My LONG Magic Story (to Bermuda!) - 10/5 - 10/10

[Crusin Karen]

15 hours ago, JimmyTheSaint said:

Hope you can help, I've asked elsewhere but no reply yet. How long did it take for your Travel Authorisation to come through for Bermuda? We applied six days ago and haven't heard anything. I sent an email trying to chase it up but no response.

 

Can't remember how long but I didn't get it until about 10 days before I cruised and I too was in a panic!!!  I asked "your question" about a dozen times lol.  (Cruise was 9/24)  They send you an email confirmation of your application and you can check if your $40 fee has been charged to your credit card.  If so, don't worry (said the world's biggest worry wort!)

[mlshum]

1 hour ago, Crusin Karen said:

WOW!!!!  What an amazing day you had.  And you're very brave!  Pictures are beautiful.  Thanks for sharing.  BTW Tides pool is not adults only.  We did not have many kids on 9/24 cruise, but they stayed mostly at the "main pool"  but there were some in Tides pool and hot tub.  Adults only is of course the Serenity.  Tides area had the bar, pizza and seafood shack.  And I realized on last day of the cruise they also have breakfast items where the seafood is.  

Thank you for your kind words and thank you for reading along!

 

I don't do the pools much.  I did hang out at Tides, the bar there, pizza, etc but I never saw a child in that pool.  I feel like some ships we've been on made Tides adult only but I'm not sure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BallFour4]

Loving this.

 

In a land not far away (Galveston) the Magic came here when she was brand spanking new. Maroon 5 performed on The Strand area and we were invited to spend the night aboard and take a ship tour. Here are some of the photos I took that day, and a few from cruises on the Magic after.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hsgCyxBkhjBos7x27

 

See You At Sea...

.

[mlshum]

17 minutes ago, BallFour4 said:

Loving this.

 

In a land not far away (Galveston) the Magic came here when she was brand spanking new. Maroon 5 performed on The Strand area and we were invited to spend the night aboard and take a ship tour. Here are some of the photos I took that day, and a few from cruises on the Magic after.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hsgCyxBkhjBos7x27

 

See You At Sea...

.

Fantastic pictures!  Thanks so much for sharing!  I think I remember when Maroon 5 performed for a ship launching.

 

We're actually sailing out of Galveston next November on the Jubilee.  I'm so excited!  I've never been to Galveston before so I'm looking forward to visiting there as well.  We'll be flying in on Thanksgiving, actually, and boarding on Saturday so we'll have all of Friday to explore.  What is the "not to be missed" in Galveston?

 

Thanks for reading along and for your kind words!

[BallFour4]

12 minutes ago, mlshum said:

Fantastic pictures!  Thanks so much for sharing!  I think I remember when Maroon 5 performed for a ship launching.

 

We're actually sailing out of Galveston next November on the Jubilee.  I'm so excited!  I've never been to Galveston before so I'm looking forward to visiting there as well.  We'll be flying in on Thanksgiving, actually, and boarding on Saturday so we'll have all of Friday to explore.  What is the "not to be missed" in Galveston?

 

Thanks for reading along and for your kind words!

Much to do on the island, message me and I will share my email. galveston.com offers some help, but the Strand area will be really nice that day. The Seawall will most likely be windy and cool.

 

 

[EllieinNJ]

When you mentioned Philip from Survivor I thought of the crazy guy running around the island in orange tidy whities.  He was a love/hate contestant for us Survivor fans.

 

The cave reminds me of the cave tubing we did on Belize.  We didn't go swimming.  Just tubing and it was a lot of fun.

 

We are going to Bermuda again in February with NCL.  Yes I know it may be cold but don't intend to do any water excursions.  Just may visit Crystal Caves or Aquarium.  We got a real deal on this.

 

Looking forward to the rest of your adventure.

[mlshum]

2 hours ago, BallFour4 said:

Much to do on the island, message me and I will share my email. galveston.com offers some help, but the Strand area will be really nice that day. The Seawall will most likely be windy and cool.

