Carnival Magic Review
A great ship - would be perfect if it fixed a few flaws.
Rating by category
Additional details
We left from Port Canaveral. There was a slight delay at the Alamo Car rental waiting for a shuttle but this was minor. The Port itself is fantastic. Definitely the best port that I have embarked from. We breezed through the check in despite the fact that we didn't have priorty boarding this time. In fact buying the Faster to the Fun would have been a waste of money on this cruise.
The ship itself is great for the most part. It is unlike the other Carnival ships as it is a lot bigger and has the Lanai deck which is a really nice addition. We had a rear balcony which was great 95% of the time. It was on the 6th floor and we could hear bass thumping most nights. It wasn't a problem until one night when it was so loud at 1am that it was shaking the glasses in the room. We complained to customer service and received a credit - all good.
The dining facilities were good. We dined in the Northern Lights restaurant with anytime dining and had few issues at all. The Red Frog pub is really great. It was so much fun. I only wished that they wouldn't allow children in there at all. The kids that were on board liked to cut through the pub when they didn't really need to.
Cabin Review
Aft-View Extended Balcony
Overall we were very happy with this cabin. It was spacious enough for the 2 of us and we enjoyed being able to look out of the back of the ship. Have the aft cabin gave us a bigger balcony which was enjoyable.
The one negative was that the balcony was over the spotlight lounge and you could hear the bass thumping everynight until at least 6am in the morning. The thumping was bearable until the Wednesday evening when between 11:30pm and 1am it was so loud that it literally woke us up. Our entire room was shaking - we thought the glasses were going to break. We ended up complaining to Customer Service and eventually got a credit for that evening.
We found that the bathroom fogged up after a shower and required the door to be open to clear it out - it was a small issue.
Other than this issue we enjoyed the room and found that it was ample space for 2 people.
Port Reviews
Port Canaveral (Orlando)
Embarkation and Disembarkation were a breeze. This is a very well organized port. Would go through it again in a moment.
Belize City
Horrible Port. Everything was dirty and the city did not look appealing at all to tour around so we ended up going back on the ship.
Costa Maya
This is by far the worst cruise port that we have ever stopped at. Everything is man made and contrived. The only purpose of this port is to try and extract money from cruisers. The vendors sell nothing but crap and they are really aggressive. We didn't spend much time at this port at all. It is located in the jungle so there is no where to go unless you book an excursion.