mlshum

Thanks so much for reading along! That sounds like so much fun! I wish more schools would do that sort of thing. I play a few instruments. When I was in high school I played flute/piccolo in band but our school acted like they really didn’t want a band. If it wasn’t sports related it wasn’t really encouraged or supported. I’m very glad your sons school was a little more forward thinking.

Usually after we complete muster, I’m ready to go look around the ship and take pictures but, alas, since we still had the luggage, it really wasn’t feasible. We walked through Lido looking for a good place to land that would be a little out of the way. We wound up aft in the Tides pool area. We found an out of the way place to put the luggage, which was getting heavier by the minute, for a little while and although we couldn’t just leave and forget it, we were at least a little bit freer to move around. I was able to take some pictures in that area and had a great view of the battleship USS Wisconsin. It was chilly when the wind was blowing but was pleasant in the sunshine. I took a few pictures, and we found a couple of loungers. We took turns going to grab some lunch while we were waiting. At that point it was around 1pm. We both opted for our first, and only, Guy’s Burger. Beautiful view of looking toward the ocean Battleship Wisconsin - We had toured this ship a couple of years ago Check out the view from these condos!! Port buildings and sailboat. Lots of water traffic Tides pool area Tides pool area Tides pool area Tides pool from deck above looking down (This photo was actually taken the second day when it was warmer) Tides pool Tides pool The ship was starting to fill up. The music had started and lots of people were milling around on deck and sitting in the Lido buffet area. The steel drum player was playing. (If I ever have a chance to learn to play a steel drum, I am definitely taking it!) It was a little cold for swimming, so the pools were empty. The rooms were supposed to be ready around 1:30 to 2pm. Although the doors were closed, Ron stuck his head in the hallway and asked our room steward, Gusti, if we could drop our suitcases in our room. Gusti was SO nice! He said dropping the luggage was no problem at all. We were FINALLY free to go roam. Standard issue interior room Closets Typical bathroom Our first towel animal of the trip, a bird in a nest, was waiting for us. Super cute! I don’t remember seeing that one before! If I ever have the opportunity, I want to learn to play steel drums! Love it! More to come later......

I had heard the same concerns about Norfolk before we went. The reason only Platinum and Diamond was inside was because they simply didn’t have room for everyone else. I did read AFTER our cruise on our Facebook that everyone in our group had a good parking experience. That’s encouraging. i have friends on the same sailing as you! I hope you have a great cruise!

Thanks so much for reading along and for your kind words! Glad to have you along!