 

 

Thank you!

[mlshum]

1 hour ago, EllieinNJ said:

When you mentioned Philip from Survivor I thought of the crazy guy running around the island in orange tidy whities.  He was a love/hate contestant for us Survivor fans.

 

The cave reminds me of the cave tubing we did on Belize.  We didn't go swimming.  Just tubing and it was a lot of fun.

 

We are going to Bermuda again in February with NCL.  Yes I know it may be cold but don't intend to do any water excursions.  Just may visit Crystal Caves or Aquarium.  We got a real deal on this.

 

Looking forward to the rest of your adventure.

 

[mlshum]

Yes, Phillip was a mess but so entertaining.  I vote for him and Russell to be on every season.  LOL

 

I, too, did some cave tubing in Belize in a similar type cave.  I think the cave itself was bigger in Belize (if it's the same one).  This one was more light, interesting rooms and water clarity.  I loved them both!

 

I hope you enjoy your trip to Bermuda and thanks so much for reading along!

[mlshum]

Oct 9^th – Sea Day

 

How can this possibly be the last day already!!!!

 

We woke up at a leisurely pace and went to the Lido for breakfast.  I was still trying to figure out this croissant situation.  I decided to try making a ham and cheese croissant.  I still couldn’t eat it.  I give up!  I mean I GIVE UP!  There was only one more breakfast but there would be no more croissants for me during this trip.  (sniff, sniff)  😞

 

 

 

Today was towel animal takeover day.  I always love that!  This had to be the best towel animal takeover that I’ve seen.  In addition to towels, you can also get fuzzy blankets on the Lido deck for watching movies in the cool evenings.  They had made some really large towel animals out of the larger blankets and towels and a lot of smaller out of regular towels, hand towels and even washcloths.  The best part was the doghouse and the different kinds of sizes of dogs.  I loved it!!

 

 

Epic towel animals!

 

 

They had fuzzy blankets for the Dive In movies on this cruise and this dog and the next alligator were made from the blankets.  I thought this dog was adorable!  He's about the best towel animal I've ever seen!

 

 

Alligator from the fuzzy blankets

 

 

Doghouse!  Super cute!

 

 

I have no idea how long this might have taken but I love it!

 

After finishing breakfast, we headed down to the theatre to catch the 9am General Knowledge trivia game.  We won!  They gave us a mini Battleship game which we in turn gave to a little girl that was sitting in front of us.  She seemed pleased.

 

 

Ugh...I don't know why some of my pictures were blurry.  Sorry!  There weren't many players for the 9am General Knowledge trivia.

 

After playing our game we had some time before any other trivia games started so we decided to go to the casino and redeem my Deal or No Deal winnings.

 

I am not a good gambler.  I don’t like potentially losing my hard-earned cash.  I’ve only played slots one time and that was our very first cruise in 2010.  I didn’t especially enjoy it and it had never crossed my mind to try again.  Today would be the day I tried again.  After all, it wasn’t MY money this time!

 

The teller loaded the $30 onto my card and I found an empty slot machine.  I had NO idea how this was supposed to work.  There were very minimal instructions.  I figured out how to load $10 of the $30 on the machine.  My goal was to figure out how to bet a dollar and basically have 30 spins before it was all gone.  Apparently, I did something wrong because the $10 was completely gone in two spins.  I decided to give up for the moment and go do something else.

 

 

I didn't realize Ron was sneaking pics in the casino until after the fact.  This was when I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.

 

 

This was me complaining to him about trying to figure out what to do.  LOL  Like I said....I'm a terrible gambler.

 

 

 

Carnival trivia was beginning in the Ocean Plaza.  We headed to Ocean Plaza to play that game.  We didn’t win but it was a lot of fun.  The person who won got ten right and we got nine right.  We were pretty close!

