watermelonqueen99

Meh, the only decent thing on the RS menu was the chocolate cake, so no big loss. Some of these comments from the drama queens on here tho.....eyeroll. Lol

If Kristina from Bulgaria is still in the piano bar, you are in store for an amazing week. She's the best bartender/server we've ever had, and we've had some great ones.

22 hours ago, pghsteelerfan said:

Hi(gh)!!!  Thanks for the heads up.  It's too bad you can't do a review of your Colorado vaca here!!!  But I'll definitely tune in for your 8/19 and NYE 2019 cruises.  When you were in NOLA on your Dream cruise, did you see the "edibles" van on Bourbon Street?  When we were there in May for our friend's milestone birthday, we saw that van EVERY SINGLE day.  Got pics but don't think I could post those here.  😂

That would be awesome to review our CO trip! 😁 Unfortunately we didn't see the edibles van, but it sounds awesome! 😂

2 hours ago, fyree39 said:

Check out Weedmaps and Leafly before you hit those dispensaries!

Will do! We visited right after legalization went into effect, so I'm sure there are many more options now! 

Bumping this, because we just decided tonight that our 20th anniversary cruise is morphing into a Colorado vacay because, frankly, we love cool weather and legal weed. 😂 But we're cruising August 2019 and NYE 2019, so please join me for those reviews! 😘

21 minutes ago, Saint Greg said:

It’s hot outside. I’m sitting here with a fun ship waiting on the guest services line to go down.

 

 

😍😍😍😍

4 minutes ago, Saint Greg said:

Last call at alchemy. Another Suri drink and he’s figured out that I order a water when they close every night 

 

 

By night 3, "our" bartenders take it upon themselves to give us a bottle of water with every other drink we order. 😂 That drink looks good, much more interesting than the vodka and diet coke I'm drinking right now. Hate to see your review ending, thoroughly enjoying it!

1 hour ago, Saint Greg said:

$15 USD for a Long Island?! Daaaaaamn. For that price, after just one, I better have a lot of fun and not remember any of it. 

2 minutes ago, Saint Greg said:

 

Last cruise I did two before the safety briefing and you suggested three...so that’s what I did this time.

Lol, awesome. Have another one (or 3) for me tonight. 😉

All caught up! Your FunShip pics did things for me. 😂 Looking forward to the rest of your review!

On 11/28/2018 at 11:13 PM, Saint Greg said:

 

Good memory! Better than watermelonqueen’s...

Literally just saw this, not sure how I missed it. Sitting here wondering why Saint Greg has so much hate for WatermelonQueen. 😂 😂😂Haven't caught up yet, but hope you're having a great cruise. 

Great review! We've been on 9 Carnival cruises spanning 4 ships, including 4 times on the Magic, and every single cabin we've had on every ship, despite location, has been blazing hot. We bring 2 desktop fans with us and it's still only slightly comfortable. And I'm sad to hear the piano bar was dead! We had an amazing PBE over the Halloween cruise on the Magic, but our cruise was his last for that contract. Glad you had a great time!

We booked the other day using the $50 deposit and got $50 OBC as well. We almost exclusively book with the reduced deposits. That way we can secure our room, but not have all that money tied up yet.

37 minutes ago, pghsteelerfan said:

OMG, I laughed through this as much as I did while reading your others and am already looking forward to your next one.  The last time we sailed out of Miami was in April 2014 and debarkation wasn't too bad then, hope the cluster it's not the new norm.  But we'll be sure to book a later flight, just in case.  Thanks again for taking the time to do another review and already looking forward to the next one.  

 

So glad you enjoyed it, thanks for reading! See ya in April! 🙂

4 hours ago, obx_fintoo said:

I had them at brunch and they aren't good, because they sit for a few minutes before getting them to you.  If you go to the Blue Iguana, they will cook the huevos to order (more or less runny, as you like them) and they will be fresh and hot!  Much like your review!    Nice job!

Aw, thank you! Thanks for reading! 

9 minutes ago, fyree39 said:

Bravo! Fantastically fun review!!

