Disney Magic

The next cruise up is our cruise on the Disney Magic from 2006. This was by far one of the best cruises we have ever done. It was pretty expensive but well worth it in our opinion. This was another eastern Caribbean itinerary going to St. Maarten, St. Thomas, & Castaway Cay (Disney's private island). So lets set sail with Captain Mickey on the Magic.

A little info on the Magic before we continue. The Magic was launched in 1999 along with her sister the Wonder built by Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri. She is approx. 83,000 tons, 964 feet long & 106 feet wide. She has 877 cabins and can carry around 2400 passengers plus a crew of about 950.

We sailed out of Port Canaveral and this was one of the best embarkations we have experienced. Disney must pump happy gas into their terminal because everyone was just so happy. Not like our normal experience at Miami, which is the worst for some reason.

Disney has one of the best sail away parties we've been to, lots of people as you can see from the pictures. 

Also of note this was the first ship we had been on that had the large outdoor movie screens. A lot of ships now have this feature. I remember we watched part of the NBA finals out there under the stars on those big screens.

Everyone was having a good time as we sailed away from port.
The Disney ships do have some unique features that aren't found on other lines. The rotational dining was one thing that was different form other lines. In most cases on other ships you eat in the main dining room each night at the same table with the same servers. Disney has added a twist to this. They have 3 main dining rooms located in different areas of the ship. Each has a different theme but your service team travels with you. The three main dining rooms are Lumiere's, Animato'rs Palate, and Parrot Cay. They have many other dining options like Palo but these are the 3 main dining rooms.
This is Lumiere's. For those of you not into all things Disney this dining room gets its inspiration from Disney's Beauty & the Beast movie. 

Animator's Palate was by far one of the coolest dining rooms ever. It starts out in all black & white and as each course is served the dining room comes to life with color. My pictures don't do it justice.

Starting off in all black & white. Even the servers outfits start off this way. 

Here is the first added color.  As the meal progresses more color is added. 

A visit from Sorcerer Mickey. Notice that there is more color on the walls now and the servers are now in colored vests.

This was also some of the best food we have had on a cruise. My mother-in-law just raved about the beef and she isn't really a beef eater.
Not sure what this was but she said it was delicious and look at that presentation.

This is Parrot Cay. It was very tropical. I don't have many pictures from in here and the lighting is kind of bad but you can kind of make out the tropical elements in the room.

Here is our room. It was just an outside cabin instead of our usual balcony cabin. Disney was more expensive so we had to step down to this. Not bad but we missed having our balcony.

All ready for bed. I didn't take pictures of the towel animals each night like I usually do but you can see one there on the bed.

Another stop at the island of Sint Maarten-Saint Martin. This time around we did an island tour that visited both sides of this unique island. It was kind of a nasty day to be in port and it rained a little while we were on our excursion but I did manage to get a few pictures. There is that checker board plaza again.

You can see our ship and a Royal Caribbean ship at port next to each other. Can you see how nasty the weather is? Not a pretty day in port.

One of the many resorts on the island. I don't remember which one this is.

Nice little area with no buildings. The weather cleared a little so I could get a decent picture. The picture to the right is a little farther around the island. This is around the same area we left for the Rhino Riders tour on our last cruise.

This is the marker the designates where the boundary of the French & Dutch sides of the island is.
Next stop is St. Thomas.
I don't think we got off in St Thomas except to do a little shopping at the Havensight mall area. We may have taken a taxi to downtown but my memory is a little foggy on the details here and I obviously didn't take any pictures.

My father-in-law did go out on a sailing excursion in a tall ship. 

There he is coming back from the excursion.

Disney has its own private island in the Bahamas called Castaway Cay. This was the first out island that had its own dock built for the ship to pull into. Other out islands are always tender ports. Royal Caribbean now has one but Disney was the first. What a great job Disney did with their island. It was very well thought out and had places for families, the kids, and an adults only area. 

The ship docked at Castaway Cay. I thought this was a pretty cool shot through the tall grass. You can see the wave runners just through the grass. We had a fun excursion on those earlier in the day. 

This is the road that leads to the adult only area of the island. You can take their tram or rent bikes and ride to the other side.

Serenity Bay is the adults only area on the island.

They even have massage cabanas right on the beach. Unfortunately we didn't get to take advantage of those.

Back to the other side of the island and you find Mount Rustmore. Very cute!

We did the wave runners here and my wife's dad even came along for the ride.

We also snorkeled around their little man made reef area. Not many fish, probably because of all the people, but plenty of neat things on he bottom to look at. We never did find the Mickey that was out there.

We also got to do a galley tour while on board. It still amazes me at how much food is prepared at one time to serve at dinner. Here is one of the head chef's who lead the tour.

One of the many creations the ships cooks come up with during the week. It amazes me that they can come up with such creative things to make out of food.

They also had a rep from Pixar on this cruise and he gave us a sneak peek at Cars which was just getting ready to come out in a couple of months. 

I don't remember who the presenter was but he gave a very informative presentation on what it takes to make a computer animated movie.
He had slides of the original story board art for each cars design and the basic story.

He also had some of the work from the very beginning of computer animation on Cars.
If you thought getting to see the characters was just for the kids you were wrong. We got our picture taken with Sorcerer Mickey!

Overall this was one of the best cruises we have been on. We would definitely go back, with or without kids.

To see more pictures from this trip please visit Partridge Pictures