Carnival Magic Review
Carnival Magic - Spain, Monaco to Itlay Ports
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My wife and I visited Europe for the first time. We had a great itinerary visiting ports & tours at Barcelona, Monaco (tour of Nice/Eze/French Riviera), Rome, Florence/Piza, Rome, Naples (Island of Capri, Pompeii, Almafia Coast, etc), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Venice (1 1/2 days), Messina/Sicily (Taromina & followed "Footsteps of the Godfather" movie), & return to Barcelona. The tours we took were long-hours (8-10hrs), much walking over cobble streets & hilly, hot in 80s, especially in Rome, Florence, Island of Capri. Ship tours were expensive but worth it. Our one problem with the tours were the tour guides walked too fast. Fortunately, we had headsets from most of tour guides so we could listen to their descriptions and discussions of the various points of interests. Our long hours of tours included a sit-down lunch at various Italian restaurants. Our cruise director strongly recommended bringing a bottle of water, wearing a hat, & secure against "pick-pocket" attempts especially in crowds.
Carnival Magic ship is a beautiful ship with its inagaural voyage was May of 2011. The decor, the casino, the clubs, the theatre & our inside stateroom was suitable for us. However, the theatre did not have enough seats. Maybe, 2 theatres would have accommodated most of the 3600 guests aboard. It's new, clean. We had a very nice, friendly & helpful stateroom attendant. Their were many activities on-board. However, although there were 2 pools, they were small for the amount of guests. There were not enough lounge chairs around the ship. Unfortunately, there were many guests aboard who placed towels or personal belongings on lounge chairs to reserve them. The ship also had 6 hot-tubs with 2 of them in their "Serentiy" adults-only area. We have been on 6 cruises and no matter what the itinerary is, Carnival always seems to have the most "kids" under 18 (about 1100 this cruise).
Because of long and late tour-returns, it was only convenient & timely for to eat once in the regular dining rooms & we even took the free-style (anytime dining-time). But we did select to eat in their speciality dining restaurants, their Steakhouse and the Italian restaurants. We felt that the Italian restaurant should have more menu choices. We had $560 shipboard credit for booking on the "early saver" account; so we used some of it for the specialty dining. The buffet areas is where we ate on our late tour-returns. It was above-average. Their one buffet area needs a convenient area to prep your coffee or tea.
Cabin Review
Interior
Room 8360 - inside stateroom. We would have liked to have a balcony but it was too expensive.
The stateroom was a very nice. It was convenient to the elevator and it was a quiet location. Our stateroom attendant, Felicia, was very pleasant & helpful. Whenever we met, she was cordial, asking about our stay and excursions, & always asked if we needed anything. Bathroom was always clean. Room was cleaned twice a day. We had to get use to using our cruise card to keep the lights on. Twice my wife left the room, taking here cruise card, while I was still asleep and awoke to darkness. I was lucky to have the TV remote on the bed or night-table to turn-it on to get light in the room.
We probably should have asked for more hangers. We also had to get use to no electric for her hairdryer in the bathroom; but there were outlets in the room by the dresser & separate outlet which the hairdryer was connected in the drawer (almost didn't find it on the 1st day). The "Safe" operation was satisfactory.
Our large & small luggage pieces fitted fine under the bed.