Carnival Magic Review
Wonderful cruise on the Carnival Magic - Western Caribbean
Rating by category
Additional details
My wife and I had a wonderful cruise on the Carnival Magic! I am 33 years old and she is 34. The cruise departed from Galveston, TX and its ports of call were Montego Bay, Jamaica; Grand Cayman; and Cozumel. This was our 4th cruise, and our 2nd on Carnival. Last year, we did the Carnival Liberty Eastern Caribbean itinerary, so much of this review will be comparing this ship to the Liberty.
Saturday, June 23: Pre-Stay in Galveston, TX:
Since we live in New York, we flew to Galveston the night before, and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, on Seawall Blvd. We flew from JFK Airport to Houston-Hobby (HOU) airport. Our flight was fine, we had no problems. However, we had planned to use Texas Airport Limousine to get to our hotel. Unfortunately, there was a major accident on the freeway, so they weren't able to get to the airport. To their credit, they offered to reimburse us half the cab fare if we took a cab to our hotel, which we did. It took quite a while and was still fairly costly to get to the hotel. This makes Galveston not necessarily the ideal port if you have to fly.
Cabin Review
Cove Balcony
Our stateroom was 2337, a Category 7C cove balcony on Deck 2, between the forward and midship elevators (closer to midship). That was an excellent location. It was very quiet (we were below the Northern Lights Dining Room), and it was very convenient (very close to the midship and forward elevators).
However, the first night, there was an annoying noise. I honestly don't know what it was, since it was not repeated on any night. I did notice a pipe on the edge of our balcony. Do all cove balcony rooms have that? If not, was the noise somehow related to that pipe? And if so, why only that one night? The water was rough that night. It might have been raining, I don't know. Looking at the deck plan, it is possible that we were below one of the Deck 5 hot tubs. Maybe the pipe was for that? Maybe it was raining, and the pipe was clearing the water from the hot tub? In any case, we did not hear that noise at all after the first night, so this is more a curiosity rather than a complaint.