We just got off our first ever Disney Cruise on the Disney Magic, which also happened to be MDAS. I am the OP on the thread, First Disney cruise and not impressed.
So, this is my post cruise full review.
If you are going to beat me up for not loving everything about this cruise. STOP HERE.
As I will make some comparisons to our cruises on RCL.
Our cruise history is, 1 cruise on the Carnival Breeze, 1 cruise on RCL Anthem of the Seas and 1 cruise on RCL Harmony of the Seas.
Boarding & Check-In at Port Miami:
We drove to the port and parked there. The worst part about check in was finding our way around the port. But we eventually parked in the garage and had a very long walk to the ship. On the positive side, parking was FREE. All the payment machines were broken and there was no way to pay, so they just left the gate up. Disney did a great job with getting you through security and the pre-cruise testing went smoothly. They said it would take 30 to 90 minutes to get the results, but the email came into our inbox in approximately 20 minutes. They must have released a huge batch because as soon as our email came in, 200 people stood up and got online to check-in. We did check on upgrades and was able to upgrade from 5B to 4A for $590. The extra space in the 4A was worth the upgrade. No other upgrades available.
Stateroom:
Advantage Disney
As mentioned above, we upgraded from 5B to 4A and the room was mostly awesome with the exception of portion of the split bathroom with the toilet was very tight. The advantage of having two sinks outweighed this downfall. The shower was super hot and the pressure was great. I loved having the H2O products in pumps. There was plenty of space in the bathrooms for toiletries. The room was nicely appointed and plenty of space for clothes and hangers. Even the safe was a decent size and fit a MacBook and iPad. Our other 15-inch gaming laptop did however not fit at any angle even by itself. The advantage of the 4A was that neither of the two kids (DD 19 & DS 17) had to sleep on the pulldown pullman. The one thing I did like with this stateroom over RCL was that on the HoS when you folded down the bed it totally blocked access to the balcony, and you have to practically step on the bed. The only downside for this room was there was no outlets at either bedside, but like 8 phone jacks, nor any other place in the room. It didn’t make sense at all. RCL wins in this category. And the TV was like 19 inches and the menus were so slow it took forever to do anything with the TV. RCL is new and nice big screen.
Entertainment:
Advantage Disney for the Disney Fans
We really loved the “Disney” branded entertainment. The cast of Tangled blew us away. Disney Dreams – An Enchanted Classic was a good show as well, more like a Disney’s greatest hits. The real star was the MDAS. The USO show was cute but not a must do. The Dr. Strange show was much better although not awesome. The best was the Stark Expo evening show. It was super corny but there was so much going on and the excitement was great. We did both Heroic Meet & Greets and met most of the other characters around the promenade. Even though this was the last cruise before face covering restrictions were lifted, they did let us take off masks for pictures.
We also loved the entertainment on RCL cruises. We also see Disney on Broadway, so seeing it on a ship is nice. Our DD just saw Frozen in Orlando just a couple weeks prior. But this is not a must do over RCL. We are looking forward to seeing Hairspray on Symphony of the Seas this coming July.
Private Island:
Winner RCL
Castaway Cay was beautiful, no doubt. The sand on the beach and water was cleaner than CocoCay. The pool at CocoCay is the advantage for us. We went to Cozumel on this trip and we stayed at the pool the entire day at Paradise Beach. Another advantage for CocoCay is you can use your drink & Wi-Fi package on the island. All Disney drinks are pay as you go. The food was good on Castaway Cay, but CocoCay had more options and better food.
Drinks:
Winner RCL.
Not an advantage. A clear winner. Even if you don’t get the alcohol package and settle for the refreshment package. All non-alcoholic drinks are included, everywhere. Even at the bar and not just “soda” in the dining room and one place on the ship. When you sit down at a restaurant, I can get a big bottle of San Pellegrino and the rest of the family can get bottled water with dinner. You can get virgin drinks at the pool bar, smoothies at the gym, espresso and coffee drinks at several locations including a cappuccino after dinner. All pay as you go with Disney. Sorry, free soda just doesn’t cut it.
