Carnival Magic review, March 18-25, 2012

[klhskygirl]

Thanks for your review! :)

My husband, I and two teenage boys were on the same cruise and your review is very accurate, especially as far as the "chair hog's" goes!

One sea day we were out looking for two chairs at about 7:40 on the deck that overlooked the main pool and finally saw two chairs that only had two lido cups sitting on them. I asked the lady sitting beside these two chairs and she said that she had been there since 7am and no one had been there SO we moved the cups and as soon as were were getting seated these two women rushed over and said those were their seats and they were walking the track. They had the other four or five seats on the other side, I suppose they ran out of stuff to "hog" the chairs with. My husband just said "well cups don't save chairs" and no one has been here since 7. Nothing else was said but as the time went on more and more of their friends and family started showing up so they just started moving regular chairs over by their lounge chairs. The lady that told us no one was in those seats also had saved about 7 chairs on the other side. Her people were in and out while we were there but I decided before we left I would offer our chairs to someone that I could tell was looking for chairs. And that's exactly what I did. I saw a couple walking around and when I saw them stop over away from us, I walked over and explained that on each side of our chairs were large groups that were "hogging" chairs and I knew that once we got up they would have taken over those chairs also. That couple was so thankful and as we walked off I looked back and the group that thought we stole their chairs were all talking about me and my husband! I didn't care!! I've only been on one other cruise but it was in Oct and there were "chair hogs" there also but this one was really bad I guess due to all the families on Spring Break so lots of young people wanting tans! We do vacation every summer in FL and experience the same thing! My husband complains every year when I make him get out there at 6am to sit with me just to get a chair by the pool!!!:eek:

Thanks again for your review, it makes me wish I was on another one!

[k2excursion]

Oops! I hadn't looked at this thread in months and didn't realize that there were a few comments. Thanks for the comments, and in case I didn't make a good enough point of it, I need to say again that this was quite an unusual week for this ship. The ship was overrun mostly by people from Arkansas, plus many from Oklahoma & Kansas, and almost nobody from Texas (very unusual for a Galveston cruise). This was the 3rd week of March, which was Spring Break for us but not for Texas. When Galveston cruises are mostly Texans, I have noticed very little chair hogging going on. You can always find one. Maybe not exactly where you want to be, but close enough. On this cruise, I've never seen anything like it. There had to be some monsterously large groups on board, and one person from each would save dozens of chairs at about 5am. If you weren't a part of one of the large groups, you were out of luck the whole day. The last sea day, I literally never got one. I tried to stand in spots to get sun or sit on the ground. Yes, this can be frustrating, but the ship is a nice ship, and my experience is not the norm for the ship.

 

I did enjoy the sailing. And once I was done with my early rant on this review, I did turn it over to the positive. I loved the Waterworks, loved the spa, loved the magic show, loved how short the lines were despite the huge number of people, loved how dinner took less than 90 minutes, loved the 2 ports that we did something at, etc. I may throw in something that I didn't love as much, or that someone was on vacation unexpectedly, but that's just to keep it balanced and objective. No cruise can be perfect, and people shouldn't expect theirs to be. But this one was still great.

 

Some more notes now that I've sailed the one ship newer than the Magic. I just got off the Breeze. In my opinion, I do prefer the style & quantity of entertainment that Magic offers. The interior decor of the 2 ships are very different. I like both styles, but Magic's style seemed more open in spots, which allowed for fewer bottlenecks of humanity. The pool areas & Waterworks of both ships are exactly identical, not counting the food/bars setups. Breeze had surprisingly short buffet lines as well, except for one fluky day. We had over 4700 on the ship (every single bed was filled). No real chair hog issues, as I could always find one in the sun near where I'd want it. For either ship & also for the Dream, if you want a balcony, GET A COVE!!! They are great! We had one on Breeze, and it was so nice. We were not underneath the galley/kitchen.