October 6th – Embarkation Day After a restless night (because I was again too excited to sleep well) it was FINALLY embarkation day! We got up, showered and headed down to find breakfast. The hotel offers a “hot” breakfast. It was mostly continental but there were some eggs, sausage and a pancake maker. It was certainly sufficient for us. We’re not big breakfast eaters anyway so it doesn’t take a lot to please us. Besides, we both knew we’d wind up nomming on some left over cheesecake before we left for the port. Ron needed a couple of last minute items, so we headed over the Walgreens next door to get a few small things. Our boarding time was 10:30. Ever since Carnival instituted the new procedure where you choose a boarding time two weeks before the cruise, I have always made it a practice to stay up late the night before, check in at midnight, and get the earliest boarding time possible. Around 10:00 am, we ordered our Uber and went downstairs to meet Mary. It is SO time to GO!! Mary was really nice. To be honest, we’ve never had a bad experience with Uber. She arrived right on time, and we headed to the port. She chatted on the way about how excited Norfolk was to be welcoming cruise ships again after not hosting any since 2019. I was telling her about reading that the Port of Charleston was closing to cruise ship traffic in 2024. She said Norfolk was hoping to pick up some of the overflow. I hope so, too, since it’s the closest port for us however, they’ve got some logistical problems that will have to be addressed before they can handle much cruise ship traffic. We pulled into the Half Moone Cruise Terminal. It was complete chaos! Hundreds of people who had just gotten off the ship were standing on the sidewalk waiting for their rides. There was no method to the madness of who was coming and who was going. There were no signs. There were no porters in sight. There were no port workers. It was just a sea of people and luggage. Apparently, this was only the second cruise out of Norfolk in several years so they’re still figuring out the procedure. As we got out of the car and started lifting our bags out of the trunk, a guy ran up and put his bags into the trunk. Mary was going to have a busy day! Our first glimpse of Magic! Really, the only opportunity to take a picture of her docked. I started looking for porters. I couldn’t see any anywhere. We skirted the crowd a little and finally saw someone with a name tag. I asked her where we went in and where we could find the porters. She opened a gate in a barrier and told us “Right this way!” We were pointed to an elevator and taken up to the second floor. There were no other people with us, so it didn’t feel quite right but we were committed at this point. We walked into the terminal. It was the point of no return. Going through security was easy. They seemed thrilled to see so many people. The workers were smiling and chatting. They were being very nice and helpful to everyone. We basically walked through the door and immediately through security. That was easy! After clearing security, we still had our bags. No porters. We realized that at this point, we were committed to keeping our bags with us. I did not see a porter from beginning to end. I can only assume that we needed to wade straight through the sea of people and go in through a different door…..or porters are like Bigfoot or unicorns. We know they exist but very few people have actually seen them! We’ll know the next time we sail from Norfolk. We walked straight up to the check-in counter. They looked at our passports, checked our Bermuda Travel Authorization forms and checked our COVID test results. You know, I paid $40 EACH for that Bermuda Travel Authorization. I expected a little more fanfare! Everything was in order, so we were sent on to a waiting area. It was probably close to 11 at this point. They did have roped off sections and signs pointing to the waiting areas. At that point we learned another interesting thing about sailing from Norfolk…..only Platinum and Diamond cruisers get to wait INSIDE the terminal. Hey, I’m WORKING on the whole Platinum thing! That apparently didn’t count. We were taken outside to a tent. It was the sort of event tent that you’d see at a wedding but was rather narrow. We rolled our luggage in and took a seat. At that point there were still plenty of seats. Our tent waiting area Waiting....somewhat patiently...... Port of Norfolk Someone made an announcement that we would begin boarding in about 45 minutes. Looks like the early embark time didn’t help much at all. We weren’t going to board until around noon. We sat there chatting, people watching and playing games on our phones. To be honest, I didn’t really care. We had checked in; we were going ready to board and we were going on another cruise! What could possibly be bad?!? Waiting in the tent wasn’t bad at all. I was glad I was wearing a sweater, but the temperature was very pleasant. I can imagine it would be pretty rough if it were much colder OR much hotter. As it was, we were comfortable. They started boarding by muster station numbers. This is different. It was usually zone numbers based on when you’d arrived in times past. Not this time! Fortunately, our muster station was A4 so we didn’t have long to wait. We stepped on board. Yay! I’m on a cruise! Here is my normal “yay, I’m on board and here’s my first step” picture. When we got inside, we thought we’d go ahead and take care of muster before we went to Lido deck. We took our luggage upstairs to deck four and entered the Showtime Theatre. Jeremy from the ropes course was on stage demonstrating the use of the life jacket. He said “I’m Jeremy from the ropes course” so we stood up and yelled “We will see you soon!”. We promptly sat down, shut up and got back to behaving ourselves so we wouldn’t be some of the first people thrown out of a muster drill. LOL The entire process only took a few minutes. The new muster process is SO much better than the old! I’m so glad that we no longer have to stand in lines crushed up against each other for 30 minutes in the hot sun. Jeremy demonstrates the life jackets Yay, we made it!!! More to come.........

I'm glad you love the mountains! I do, too, but there's just something special for me about the beach. I guess maybe we love the one we don't have access to as often. Thanks for reading along!!

Thank you so much and thanks for reading along! I hope to have some more up this afternoon.

Thank you so very much! I can’t say I consider myself a great writer either but, like you, I like to read SO I try to write what i’d Like to read. I’m so glad you’re enjoying it and thanks so much for reading along.

We are kindred spirits, then! I look around my mountains and they are beautiful. I love them, too, but there’s something about that expanse of water! Thanks so much for reading along. There’s definitely some impressive water still to come!

Ok, super jealous! Lol. Thanks for reading along!