Wi-Fi:
Winner RCL
There is nothing more disappointing than DCL Wi-Fi. I burned through the free 50MB in about 10 minutes. There was no way I was going to have an open-ended bill for Wi-Fi. For RCL I can get Voom for 4 people for 7 days under $200 for unlimited Wi-Fi that is so good you can stream video and make Voice Over Wi-Fi calls. I don’t want to hear; a cruise is our time to unplug. That is an excuse. We love to get photos texted to us every day of our dog sitter and to be able to keep an eye on our cats at home with our webcams. We are lucky enough to leave the cats home and our neighbor is great and comes over several times a day to feed them and give them love. I lay out a thick blanket and set it up with a webcam pointing at it. It’s like a cat magnet every time we go away. And we can watch them cuddle on the blanket at night to sleep. So much better than when they were at a kennel with no camera and in a cage all day. Enough about out cats.
MDR:
Winner DCL
The food for both is the same for us. There was nothing to write home about for Disney. And it certainly didn’t live up to the hypes. Where Disney wins out is for the different dining experiences. Rapunzel’s and Animators Palate are so fun and unique. The only downside for us is the early and late dinner. I hated the late dinner. I though I would be ok with it, but it was work. Seeing the early show was fine, but having to wait until 8:25PM to sit down to dinner every night was rough. At least RCL has my time dining. You might have to wait for a table to open up, but they had a dedicated dining room for MTD and you can sit down and eat when you wanted. I know this doesn’t work for Disney and the shows they put on in the dining room. But if I had to do it again, I would try for early dining.
Buffet:
Winner RCL
I was not impressed at all with Cabanas. While RCL Windjammer is not excellent, there are many more choices over Cabanas.
Specialty Dining:
Winner RCL
We didn’t dine at Palo for dinner, but we did hear that the menu changed, and it starts at $45pp and goes up drastically with the supplements. We did however eat at Palo Brunch, and we really loved it. Some things were a miss, but others were so on. The meat plate was ok, and the seafood was horrible. The eggs benedict was the best I have ever had. The pancakes & waffle were excellent. And we did try the much-recommended grape and gorgonzola pizza. When I brought it up with our server, he tried to talk us out of it. And another couple at the table next to us ordered it as well and we laughed about reading that you must try it. So, he relented and brough it for both of us and both tables devoured it. Next up was the chicken parmesan, which I am still shaking my head over how they make it so amazing. The lasagna was ok, just too rich and also the eggplant wasn’t great. Eggplant should be light and bright, and this was so overly rich, I couldn’t eat it. But it didn’t matter because we were so stuffed. But we did manage to enjoy some of the desserts. Same as dinner. Some amazing plates and some other that just didn’t do it.
Were RCL wins out for us is the unlimited Dining Package. For under $200pp for 7 nights, we get the UDP and have a ball. It included unlimited specialty dining the entire cruise including lunch on embarkation day and sea days. On our last RCL HoS cruise, while everyone headed to the buffet, we sat down to an amazing lunch at Jamie’s Italian. The meat plan here is to die for. Mimi our server kept bringing plates, we had to tell her to stop. She also made some great wine recommendations, and my glass never went empty. We ate at Jamie’s several times during that cruise and even though my son wasn’t on the UDP as he barely eats a slice of pizza, Mimi always had someone go down and get a couple slices for him. She even brought up some of the crew Indian dishes when she found out we liked Indian food.
There so may diverse specialty dining on RCL we never saw a crowded MDR and made reservations for when we wanted to sit down to eat.
Ice Cream:
Winner DCL
RCL is a joke when it comes to soft serve. I think it is frozen yogurt, blah and they cut it off like 5PM. We lost count of how many soft serve cones we had. I was disappointed in the fact that there was no place to get Mickey Bars besides room service. I thought they would be handing them out left and right, but no. The only person who had one was my DS in the MDR a couple of nights.
