Lessons Learned on my recent Magic Cruise (5 nights, Jan 2017)

I read so many posts here before my cruise that I thought I would share some of my feedback -

1) Excellent experience with Captain Marvin's in Grand Cayman. We did the 2 snorkel and stingray city stop. My 7 year olds were a little young but they enjoyed the boat ride. Then we stopped at the beach for lunch and a little ocean time. Cabs seemed to be $4/person from beach to port which seemed like only a mile or two.

2) Laundry on every floor with an iron and ironing board - no irons in room - laundry was reasonably priced from what my friend said.

3) Dinner was much more casual then we were expecting. People were dressed nicely but not fancy. You could totally get away with wearing casual pants or skirt or even jeans. My kids wore shorts every evening. We just dressed up a tad bit nicer one night so we could take some pictures. But seriously, you can wear shorts and a shirt to dinner and it would be fine.

4) Get to the main shows early (10-15 minutes) to get a seat. Servers will bring you drinks to your seat if you want. And buy the plastic popcorn container bc refills are only $1.50. This was handy for us because we had late dinner so kids always needed a snack. The Disney shows are amazing!

5) We really enjoyed John Charles (went to 3 of his shows) but did not enjoy David and Leeman - that would be the evening I would skip of all the shows. Just my opinion.

6) I regret not purchasing an autograph book for my kids. It was an oversight on my part because having an autograph book really engaged the kids and made them want to seek out the characters more. My kids just had notebooks but I even got adorable pictures with Anna and Elsa with my 7 year old boys because they wanted the autograph for their collection. So definitely get a book before you go or they are on the ship for like $12.

7) I'd skip the sit down breakfast next time. It's exactly the same food as the buffet but not as good/hot if you can believe that. It's nice to be waited on and get served coffee but I thought it was just as easy to do the buffet and quicker.

8) We really liked the late dinner at 8:15pm. We would be at the pool until 5pm or so and then go to the 6:30 show and the kids would run around or go to kids club for an hour before dinner. Will definitely always keep that time for future cruises.

9) We had very few professional pictures. Although a ton were taken they have some kind of face recognition software and so our picture folder had a bunch of other people in it and only a couple of our family. So make sure to snap your own photos. We didn't care because I didn't want to spend hundreds of bucks on pictures.

10) Register before you leave online for kids club. Then when we got to registration the day of our cruise there was a HUGE line to get the wristbands for the kids. Everyone told us the line on the ship would be just as crazy but we walked onto the boat, directly to kids club and there was NO ONE there other than us and got our wristbands in 5 minutes and got to explore the club with the kids.

11) We brought on 4 bottles of wine but next cruise we will probably skip it or only grab 1-2. Alcohol was not expensive at all and so we just drank around the boat when we wanted. We live in Chicago and thought the drinks were cheaper on the cruise then at home. We got the wine package for dinner which we also thought was a great deal.

12) We bought the 10% off a future cruise deal with a $250 deposit and did not pick a specific future sail date. Was told if you sail between Thanksgiving-Christmas (or something like that) they offer 20% off. FYI.

I think that's all I can think of. Hope this might help someone with their planning. We had an amazing time and look forward to our next cruise!