LIVE-ish Carnival Magic May 19 - May 26 Family Cruise Eastern Caribbean LET’S CRUISE!

[KKB]

Thanks for the great review!

We have sailed 40x but only 3x on Carnival (so "newbies" to Carnival)--Miracle & Splendor.

We have the Panorama & Magic booked.

I ALMOST didnt't book Magic due to poor reviews, but your review (and a friend wanting to go) changed my mind!

We have sailed most mainstream lines & have never had a bad cruise--not a perfect one either tho. But always a good time.

 

[TravelBluebird]

33 minutes ago, KKB said:

Thanks for the great review!

We have sailed 40x but only 3x on Carnival (so "newbies" to Carnival)--Miracle & Splendor.

We have the Panorama & Magic booked.

I ALMOST didnt't book Magic due to poor reviews, but your review (and a friend wanting to go) changed my mind!

We have sailed most mainstream lines & have never had a bad cruise--not a perfect one either tho. But always a good time

 

@KKB I am just like you—just because a cruise isn’t perfect doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it! And I very much enjoyed my Magic cruise,  As did every one in my family; they all want to cruise again!

 

Also, if you like the bigger ships, I highly recommend the Excel class Carnival ships as well. I have older LIVE blogs on Jubilee, Celebration and Mardi Gras here on Cruise Critic.

[Greg901]

4 hours ago, TravelBluebird said:

 

Yes, yes they do have that according to the buffet goers in my family!  It’s like pomnegranate mixed with quava and some other juices, correct?

Thanks  its pomegranate orange  guava juice. Great review can't wait till we are on the magic just 28 days

[TravelBluebird]

We are headed home this morning on a 6:50am Southwest flight.

 

Supposed to be leaving on time but will have a delay in air due to weather.

 

Boarded in the middle B group and nothing but middle seats left! I truly dislike the Southwest gate shuffle.

 

Fell asleep last night at 9:30 so unusual for me, and I hate to report I have a scratchy throat. I hope I don’t catch the cruise crud. DH has a cold; everyone else doing OK.

 

Wake up call at 4:15am. Ugh, but i slept enough due to falling asleep so early! 

 

Hotel had a free airport shuttle. DH forgot his wallet in the room and had to do a sprint to get it. Glad he remembered!

 

OK plane door closing!

[TravelBluebird]

Due to the weather  our flight is going to be much longer than usual—-over 3 hours from Ft. Lauderdale to Nashville!  Going around the weather? Headwinds?  

 

Bought the $8 internet on Southwest to entertain myself.

 

We have over a 2 hour drive home…lots of flooding advisories, but we think the severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings will have moved east by the time we land.  Our homes had multiple severe thunderstorm warnings and even 2 tornado warnings yesterday and.last night!  We are glad we didn’t travel yesterday as there were big storms and tornado warnings along our route home. I hope y’all reading this were not badly affected by the severe weather.

 

For planning references if you ever fly from FLL, there is quite the long line at TSA for the early morning flights!  TSA Pre was a short, easy line though. We left the hotel at 5am and got to the gate after baggage, printing boarding passes, TSA, getting water, restrooms, etc. about 10 minutes before our flight boarded at 6:20.

 

We had 1 overweight bag by 3 pounds that we had to shuffle things around into other bags at the gate.  Our hotel had a scale to weight baggage but it was $1 a pop so we didn’t do it. We also ended up with 1 jammed luggage handle we couldn’t get to retract.

 

 

[elklemi]

In Oak Ridge and rain has stopped and is moving to the east, by the time you cross the Plateau it should be clearing up for return to Knoxville, safe travels back to East Tennessee.

[TravelBluebird]

1 hour ago, elklemi said:

In Oak Ridge and rain has stopped and is moving to the east, by the time you cross the Plateau it should be clearing up for return to Knoxville, safe travels back to East

 

Thank you for the info @elklemi!  It seems at least like our area did not get a serious tornado

[TravelBluebird]

I’m watching Southwest‘s live TV and evidently there has been a ground stop at Atlanta airport this morning! So glad we are not flying through Atlanta as we normally do for a cruise!

[Hogladyrider]

@TravelBluebird...thanks for taking us along on your family cruise....it was action and fun packed!

 

Traveling these days has become very involved for sure!

 

Safe trip home!

[TravelBluebird]

5 minutes ago, Hogladyrider said:

@TravelBluebird...thanks for taking us along on your family cruise....it was action and fun packed!

 

Traveling these days has become very involved for sure!

 

Safe trip home!

You are so welcome @Hogladyrider!  We are driving from the airport now Nd half of us are already asleep in the car!  I’ll be sure to link to my videos when they are ready! 

[pe4all]

Great review as usual! We love the Magic, and are looking forward to being on her again in January.  Reading your review makes me wish the time went faster!

[TravelBluebird]

11 minutes ago, pe4all said:

Great review as usual! We love the Magic, and are looking forward to being on her again in January.  Reading your review makes me wish the time went faster!

 

@pe4all January is only 8 months away (OK, that’s an eternity when you can’t wait to get on the ship!).

 

Everyone LOVED the cruise—Magic is great for a family cruise; we have been spending time in the car ride just now saying what our favorite thing was, and our favorite port.  Overwhelming favorite thing was the family dinners each night when we all came together at 6–even the grandkids picked that!  No one could decide on favorite port—we liked them all for different reasons.

 

Definitely going to plan another family cruise!!

[TravelBluebird]

By the way, we have squeezed all 6 of us in our Ford Explorer WITH all our luggage, safely for our trip back from the airport. We had 1 of those extra Carnival folding bags all filled up on the way back, and were worried we couldn’t do it, but we did! 🎉

 

 

[pcvtmom]

Family cruises are the best!  I just love how the wait staff interacts with my grandkids. On our last one, our waiter made origami for them every night.  Now my 7 yo granddaughter is hooked on origami!

Thanks for a fantastic (as always!) review.

[TravelBluebird]

1 hour ago, pcvtmom said:

Family cruises are the best!  I just love how the wait staff interacts with my grandkids. On our last one, our waiter made origami for them every night.  Now my 7 yo granddaughter is hooked on origami!

Thanks for a fantastic (as always!) review.

 

@pcvtmom That is so special! We were having fun with geography trivia in the car on the way home talking about the most populated countries in the world, and when we got to Indonesia, grandkid said “That is where Ekka is from!”.  They loved our wait staff also; such a great experience.

[TinkLoverSam]

Our last cruise was 3 generations to Alaska on the Disney Wonder. My mom and dad, sister and her hubby, my hubby and I and our 2 boys. I agree, dinner with everyone was awesome, though we did do a lot together during the day as well. Being able to sit and talk about our day as we ate dinner was amazing and the servers were so great with our boys (2yo and 6yo at the time)

[SASA13]

On 5/23/2024 at 5:56 PM, TravelBluebird said:

We were docked next to the Carnival Venezia today!  My transatlantic on her still one of my favorite cruises ever!  And we ran into the wonderful MarQ who remembered us!  Hugs all around, he’ll be on Venezia till August then over to Vista!

great pic.  We sail the Magic in August and the Venezia is November  🙂