Carnival Magic at Thanksgiving - Review

[LindseyButlerWilson]

Great review, I'll be on the Magic during spring break! 3/29-4/5

 

 

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It's a fun ship and lots to do on it. I'm sure you'll have a great time! :D

[LindseyButlerWilson]

Day 5 Sea Day

This was my most impressive day of sleeping in. Before bed the night before I did a big no-no and looked at pictures of my dogs which led to tears and deciding I was ready to go home. I slept until after 10 am and let me tell you, that is something I haven’t done in at least a year or two. Lucky us, it was a sea day and we headed straight to brunch. Because we were up so late, this was one of the only times Mike and I ate by ourselves. I ordered an omelet and pancakes and Mike got huevos rancheros. We’d asked for a table for two and the hostess graciously accommodated us. It turned out to be our downfall because the servers in our section did their best to ignore us. Brunch took around an hour and a half and when we FINALLY got our food; our server explained that it was because my omelet took so long to get made. Whatever.

We felt like some relaxation was in order so we headed straight for the serenity deck. My sister located this spot for us and I wish we’d known about it earlier (like the last cruise for example!). It’s located at the very front of the ship and is accessed by walking up a couple of flights of stairs from the 11th deck. The sports court is right next to it, which worried me at first, but it was very quiet. It was cool out, probably too cool to really lay out, but we made it work. First Mike and I scooped up a double hammock. This was sweet by any definition. It gently rocked with the movement of the ship and I would have been happy to fall asleep for a while… except that I’d slept in and wasn’t in a dozing mood. After about a half hour on this, I moved to a plush lounge chair next to the railing and read. Because of the colder weather, very few people were hanging out here, but my sister said it was never that busy. Mike went to get us a couple of Blue Hawaiians (if you haven’t had one, get one!) and after he came back we all got in the hot tub.

About this time my sister remembered the Love and Marriage show and we all decided to go change and then go watch it. We headed back to our room and switched out of our cold wet suits and into warmer clothes. We never made it to the Love and Marriage show. There was much dilly dallying and watching TV instead. I think this was just the day that we decided to be completely lazy.

In fact, by the time we had our behinds in gear; it was time to start getting ready for dinner. We had an invitation to a party for past guests. I am gold with Carnival so we both got in. The party was really fun! It was in the Showtime lounge and everyone got a big cocktail (and I think they were refilling when people ran out). We all got Mardi Gras beads and little hours devours. The cruise director and his staff showed a slide show of all of the ships from Carnival starting with the Mardi Gras. There was a couple in the audience who’d sailed on her and we all applauded them. After thanking us for a repeat business and recognizing the passenger at the party who’d cruised the most with Carnival, there was a dance party up on the stage. Mike and I left after watching the dancing a bit. I have to say that some of the Carnival staff can get down!

Since Thanksgiving had been cruise casual, this was the formal night and we knew we’d be taking a lot of pictures. Like I said previously, Carnival did a great job with the photos this time and this night had a lot of great backgrounds. We met up with family members and took several family portraits before dinner, and we ended up buying a lot of them.

Dinner was a lot of fun. I started with a chilled cherry soup and chilled cucumber soup AND escargot. Escargot just cannot be beaten. I love the stuff. I was pretty full but I had braised short ribs that were divine and even managed to take a few bites of cherries jubilee. I also ordered a cappuccino and it was yummy if not exactly a true cappuccino.

We wanted to go to comedy again, but we also wanted to go to the nightclub for country music night. The first comedian was a new guy, I cannot remember his name. He was not memorable. It’s not so much that he wasn’t funny; he just wasn’t funny enough to stand out. I ordered a BBC from the bar, this is a drink special to the Punchliner comedy club and it was pretty good, if sweet. The highlight of this show was when Mark, the manager of the comedy club warned us that we were in his house and that if we heckled, we’d get kicked right the hell out. And that is a very sanitary version of what was actually said. I don’t know what we missed the night before, but it was bad.

There was some discussion after the show about whether we’d wait around for the next act or not, but I really like Pat Godwin and I wanted to see him again. We stayed and Pat did not disappoint. He told a couple of jokes for the second time, but he has such great energy and such a good attitude that it was still funny. There was a woman in the audience whose husband never showed up for the show, and she made the mistake of looking around for him one too many times. What followed was probably embarrassing for her, but was hilarious for everyone else. I don’t want to ruin the joke, but Pat was very clever in his set up and once the joke landed people were crying they were laughing so hard.

We cut out after this show, not wanting to miss the opportunity to two-step. It wasn’t really late enough for the club to be busy so we had a lot of dance floor to ourselves and my family made good use of it. We danced until DJ shifted to hip hop and pop music and then a lot of the family headed off to the casino. Mike and I stayed with my sister, her fiancée, and my cousin Taylor. About this time I noticed shot glasses that had lights in them circling around the room. We all decided to do shots together. The first ones were called The Electric and were basically tiny mai tais. However a group near us ordered something called B-52s. This is a combination of Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish cream, and Grand Marnier. It’s delicious and deadly. As the place started to fill up, we continued to dance and periodically do shots.

So if the rest of this review hasn’t clued you in, I am not much of a party animal. That said, I overdid it a bit… scratch that, a LOT. At some point we all decided to buy rounds for each other. Later when we looked at the bill we estimated that we drank around 10 shots a person :eek:. Not something that a lightweight like me needs to do. Around 1 am my husband and my cousin escorted me back to our room. On the way I noticed that someone a couple of doors down from us had Aggie flags by their door. I was feeling a little mischievous I guess because I grabbed one and took it with me (not to worry, I returned it the next day). All in all, it was a really fun night, if a little out of hand…

I will say this for the nightclub, the staff was so nice. They gave us discounts for wearing white (which we were not) as it was their ‘white party’ that night. They also gave me water about the time I decided I might have had too much to drink. Getting ridiculously drunk was not my intention but I owe those bartenders a big thank you for being nice about it.

Next up… Last Day, and maybe a tiny hangover…:rolleyes:

[get me off land]

Subscribing! So excited to hear more about holidays aboard!

[treefrogg43130]

Almost all planned.

Grand Turk booked Cabana

Aruba booked UTV tour

St Kitts booked Tangerine tour

St Maarten possibly Mahoney beach

Bonaire booked Twizzy cars

Antigua still ?