Activities:
Winner RCL.
Not even close. There is so much to do on the RCL HoS, I won’t even go into it all. Ice skating on a cruise ship, wow. The main pool on the Magic is tiny and it don’t even think they filled it up all the way. And they only let like 4 people in at a time and there was a line to get in, we didn’t even bother. My DD and I did go in the adult pool once and there was no such restriction. There wasn’t even anyone there regulating.
Picture package:
Winner DCL
We didn’t know if we would get our value out of the unlimited download package, but we were pleasantly surprised. I wouldn’t even consider this on RCL.
Casino:
No Winner as we don’t partake.
Ship:
Winner RCL
Like I said the Disney ship is elegant and well kept, but it doesn’t have the grandeur of the Oasis Class ships. It’s tiny. I know 6,000 people are on that ship, but it didn’t feel like that for us except for a couple times. Sitting in Central Park at night, looking up at the stars, sipping and old fashion while a musician is playing. It’s just awesome. And we stay on the same floor, so it is a 2-minute walk to and from Central Park.
Pizza:
Winner RCL
The pizza on DCL was so bad it made the mediocre pizza on RCL seem like Palo.
Disney Characters:
Winner DCL.
We didn’t think we would enjoy this as we don’t even really stop for the characters at WDW any longer. But we did have some nice encounters and got some great pictures.
Summary:
After all the negatives, you would think we didn’t have a good time on the Disney Magic. We had a lovely cruise and Disney does win some of my ratings categories. We had so many great experiences on board. The only reason we booked was it was kismet. It was MDAS and the same week as my DS Senior trip week and my DD spring break from college. But not enough for us to spend the premium it costs. Will we ever take another Disney Cruise? Maybe. I did put down the deposit for the next cruise and we will see if we can make it work. Maybe we must try a bigger ship or maybe the Wish. But I only see 3- & 4-night cruises on there so far. Our Carnival cruise was ok. But our 2 RCL cruises clicked with our family, and we are sailing on Symphony of the Seas this coming July which was twice postponed due to Covid.
So, this is my post cruise full review.
If you are going to beat me up for not loving everything about this cruise. STOP HERE.
As I will make some comparisons to our cruises on RCL.
Our cruise history is, 1 cruise on the Carnival Breeze, 1 cruise on RCL Anthem of the Seas and 1 cruise on RCL Harmony of the Seas.
Boarding & Check-In at Port Miami:
We drove to the port and parked there. The worst part about check in was finding our way around the port. But we eventually parked in the garage and had a very long walk to the ship. On the positive side, parking was FREE. All the payment machines were broken and there was no way to pay, so they just left the gate up. Disney did a great job with getting you through security and the pre-cruise testing went smoothly. They said it would take 30 to 90 minutes to get the results, but the email came into our inbox in approximately 20 minutes. They must have released a huge batch because as soon as our email came in, 200 people stood up and got online to check-in. We did check on upgrades and was able to upgrade from 5B to 4A for $590. The extra space in the 4A was worth the upgrade. No other upgrades available.
Stateroom:
Advantage Disney
As mentioned above, we upgraded from 5B to 4A and the room was mostly awesome with the exception of portion of the split bathroom with the toilet was very tight. The advantage of having two sinks outweighed this downfall. The shower was super hot and the pressure was great. I loved having the H2O products in pumps. There was plenty of space in the bathrooms for toiletries. The room was nicely appointed and plenty of space for clothes and hangers. Even the safe was a decent size and fit a MacBook and iPad. Our other 15-inch gaming laptop did however not fit at any angle even by itself. The advantage of the 4A was that neither of the two kids (DD 19 & DS 17) had to sleep on the pulldown pullman. The one thing I did like with this stateroom over RCL was that on the HoS when you folded down the bed it totally blocked access to the balcony, and you have to practically step on the bed. The only downside for this room was there was no outlets at either bedside, but like 8 phone jacks, nor any other place in the room. It didn’t make sense at all. RCL wins in this category. And the TV was like 19 inches and the menus were so slow it took forever to do anything with the TV. RCL is new and nice big screen.