 

Since we really weren’t hungry yet for lunch, we decided to go back to the casino and finish losing my Deal or No Deal winnings.  At this point there was $20 left on my card. With renewed resolve to complete this task I sat down at a different machine that had fewer buttons.  This time I did a little better and managed to figure out how to bet one dollar at a time.  I would spin, lose, spin, lose, win a couple of dollars, lose, etc.  On it went until that $10 was gone.  We decided to go ahead and finish using up the rest of the casino money while we were there, so I loaded the last $10 onto the same machine.

 

The same thing happened.  I would bet a dollar, lose, bet, lose, win a couple, lose, etc.  I got down to only three dollars left and then something very strange happened.  Lights flashed and bells rang.  The numbers started ticking up.  I turned to Ron and said, “If this thing reaches $20 I’m cashing out!”  $20 came and went and still it kept climbing.  $30….$75…..$100….$150….$175……  By this time people were starting to gather around to see what was causing such a racket.  The numbers kept climbing.   $200…….$250….$275 and finally stopped at $302.  I was in shock.  I felt like fainting.  I felt dazed.  I turned to a lady beside me and asked how I cashed out.  She pointed to the “cash out” button.  I promptly hit the button.  She assured me it was OK to remove my card.

 

 

 

By this time Ron and I were cracking up.  It was the most ridiculous thing ever!  I went to the teller, handed her my card and said, “I think I accidentally won $300.”  She kind of chuckled like she didn’t believe me and took my card.  She put it into her machine and a look of surprise came over her face.  She said, “You DID just win $300 dollars!”.   She counted out $302 dollars.  I took it, put it in my pocket and left before they could change their mind!  I would have never, NEVER in my wildest dreams guessed that I would ever win anything in a casino because, after all, one must play to win and I never play.  LOL  We sent a message to our friends Liz and Aaron.  They love the casino and know that I didn’t usually play.  I HAD to rub it in a little.  It was a TOTAL accident that will never happen again.

 

After all the casino excitement, we had worked up an appetite, so we went out on deck to Guy’s Pig and Anchor for lunch.  This was probably the best Pig and Anchor food we’ve had yet.  Go figure!  It’s kind of hit or miss!  We finished lunch, went up to Lido to get some dessert and decided that relaxing, reading and a nap was in order.  It had been an eventful morning!  We dropped off the final duck, which was Griffyndor.

 

 

 

 

Remember that I won a Bingo package on my second Deal or No Deal game?  I had picked up my $25 card at 11:30. The game was to begin at 2pm.  Again, I’m not a good Bingo player but since it was free, I was going to stick it out.  What I didn’t realize is that there would be three games.  The first was normal Bingo.  The second was filling in the corner boxes and the third was covering everything on the card.  I didn’t win anything.  Fortunately, I didn’t expect to win anything so I wasn’t disappointed!  The entire game took longer than I imagined it would.  My AADD (adult attention deficit disorder) was starting to kick in and Ron was starting to chuckle at me because I was squirming.  LOL  Finally it was over and we headed back out.

 

 

Here are the last two ducks we found.  We set them both free for someone else to enjoy.

 

 

I'm going back to work now but I will be back later this evening to finish this story!

 

 

 

 

 

[nanners]

21 hours ago, mlshum said:

There are two pools.  The Tides pool is all the way in the back and, I think, is supposed to be for adults only.  There is also a Lido pool which usually has several kids.  They are both sort of small.  There are numerous hot tubs scattered around the deck.

 

Thanks for reading along!

 

Thank for that info.  I feel better now!

[mlshum]

58 minutes ago, nanners said:

Thank for that info.  I feel better now!

I'm not sure Tides is only for adults.  Someone just posted earlier today that they had observed children in it.  There weren't any children using it during our cruise but that could have just been a fluke because there weren't many children on our sailing.  I seem to remember the Tides pool being off limit to kids on some of the other ships but I honestly don't know for sure.