Thanks, hun! Glad you enjoyed it!

2 hours ago, Saint Greg said:

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if I forget about it again on my next cruise.

I'll remind you. 😛

Obviously I'm in.  Hope you have a great cruise! 

12 minutes ago, Saint Greg said:

 

Someone wasn’t paying attention in my last review. 

 

 

 

 

 

Spanked again by Saint Greg. 😂 Sorry, I'd had many drinks between reading your review and cruising. 😂

27 minutes ago, pacruise804 said:

I find Blue Iguana makes a better huevos rancheros. 

 

The piazza desserts always look good, but I'm usually never hungry enough to get one when we are near it.  Other than having fruit (are you allergic, or just avoiding "healthy" while cruising?) was it good?  I remember that lido desserts usually don't taste as good as they look.

Nah, not allergic. I eat healthy at home so I try to avoid healthy food on the ship. 😂 And yes, it was pretty good. And no, Lido desserts don't taste anywhere near as good as they look.

Monday, November 5th, 2018

We made it to the airport and dropped our car. Our flight boarded on time, and soon we were Houston bound:

The pilot had come on and said we were gonna have some bumps when we got over the Gulf, so I used this as an excuse to order a double vodka on the rocks. We watched an episode of Chopped on our relatively short flight.:

I'm just gonna say it, Southwest. I miss the damn peanuts. Dry-ass pretzels and crackers just don't do it for me. Also, long leg problems. *eyeroll*  Why I don't try for an exit row, I'll never know:

Pretty soon, we were descending into Houston:

We were bummed to learn that our flight to Tulsa was delayed:

But, Southwest was on it, and when our plane arrived, they turned it around very quickly. We didn't end up departing much later than originally scheduled. We had a very short, uneventful flight, and pretty soon we were back on Tulsa time:

We were off the plane, bags in hand, in our car, and home by 10 PM. And that concluded our vacation, it was sadly back to reality.

Some final thoughts on this cruise. The elevators were AWFUL. We have never experienced such slow elevators before. We ended up taking the stairs most of the time. The Lido buffet quality and the fly situation was horrendous. Or room steward was not good. There was a plastic fork by my side of the bed from the previous cruise almost the entire week. He let plastic water bottles and empty drink glasses pile up. The live music on this cruise was terrible aside from Zack the PBE. The lobby bar staff left much to be desired. The debark was absolutely horrible. But overall, we had a great time, met some great people, and still think very highly of the Magic. We firmly believe a cruise, or any vacation, is what you make of it, and we made the best with what we had.

I hope you guys enjoyed my review and found it at least somewhat helpfu!. Join me here in April as I review our 7 day cruise aboard the Carnival Dream to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary! Cheers!

Sunday, November 4th, 2018:

This is the day they were kicking us off the ship. Rude. We were up and out of our cabin by 8. We headed to Lido to wait. There was a very long delay getting off the ship. Malcolm kept making announcements saying the terminal was very busy and that there were only 4 officers working customs. Then he came on saying there was a technical glitch with the gangway, and it had to be readjusted. We waited and waited and waited and waited. Once they finally did start calling zones, it moved fairly quickly. We were off the ship around 10:45, literally among some of the last passengers off.

What happened next was pure and utter chaos. A literal madhouse. The sea of confused people was unending. There is a huge carousel now where you have to get your luggage, just like at the airport. So you're standing shoulder to shoulder with other confused people who are looking for their luggage. Once you get your luggage, you have to make your way through the herd of people to get in line for customs. We stood in line forever. Once Malcolm came out and started directing people to several different lines, it moved faster. We finally made it through customs and went to wait for the Alamo shuttle, since we had a car reserved. We waited for 30 minutes in the Miami sun before the shuttle showed up. At this point, I was done. This was our worst debark experience in 9 Carnival cruises. Miami went from our favorite port to sail out of, to we'll have to think real hard before sailing from Miami again.