Entertainment:
Advantage Disney for the Disney Fans
We really loved the “Disney” branded entertainment. The cast of Tangled blew us away. Disney Dreams – An Enchanted Classic was a good show as well, more like a Disney’s greatest hits. The real star was the MDAS. The USO show was cute but not a must do. The Dr. Strange show was much better although not awesome. The best was the Stark Expo evening show. It was super corny but there was so much going on and the excitement was great. We did both Heroic Meet & Greets and met most of the other characters around the promenade. Even though this was the last cruise before face covering restrictions were lifted, they did let us take off masks for pictures.
We also loved the entertainment on RCL cruises. We also see Disney on Broadway, so seeing it on a ship is nice. Our DD just saw Frozen in Orlando just a couple weeks prior. But this is not a must do over RCL. We are looking forward to seeing Hairspray on Symphony of the Seas this coming July.
Private Island:
Winner RCL
Castaway Cay was beautiful, no doubt. The sand on the beach and water was cleaner than CocoCay. The pool at CocoCay is the advantage for us. We went to Cozumel on this trip and we stayed at the pool the entire day at Paradise Beach. Another advantage for CocoCay is you can use your drink & Wi-Fi package on the island. All Disney drinks are pay as you go. The food was good on Castaway Cay, but CocoCay had more options and better food.
Drinks:
Winner RCL.
Not an advantage. A clear winner. Even if you don’t get the alcohol package and settle for the refreshment package. All non-alcoholic drinks are included, everywhere. Even at the bar and not just “soda” in the dining room and one place on the ship. When you sit down at a restaurant, I can get a big bottle of San Pellegrino and the rest of the family can get bottled water with dinner. You can get virgin drinks at the pool bar, smoothies at the gym, espresso and coffee drinks at several locations including a cappuccino after dinner. All pay as you go with Disney. Sorry, free soda just doesn’t cut it.
Wi-Fi:
Winner RCL
There is nothing more disappointing than DCL Wi-Fi. I burned through the free 50MB in about 10 minutes. There was no way I was going to have an open-ended bill for Wi-Fi. For RCL I can get Voom for 4 people for 7 days under $200 for unlimited Wi-Fi that is so good you can stream video and make Voice Over Wi-Fi calls. I don’t want to hear; a cruise is our time to unplug. That is an excuse. We love to get photos texted to us every day of our dog sitter and to be able to keep an eye on our cats at home with our webcams. We are lucky enough to leave the cats home and our neighbor is great and comes over several times a day to feed them and give them love. I lay out a thick blanket and set it up with a webcam pointing at it. It’s like a cat magnet every time we go away. And we can watch them cuddle on the blanket at night to sleep. So much better than when they were at a kennel with no camera and in a cage all day. Enough about out cats.
MDR:
Winner DCL
The food for both is the same for us. There was nothing to write home about for Disney. And it certainly didn’t live up to the hypes. Where Disney wins out is for the different dining experiences. Rapunzel’s and Animators Palate are so fun and unique. The only downside for us is the early and late dinner. I hated the late dinner. I though I would be ok with it, but it was work. Seeing the early show was fine, but having to wait until 8:25PM to sit down to dinner every night was rough. At least RCL has my time dining. You might have to wait for a table to open up, but they had a dedicated dining room for MTD and you can sit down and eat when you wanted. I know this doesn’t work for Disney and the shows they put on in the dining room. But if I had to do it again, I would try for early dining.
Buffet:
Winner RCL
I was not impressed at all with Cabanas. While RCL Windjammer is not excellent, there are many more choices over Cabanas.