 

The Serenity Deck IS definitely adults only.  There are several hot tubs on Serenity but no dedicated swimming pools.  

 

To be honest, in 11 cruises I've never actually been in a cruise ship swimming pool and I think I've only been in a hot tub once!  LOL  I usually do the water slides at least once and we do a lot of swimming in port.

 

Hope you have a great cruise!

[mlshum]

Evening came and it was time for dinner.  As I said earlier, this was our 11^th cruise.  On every single night of every single cruise we have mostly eaten in the main dining room except for once at a specialty restaurant.  On this night we decided to do something totally different.  We went to the Lido buffet for dinner.

 

I had heard that the menu was pretty much the same as what was in the main dining room.  This was largely true.  I love a good salad, and I always enjoy the salad bar.  Jerk pork was on the main dining menu and sure enough, it was on the buffet, too.  Everything that we ate was good.  There were some additional things that were not available in the main dining room, such as carved turkey but there were also some things that you couldn’t get, such as chocolate melting cake or baked Alaska, which makes sense because of the ice cream.  The desserts that were offered on the buffet that night were pretty “meh”.  I don’t remember what we had but it certainly didn’t make an impression.  I only ate a couple of bites of the dessert, promising myself I’d get some ice cream later.

 

After dinner we went to Pixels to get our ropes course picture and then to the main theatre to see “America Rocks”.  They did a fine job.  It was pretty similar to all of the other Playlist productions but had mostly 70’s rock.  We enjoyed the show.

 

 

Waiting for the show to start

 

 

Ryan introducing the show

 

 

Check out his shoes!  This guy has some truly unusual shoes!

 

Brad, the pianist, would be playing in the piano bar at 9pm so we went that direction to find a seat.   This was my first time on a Dream class ship.  The piano bar is very open to a main traffic area.  This doesn’t seem like a great layout to me.  At one point, there was a long line of people waiting to get in to Punchliner.  At other times, people would wander in to speak to someone they knew.  There was so much talking and laughing that you couldn’t hear Brad at all.  He was doing a good job but even though we were pretty close to the piano, it was just too loud to enjoy the performance.  We finally gave up after about an hour.  I very much prefer the piano bar to be in a dedicated room where you can actually hear what is happening.

 

 

Waiting for the show to start

 

 

The piano bar

 

 

Brad was giving it his all

 

We went up to get a piece of pizza and a small cup of ice cream.  The next day was debarkation.  It didn’t seem possible.  We had decided to do self-debarkation.  We hadn’t packed a single thing and we DIDN’T pack anything until the next morning. It was pretty late so we went back to our cabin for the rest of the evening.

 

Here are some pictures from our last walk around the decks.  It was a perfect evening although it was getting chilly again as we got closer to Norfolk.

 

 

 

 

 

I love this picture!

 

 

October 10^th – Debarkation

 

How is it possible that four days have already come and gone?!?  We like the seven-day cruises more than the shorter cruises, but we love them all and will certainly take what we can get that works with our schedules.  I was grateful we had been able to steal away for this cruise.

 

We got up, as usual, showered and headed out for breakfast.  It was around 7:00 am.  We knew we had to be out of cabins by 8:30. They had already started calling for self-debarkation and were calling groups by muster stations.  Since our muster station was A4, we were in an early group.  I didn’t even attempt the croissant this morning.  I was beaten.  Defeated.  No croissant this trip.  (little tear)  "Croissantgate" comes to an end.  I'll be back on the Sunshine in February so they will HOPEFULLY have it worked out by then!

 

We went back to our room, threw all our belongings in suitcases, spoke to Gusti to tell him goodbye, give him a thank you card with an extra tip, and headed down to deck three.  The debarkation process seemed to be moving along smoothly.  Ryan was directing the process wearing a cow suit complete with udders.  We only waited in line about fifteen minutes, and we were walking off the ship.  Very easy!  We sailed through security, had nothing to declare (not even souvenirs since we didn't get to shop for any in Bermuda!)  and were outside in no time at all.  Ron grabbed his phone and ordered an Uber.