We finally got on the shuttle. Our driver obviously thought we were on a rumway (typo and it stays), and that our bus had wings and we needed to get lift. Because of this, we got to the airport in about 112 seconds. We got our car and stopped at Publix to get some snacks, then stopped by the liquor store since we were technically still on vacay. My liver at this point had put in it's 2 week notice, it can be such a moody b$%^h.

We wanted a really high end dinner to bring our vacation to a close, so we had chicken sandwiches from Checker's and ate them in the car. We were exhausted by now, and headed to our hotel. We got cleaned up and settled in to catch up on The Walking Dead and to watch the new one. We were led to believe that Rick was going to die that night, so I put on my mourning veil. (A pair of black lace draws I found in my suitcase. I wasn't sure if they were mine or not, but there were nights I reached 15, so who knows.) Rick didn't die, so I removed my draws veil. After a small incident involving a lizard getting into our room, me screaming bloody murder and running to hide in the bathroom, and C having a full on fist fight with said lizard, we finally crashed.

Final post coming up....

Saturday, November 3rd, 2018:

Today was our last day at sea. We slept in (shocker!), then headed to sea day brunch. I'm very critical of the food on Carnival, because most of it is inedible to us. But we really enjoy the brunch. I tried the tomato soup for the first time and it was actually really good:

Surprise, surprise, I had the steak again:

The steak was good as always. C had the huevos rancheros thingys and he said it wasn't good. We grabbed a drink and spent the day doing the usual. We played cards, played a little in the casino, and just enjoyed our last sea day being lazy. We knew there were children and other unpleasant things waiting at home, so we wanted to enjoy not having responsibilities a little longer. Eventually we ended up in the OP, and decided to grab a white chocolate cake from the coffee shop:

 I was enjoying it, and all was well until I turned to C and said "what is this f*#@ery?? He scolded me for swearing so loudly, and asked what was wrong. I had forgotten, AGAIN, that there is fruit in this cake. Tragic:

After I recovered from the trauma of being unwillingly exposed to fruit, we got ready for the evening. This was waiting in our room when we got there to remind us:

The debark info was very confusing. They don't put the tags in your mailbox anymore, you have to go get them yourself off of a rack now. By the time we figured this out, we were left with zone 31, so basically we would be last off the ship. Ugh. But we put our bags out and went to say our goodbyes to our bartender friend in the karaoke lounge, then headed to the piano bar. We closed it down, and loved on all of our new friends we had made there, crew and passengers alike. We skipped the casino bar since we had to be up early for debark.

Last post and final thoughts coming up....

10 hours ago, pacruise804 said:

Welcome back! The escape bar does look like a nice place to hang out and visit with good music in the back ground.  I love a good live band, but sometimes the band is just mediocre.

 

The table cloth thing doesn't really bother me, but the chairs not being pushed in - 😮- that made me a little twitchy 😉 

 

 

We had a great variety band two cruises ago, but our last cruise on the same ship was very new and the Karaoke was often more entertaining.  I have been impressed with the talent level of my fellow cruisers both times, but ship entertainers should be better entertainers than passengers.

 

 

That's a really good idea!  Something similar to O'Sheehans on NCL or maybe what I've read of Solarium Bistro on Royal (trying it next year).  It is hard to pass up all the courses in MDR, but honestly much of that food is "kept us alive" vs. fine dining.  I think a quick, casual, full-service (or at least semi-full) restaurant would be a very welcome addition.

 

I don't remember if you did sea day brunch, but it might be worth trying sometime too if you do want a switch up of table service.  It's nice to not have to fight to find a seat and the presentation is nice.  The service is still pretty slow, but on a sea day that's usually ok.

Thanks for reading along! I agree about the chairs not being pushed in! Lol We do sea day brunch every sea day, I actually really like the steak!

21 hours ago, DebOinKC said:

Girl, so glad you are back to finish your review! (still wish you could have done the Glory with us 😞 ) but enjoying your great sense of humor & review.

So glad you're reading along! Sorry about the Glory, lol! It was pretty much a last minute decision to switch. But hopefully we'll cross paths on a ship at some point! 😀