria and Sonja. The nicest ladies you ever want to meet. We traveled with a party of 14 and I'm sure we were overwhelming to deal with. The Ladies had so much patients and were able to schedule us for "EVERYTHING" we wanted. Palos, High Tea, Brunch, Excursions, Kids club and Vista Spa services. Awesome......1 hour later we were off to check out the Staterooms!!!

We stayed on the 8th floor and the room was just beautiful and spacious!!

The kids we OFF and RUNNING. We couldn't keep them with us. We toured the ship a little and made our way to Topsiders Buffet. Weather was not so nice and by 5:00pm departure time the BonVoyage party was moved indoors on the 3rd Floor atrium. Very , Very crowded and too hard to enjoy yourselves so we made our way back to our cabin, stood out on the verandah and had our own little farewell party!!! Kids loved blowing bubbles off the balcony.

Before you knew it it was time for dinner, we had early seating and APLAPLA rotation. Animator Palete show was fun and a great way to start off our cruise. Matej and Erwin were our servers and had their hands full with our party of 14 (7 Adults, 7Kids). They did a fantastic job and had lots of patients as well. All crew members were friendly and couldn't do enough to make you happy. They are out to please!!!

The Welcome Show was okay, not the best compared to the shows that were to come on the following nights.

Checked out the kids club, but since we had 7 kids in our party the kids were happy hangin out together 'Exploring' the ship and being independant.

Got back to the room around 11:00pm to find our first towel bunny , our Navigator and our personal Itinerary. All things in order and it looks like we got all the reservations we requested!

Time for Bed

Character breakfast in Parrot Cay. Cute the kids enjoyed it. However the characters really 'rush' through with the photographers to get everyone pictures!! Hard to keep them at your table for any length of time. We headed up to the Adult pool by 9:30.
Nice and quiet, hot sun and a breeze.


11:00 was our first Spa service. AMAZING! what else can you say??.....who doesn't like a good massage in a quiet room that smells like a garden?
The RainForest is definetly worth the additional $8.00. Sauna, 2 steam rooms, hot rock chaise lounge chairs, fog shower, rain shower with 6 heads.....

WoW time for lunch. We opted for the fresh fruit bar at scoops and a small sandwich. SAving room for dinner at Parrot Cay.

I could go on and on about what we did everyday, but I want to wrap it up without too many boring details. I'll be happy to answer any questions or help out for making decisions...let me know!!

To wrap it up I will say we enjoyed the food at all the restaurants. I think Animators Palete menu was my least favorite. PALOS dinner was 'unbeliveable". It was right up there with any good restaurant in NYC (and we eat in the city alot)PALOS brunch is not to be missed....an awesome array of food. High Tea was nice, but nothing special. Topsiders is your basic buffet fare. And we ate breakfast in our stateroom most mornings, out on the verandah with the warm breeze and the water rushing by. Nice and relaxing. my favorite time of day.

We had a blast at wine tasting. The crew member have such a sense of humor and by the 6th glass of wine 'anything' is funny!

We made it to all the shows. Disney Dreams is not to be missed. Herculese was a little hoaky, but the kids liked it. My kids also really enjoyed the Magic show and Farewell Show. We did catch a few movies. Freaky Friday, Finding Nemo, Pirates of the Carribbean, SPY Kids 3D and the new Kevin Costner Cowboy movie were some of the few playing.

Characters are everywhere. Check the schedule daily. The kids had fun having their pictures taken with them. We went to Shutters every morning to check out the new photos. We also bought the $85.00 package of 10-6X8 pictures.( $15.00 savings) However keep in mind Formal portraits are only printed in 8X10.

St. Maarten and St. Thomas are typical Carribbean ports. If you don't book an excursion there are a ton of taxi, van drivers that will take you anywhere you want to go!!!In St Marteen, we took a cab ride- $10.00 p/p to Orient Beach Bikini Beach. Beautiful beach on the French side of the Island. Restaurant, restroom, shops and water activities available at your finger tips. The only thing we don't enjoy are the dozens of local vendors who don't stop asking you to buy their wares! Non-stop and quite annoying. If you tell them FIRMLY NO...they go away, but not long after, a new one comes along. The van driver came back just as we asked him to exactly on time( he was probably there early) We got back to the boat by 5:00, quick shower then ran out to the shopping on the dock. There was not very much and wish we planned it better to take the water taxi into town for shopping ($3.00 p/p) Had to board the boat by 7:00, we had dinner reservations at PALO for 8:00. This was a smart move on our part. A perfect night for dinner here because it gave us all the time in town without having to rush back for 6:00 dinner seating in the rotation restaurant. We sent the 7 kids down to dinner on their own , and they were very well taken care of by our servers.

St Thomas is a shorter day. You have to be back on the boat by 4:30. We planned an excursion: 5 star snorkle tour to St John Trunk Bay. Well, you have to be up at 6:00 for customs, then meet at Studio Sea at 7:45 for the tour. BOY were the kids tired. You take a (ferry) boat ride to St. Johns (waters were quite rough) 50 min. later you arrive in Trunk Bay. You only get about an hour to snorkle and then have to head back to the boat. I felt the excursion was way too short, no chance to really enjoy Trunk Bay, but it was a good opportunity for the kids to try out the snorkling and they just LOVED it!! That's when we decided to rent them snorkle gear at Castaway Cay.

Castaway Cay was the absolute Highlite of the trip. We would have been happy spending 2 days there!! My husbsand and I had a cabana massage. We just loved it! We also took the kids on a bike ride around the Issland. They really enjoyed that too. Spent some time in the water and then time for lunch. They move you through very quickly at Cookies B-BQ so there is not a lot of wait time, and you can get back to having fun. Lot's of available drink stands. We got hooked on Bailey's Colodas and BBC's. The snorkle trails were cool, a little far to have to swim out to for some of the kids. My Father and his wife enjoyed the quiet time a Serenity Bay, since the family beach was like a hot summer day a Jones Beach. My nephew did the 'Teen Excursion' and had a blast! Bike riding, Snorkling and kayaking. Highly reccommended!!!

All in All I have to say this was the best family vacation we have ever taken!!
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