Specialty Dining:
Winner RCL
We didn’t dine at Palo for dinner, but we did hear that the menu changed, and it starts at $45pp and goes up drastically with the supplements. We did however eat at Palo Brunch, and we really loved it. Some things were a miss, but others were so on. The meat plate was ok, and the seafood was horrible. The eggs benedict was the best I have ever had. The pancakes & waffle were excellent. And we did try the much-recommended grape and gorgonzola pizza. When I brought it up with our server, he tried to talk us out of it. And another couple at the table next to us ordered it as well and we laughed about reading that you must try it. So, he relented and brough it for both of us and both tables devoured it. Next up was the chicken parmesan, which I am still shaking my head over how they make it so amazing. The lasagna was ok, just too rich and also the eggplant wasn’t great. Eggplant should be light and bright, and this was so overly rich, I couldn’t eat it. But it didn’t matter because we were so stuffed. But we did manage to enjoy some of the desserts. Same as dinner. Some amazing plates and some other that just didn’t do it.
Were RCL wins out for us is the unlimited Dining Package. For under $200pp for 7 nights, we get the UDP and have a ball. It included unlimited specialty dining the entire cruise including lunch on embarkation day and sea days. On our last RCL HoS cruise, while everyone headed to the buffet, we sat down to an amazing lunch at Jamie’s Italian. The meat plan here is to die for. Mimi our server kept bringing plates, we had to tell her to stop. She also made some great wine recommendations, and my glass never went empty. We ate at Jamie’s several times during that cruise and even though my son wasn’t on the UDP as he barely eats a slice of pizza, Mimi always had someone go down and get a couple slices for him. She even brought up some of the crew Indian dishes when she found out we liked Indian food.
There so may diverse specialty dining on RCL we never saw a crowded MDR and made reservations for when we wanted to sit down to eat.
Ice Cream:
Winner DCL
RCL is a joke when it comes to soft serve. I think it is frozen yogurt, blah and they cut it off like 5PM. We lost count of how many soft serve cones we had. I was disappointed in the fact that there was no place to get Mickey Bars besides room service. I thought they would be handing them out left and right, but no. The only person who had one was my DS in the MDR a couple of nights.
Activities:
Winner RCL.
Not even close. There is so much to do on the RCL HoS, I won’t even go into it all. Ice skating on a cruise ship, wow. The main pool on the Magic is tiny and it don’t even think they filled it up all the way. And they only let like 4 people in at a time and there was a line to get in, we didn’t even bother. My DD and I did go in the adult pool once and there was no such restriction. There wasn’t even anyone there regulating.
Picture package:
Winner DCL
We didn’t know if we would get our value out of the unlimited download package, but we were pleasantly surprised. I wouldn’t even consider this on RCL.
Casino:
No Winner as we don’t partake.
Ship:
Winner RCL
Like I said the Disney ship is elegant and well kept, but it doesn’t have the grandeur of the Oasis Class ships. It’s tiny. I know 6,000 people are on that ship, but it didn’t feel like that for us except for a couple times. Sitting in Central Park at night, looking up at the stars, sipping and old fashion while a musician is playing. It’s just awesome. And we stay on the same floor, so it is a 2-minute walk to and from Central Park.
Pizza:
Winner RCL
The pizza on DCL was so bad it made the mediocre pizza on RCL seem like Palo.
Disney Characters:
Winner DCL.
We didn’t think we would enjoy this as we don’t even really stop for the characters at WDW any longer. But we did have some nice encounters and got some great pictures.
Summary:
After all the negatives, you would think we didn’t have a good time on the Disney Magic. We had a lovely cruise and Disney does win some of my ratings categories. We had so many great experiences on board. The only reason we booked was it was kismet. It was MDAS and the same week as my DS Senior trip week and my DD spring break from college. But not enough for us to spend the premium it costs. Will we ever take another Disney Cruise? Maybe. I did put down the deposit for the next cruise and we will see if we can make it work. Maybe we must try a bigger ship or maybe the Wish. But I only see 3- & 4-night cruises on there so far. Our Carnival cruise was ok. But our 2 RCL cruises clicked with our family, and we are sailing on Symphony of the Seas this coming July which was twice postponed due to Covid.