 

After a few minutes, we were notified that Obed was on his way.  People were coming off the ship and starting to congregate.  Buses were arriving.  Pedestrians were everywhere and many paid no attention whatsoever to those who were trying to direct traffic.  Norfolk is having growing pains for sure, but I think they will eventually figure out a better system if they have more ships coming and going.

 

Obed arrived.  He was unaware that a ship was docking that day.  We explained the embarkation and debarkation process to him.  He told us that as soon as he dropped us off, he was heading back to the port area to spend a good part of the day trying to pick up some cruise passenger business.  I’m glad we were able to help him and I hope he had a good day.  He was really nice!   We were at our car in about ten minutes.  It wasn’t until after we got home that I realized he HADN’T taken our traditional “our cruise is over and now we’re pouting” picture.  Oh no!  I thought about cheating all of you, making Ron go out to the car right now and take it but I wouldn’t do that to you.  I’ll get it the next time!

 

So…..that’s pretty much it!  We had a wonderful cruise, as always!  Bermuda was gorgeous and I’m SO glad we were able to go a second time when it wasn’t raining.  The Magic is a beautiful ship and although some of the food wasn’t the greatest, some of it was really good and it was all good enough that I managed to gain a few pounds.  LOL 

 

I’m already looking forward to our next adventure in February on the Sunshine.   This will be the first time we'll get to sail with a large group.  We're sailing with four other couples who are some of our closest friends.  We all go to church together.  It's going to be a great cruise!   Hope to see you then!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mlshum]

And here are the Fun Times for the last day......

 

Funtimes 4-1.pdf

 

Funtimes 4-2.pdf

[Jamman54]

Well done!! Looking forward to your cruise on the Sunshine! 

[mlshum]

2 hours ago, Jamman54 said:

Well done!! Looking forward to your cruise on the Sunshine! 

Thank you!  I am, too!  I’m also looking forward to your next review.  Where are you headed next?

[Guest BasicSailor]

 

 

Those photos are a cruisers delight.👍

[mlshum]

33 minutes ago, BasicSailor said:

 

 

Those photos are a cruisers delight.👍

Thank you!  I couldn’t agree more!  The moon was breathtakingly beautiful that night

[Jamman54]

3 hours ago, mlshum said:

Thank you!  I am, too!  I’m also looking forward to your next review.  Where are you headed next?

Freedom and Spirit in January. 😎

[pcvtmom]

Awesome review!  Thanks for taking the time to post this informative and entertaining review. The next time we sail to Bermuda, I think we'll look into the excursion you all took.  It really appeals to me!

[luvcruzing]

Thank you for doing the review.  Loved following along with you on your adventures.

[mlshum]

27 minutes ago, pcvtmom said:

Awesome review!  Thanks for taking the time to post this informative and entertaining review. The next time we sail to Bermuda, I think we'll look into the excursion you all took.  It really appeals to me!

Thank you so much for reading along and for your kind words!

 

it was such a fun day and I know you won’t regret it!  They pack a lot into 7 hours!

[mlshum]

28 minutes ago, luvcruzing said:

Thank you for doing the review.  Loved following along with you on your adventures.

Thank you so much for reading along and for your kind words!

[cellfree]

Have read through your “story,” we are cruising on the Magic tomorrow. Did you reserve Uber ahead of time or simply call for one Day of Embarkation? 

[mlshum]

2 hours ago, cellfree said:

Have read through your “story,” we are cruising on the Magic tomorrow. Did you reserve Uber ahead of time or simply call for one Day of Embarkation? 

Hey there!  We also have close friends cruising with you tomorrow.  I hope you have a fantastic cruise!

 

We did not reserve in advance.  We used the app at about 10am, she picked us up about 10:15 and dropped us off about 10:30.  Very easy.

 

Thanks for reading along!