From Here to There – A Move Across an Ocean

We finally made it aboard the ship!  All aboard time was 4pm.

The Disney Magic ship made it’s first sail in 1998, but recently had a major update and renovation.  It’s a great ship with lots of different things to do for both kids and adults. The ship has 11 public decks, can accommodate 2,700 passengers in 875 staterooms, and has a crew of ~950 people from all over the world!  The ship is decorated in an Art Deco style.

First things first – we wanted to find our stateroom and put down the bags we had with us.  The rest of luggage would be brought to us later in the evening.  As you can see in the picture – some people who had boarded earlier in the day had already received their luggage. 

Stateroom 6052 – Found it!!

Ahhh – home for the next 13 days! 

One great thing that makes Disney ships different are their bathrooms.  There are 2 rooms in each stateroom – one has a the shower/tub and sink, and the other has the toilet and a sink.  Having 2 sinks is great when everyone is clamoring to brush their teeth!  

And of course you can find Mickey on the TV any time of the day, as well as various Disney movies, ship and excursion information, weather, and cruise destination info. 

Whenever we have cruised in the past, we have always done a veranda stateroom because with small kids – you never know if they will get sick, or need a nap, or whatever, and having that extra space to be able to enjoy the outside while being tied to the room was invaluable to us.  But when we first booked this cruise back in December, all the veranda staterooms were already booked!  So we booked an inside stateroom just to get on board.  When final payment day came – surprise, surprise – some veranda rooms opened up!  So we snatched one up.  And we enjoyed it a lot!  It was quite cool/cold for much of the trip, so it was great to be able to get some fresh air.  And being able to listen to the waves is also an awesome perk of a veranda room. But honestly, while we enjoyed the veranda, this will probably be the last time we will do a veranda stateroom room because the girls are older, we aren’t in the room that much anymore, and the ship had some great adult spaces where we could enjoy the outside.

Now that we found our stateroom, it was time to look around the ship and see what all Disney had to offer!

First there was the Sailing Away Deck Party – so we couldn’t miss that!  And it was our first time seeing any of the character on board! 

Once that was over, it was time to see what other goodies the ship had in store for us.  The pools were great!  There were 3 different heated pools – one for adults only, one for kids and one for the smaller kids that included a splash pad area.

The pool and hot tubs for adults.  I didn’t see the pool get used much on this trip, even though the pools are all heated – when you get out, you freeze your butt off!

The kid’s pool – there were always kids in the pool and hot tubs!! 

And there was a 3rd pool that I didn’t get a picture of.  The girls were in the pools a lot throughout the cruise.  There were also 2 huge slides on the ship.  The yellow one in the above picture was the girls’ favorite, and they went on it over and over!

The other slide was a bit more daring!  It is pictured below – the red and blue slide.  The floor dropped out from beneath you, and it swings you out off the side of ship and back around, which you can see in the second photo.  Oldest finally worked up the courage to try this slide on our last day!  And there was always a movie playing on the big deck TV! 

(Photo from Disney Cruise Line website)

The main Lobby area was very lovely!  And this is where the girls got to finally meet Mickey and Minnie in person for the first time!  

Looking around on the ship, we came across the kid’s club – and it was really great!  There were various clubs for different aged kids.  There was a nursery on board, the Oceaner’s Club and Lab for 3-10 year olds, the Edge club for 11-13 year olds, and Vibe for 14-17 year olds.  My only wish was that the Oceaner’s Club was split a bit more evenly – maybe 3-6 and 7-10 year old groups.  But the girls had a great time when they did go to the club.  Oldest was old enough to sign herself in and out, but Littlest could only sign herself in – MyMan or I had to sign her out, so she didn’t like that as much.  But there was tons for them to do in the clubs! (Photo from Disney Cruise Line website)

Right next to the Oceaner’s Club was the Buena Vista Movie Theater, where they showed movies every day, both regular and in 3D.  They had good movies to choose from as well – they played Alice Through The Looking Glass, Jungle Book, The BFG, Captain America: Civil War, to name a few.

Disney ships have rotational dining.  This means that there are 3 different dining rooms that you are assigned to that you rotate through throughout the trip.  The servers who are assigned to you, rotate with you, which is awesome!  Our main server was named Jay from Jamaica, and he was awesome!  He always made sure he did what he could to make dinner a great experience.

The first night we ate at Animator’s Palate.  This was probably my favorite dining room because on the walls were screens where you could watch how the drawings of the characters progressed.  (Photo from Disney Cruise Line website)

The next evening we ate at Cariaco’s restaurant.  It was my least favorite, but it was still good.  (Photo from Disney Cruise Line website)

And our 3rd dining room was Lumier’s.  It was lovely as well, and themed with The Beauty and The Beast artwork. What was fun about that was our table happened to be right under Belle and the Beast!!  (Photo from Disney Cruise Line website)

We participated in a Fish Extender gift exchange, which is something special for Disney Cruises (at least I’ve never heard of it on other cruises before).  So to help us prepare for that, my friend Shanna send us along with some door magnets to help make our door more special!  The extender hanging from the fish hook (hence the name Fish Extender!) is something I had made for the cruise from an Etsy shop.  The game is you sign up to participate, and when  you get all the names in your group (we had 12 cabins total), you make or buy small gifts for them that you bring on the cruise and put in their fish extenders throughout the cruise!  You can do it for the cabin as a whole, or for individuals.  It’s totally up to you!  The square magnet under the stateroom is one of gifts that we received – it has all the ports of call, plus our name, etc on it!  Love it!

Here is an example of the type of Fish Extender gifts you can receive.  I forgot to take a picture of all of ours, so a friend from the cruise let me borrow the picture she took of hers.

This is what I did for our FE gifts that we handed out.  On the top left is a Disney journal book that I made for all the kids in my group (below that is a picture of what the journal looked like inside).  When we signed up for the FE group – we all put our favorite Disney characters, so I made personalized bookmarks for every person in my group (there were way more than what you see here – this was just for a photo op!).  I blurred out their names in this pic for privacy.  I ordered little wooden shoe keychains, and gave one to each kid in our group.  I got American Diner magnets for each person.  The white Holland bottle top is actually a bottle opener that is a magnet to stick on your frig – which all the men in my group got, and finally a Holland refrigerator magnet that all the women in my group got.

The girls were SO EXCITED about the FE gift exchange!  Every day they would run to our cabin to see if they had received anything that day.  And it was always a little exciting to come back to your room and see your extender have some goodies in it! 

There was also a candy exchange going on with our fellow Facebook Disney cruisers, but I did not participate in that as I was good with just doing the FE gift exchange on our first cruise!

It was time to head back to the room for the evening.  Our stateroom host Jojo was awesome, and of course made the towel animals every night.  Another neat thing about Disney cabin beds – there is a top bunk that comes down from the ceiling if needed!!  So Littlest slept on the couch bed, and Oldest got the top bunk. 

And we of course enjoyed the sunset out on the veranda!

Goodbye Copenhagen!  Tomorrow’s port….Oslo, Norway!