Magic – October 2022 Disclaimer: This is more of a “story” than a “review”. This isn’t a list of things I liked and things I didn’t. This is, instead, the story and photos of our cruise. I have shared our thoughts and opinions. Those thoughts and opinions might be different for someone else who was on the very same cruise. That’s OK! Everyone is different and everyone has a different way of telling their story. This is mine. If you prefer a more “technical”, shorter review then I’m not at all offended if you skip this post (or posts) altogether. If you prefer to start reading on the first cruise day, I hope to have that posted tomorrow. But if you, like me, love to read the start to finish adventure and look at the pictures then you are MY people and I’m honored to have you read along. There were big wins (really!) and small losses (boo!) but all of these work together to create our “story”. So….without further ado…….here is MY long Magic (to Bermuda) story! It was a dark and stormy night….and day….and night…and…you get the picture. It rained our entire cruise to Bermuda in 2015. It wasn’t just a little bit of rain. It was RAIN. Continuous and soaking RAIN. It was my one and only trip to Bermuda. Shore excursions were canceled. The ship rocked for days to the point that the drawer in the nightstand beside the bed opened and closed until we finally stuffed a towel in it to make it stop. Lots of other passengers were seasick. Although we did explore some on our own, we really didn’t feel like we “visited” Bermuda. Time to change that! If you haven’t read any of my other reviews, let me take a minute to introduce you to myself and my husband. We are Ron and Michelle, and we live in the beautiful mountain state of West Virginia, just a few miles from the southernmost West Virginia/Virginia border. I am a real estate appraiser and own my own business. Ron, who is also an appraiser, is the Appraisal Services Manager for a regional bank chain. It is sometimes difficult for me to find time to take a vacation during typical vacation months. Since I am self-employed, I tend to “make hay while the sun shines”……literally….while the sun shines, since spring and summer tend to be my busiest times. In light of that, we often take our vacations on the off seasons….January, February, October, November…whenever we can make time to get away. This would be our 11th cruise, ten of which were with Carnival. (The only trip I ever did on Royal Caribbean was that trip to Bermuda.) As I was saying, although I had a good time on our first Bermuda cruise, I would have loved to visit Bermuda when it wasn’t raining buckets. That opportunity presented itself this year. West Virginia isn’t exactly close to any ports unless we drive multiple hours. On every one of our other ten other cruises, with the exception of one, we flew to our embarkation city. This time, Carnival was offering a quick four-day trip to Bermuda out of Norfolk, VA. That’s only about six hours away from us. Better still, we could sail over the Columbus Day weekend, which meant that Ron would only have to use a couple of vacation days instead of a whole week. Sign me up! We had been in the Port of Norfolk once before when we toured the USS Wisconsin. We didn’t realize that the building we were in was next door to the cruise port for Norfolk. In the month we visited the Wisconsin, there were no commercial cruises scheduled. Interesting that we’d already been there once and didn’t even know it! We booked the cruise on the Magic, I joined the Facebook group and started reading on Cruise Critic. I quickly discovered that parking was apparently a very real problem in Norfolk for cruisers. (Turns out it wasn’t but I was going on the information I had at the time.) The parking lot for the cruise terminal is called Cedar Grove. It is about a mile and a half away from the Nauticus/Half Moone cruise terminal. That doesn’t sound so far but it’s a pretty good hike if you’re carrying luggage. According to the website, parking is $15 per day. Again, not terrible. The problem apparently rises with the difficulty in getting from the parking area to the cruise terminal. I had read several stories about people cruising from Norfolk who waiting on shuttles for an hour, huge lines for shuttles and general problems with transport from parking to the ship. Additionally, there were reports of vandalism to multiple cars that were left there during a few cruises. Given that information, we decided to search for a hotel that would allow us to leave our car on their parking lot for the duration of the cruise. I can see that one advantage to flying to the port is you don’t have to figure out what to do with a car. A bit of research revealed that the Holiday Inn Express would allow me to leave my car on their lot during the cruise. I called to confirm that fact. They were super nice. They readily agreed that they regularly had cruisers who left cars there with no problems BUT they did not have parking lot security and would not take responsibility for anything that might happen. Sounds like a plan! I booked directly through the hotel and the rate, with taxes, was $198.56. Not too bad considering that I wasn’t paying for parking at the port. Time ticked by. All of our “lasts” were finally here. Last day of work….last report that had to be delivered….last time to do laundry. Finally, it was time to pack and head out! Woo hoo! Bermuda is one of the few places that still requires testing. We were traveling the day before our cruise, as normal. We left home on Wednesday, Oct 5th. The testing requirement for Bermuda was a little more lenient than the past Carnival requirements and allowed up to 4 days before. We opted to take the tests right before we left. October 5th – Travel Day Wednesday morning we were up bright and early. I always have trouble sleeping the night before we leave on a cruise. It’s kind of like the first day of school. I’m too excited to sleep well! As before, we used the eMed tests. We basically got up, got ready, took tests and walked out the door. Easy peasy! We were on the road by 8:30. First stop was Tudor’s Biscuit World. Tudor’s is a very small chain with most restaurants in West Virginia. Their biscuits are HUGE and delicious. I am one of those people who constantly has to fight with a weight problem so I seldom let go and eat things like a Tudor’s biscuit with bacon and cheese. When I’m on vacation, I give myself permission to NOT care about my weight. Instead, I’m going to eat everything in sight and all the things I’ve wanted to eat for a while. Time to let off steam! I’m on vacation! My vacation starts the minute I walk out the door, so a biscuit was definitely in order. We ate breakfast while we drove. We were just enjoying some time together to talk about nothing and everything. It’s hard to find that time for conversation. Driving is the perfect time to catch up. With a drive time of about six hours, stops for gas and restroom, then lunch, we finally arrived at Virginia Beach about 3:30. The temperature was in the low 60’s. Beautiful day for a drive on I-77 Going into the Hampton Roads Tunnel Up out of the tunnel and you can see military ships in the distance I love the ocean. I love the beach. I love the surf. If I’m at the beach, I’m going to walk in the surf even if it’s cold. I’m like a 6-year-old in that respect. (It would be a shame if I was required to lie down on the sidewalk and throw a tantrum but fortunately, Ron is an agreeable human and didn’t argue! He’s smart like that! As long as HE didn’t have to go into the surf, he was fine.) We drove into the town of Virginia Beach and found public parking. We then walked out to the boardwalk. Ahhh….there it was! It even smelled “right”. It’s hard to explain and I’m sure many of you have lived near the ocean but for me, the first sight, smell and touch of sand is one of those “perfect” moments. Maybe different people see different things, but I see the hand of God and a perfect creation. I see that here in the mountains, too. I suppose all of us are awed by the things we don’t see every day. At any rate, I love it. We made it to the boardwalk! Looking out toward the Atlantic. You can't quite see Bermuda from here.... A ship in the distance You could tell that the water had been up over the boardwalk because of the extra sand. Hurricane Ian had blown up the coast the week before after decimating poor Florida and I suspect the high water and sand were from that storm. We walked for a while just enjoying the beach. We stopped at the pier for a minute but didn’t pay to walk out on it because we weren’t going to be there very long. We just talked with each other…sharing our memories of being there over Thanksgiving in 2020 and just enjoying the rare opportunity to be together without the demands of work. In addition to being my husband, Ron is my very best friend. There’s no one else on earth I’d rather spend my time with. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants and off I went. The sidewalk was cold. The sand was wet and cold (Imagine that!) It was definitely cold! I didn’t want to stay long but the important thing is that I DID go into the surf. It was a moral imperative! Ron wisely busied himself taking pictures so he would not be caught in the fray or the spray. Heading into the surf...wearing a long sleeved shirt, sweater AND jacket! It may not be the best idea I've ever had, but I'm doing it anyway! This is cold! One last picture for posterity and I'm finished After just a few minutes I couldn’t stay in the water any longer. I walked up to a bench, pulled some Kleenex out of my backpack that I’d brought for just this occasion, cleaned up and put my shoes back on. Mission accomplished. Let’s go find dinner! Swimming always makes me hungry! We knew there was a Cheesecake Factory just a few miles down the road, so we headed that way. I really like Cheesecake Factory! The closest one to us is probably Charlotte, NC, which is 3-4 hours away. If we have an opportunity to go, we usually take it! I’m partial to their pasta so we each ordered a different pasta dish and tried both dinners. I ordered chicken Romano and Ron ordered chicken alfredo. Both were really good, but we were only able to finish about half. I had asked Ron if he wanted to just get one dinner and halve it but we wanted different things. It was too bad we couldn’t take it home but….no way to do that. We took a piece of cheesecake to go. He opted for a mango, and I got a peanut butter cup. So many options! So many calories! Fortunately, it’s vacation and calories don’t count right now. We drove about 20 minutes to our hotel; Holiday Inn Express. As I had said earlier, I had called ahead, and they had agreed to allow us to leave our car there for the duration of our cruise. We checked in an went to our room. We got a king suite. It was very nice. There was a living room, bathroom (of course) and separate bedroom. There were television sets in both the living room and bedroom. It also had the typical refrigerator, microwave and coffee maker. I had nothing that I wanted or needed to microwave and neither of us drink coffee so we put our cheesecake in the refrigerator and settled in for the next 15 hours. We watched a little television, ironed clothes and ate part of our cheesecake. We lead exciting lives. LOL More to come..........

Oh yay! Another Willdra review! I'm a little late to the party but so excited to settle in and enjoy the ride! We're on Sunshine in February so I plan to tuck away some information for future use...as well as be entertained (as you do so well)!

So enjoying your review! Thanks for taking the time to write it. We’re headed to Bermuda on Magic on 10/06. Can’t wait!

Yay, another Jamman review! We’re off to Bermuda in 3 weeks and i’m glad to read both your and Greg’s reviews before I go. It’s been quite a few years since I was there. Looking forward to your review!