Disney Magic Review
Rating by category
Additional details
The food quality was substandard at best. Most of our meals came out lukewarm, heavily sauced, and over salted. This was consistent throughout the cruise. It's almost as Disney felt that since they were creating the Disney "magical" experience with the characters, that the adults and children wouldn't notice the lack of variety in food, fresh fruit or appetizing meals. I know that children's palates aren't as developed as adults, but please, there is just some much mac n' cheese (made with what seemed like velveeta), pizza and chicken fingers that a child can eat over the duration of a 7 day cruise. The orange and apple juice was only available during meal hours, so if you didn't plan ahead and bottle some for your stateroom, your child was drinking milk or from the soda station
We had a family deluxe oceanview. Our stateroom attendant was polite and did a great job of keeping our room clean, tidy, and well stocked with fresh towels, etc.
The Disney meet and greets were fantastic for the children. You have alot of opportunities during the cruise to meet with the different characters. If your little ones are looking at getting some autographs and pictures, you will want to get the majority of them as early on in the cruise as possible. Disney runs their ship lean, which means closer to the end of the cruise, you have less opportunity to meet the characters as many of them double for the evening entertainment. Also, for those families that didn't get their quota of photos earlier on in the cruise, they are now scrambling to get as many photos as they can before the end of the cruise. Picture taking is scheduled, and random all at the same time. Since there always seems to be a character(s) walking around on the ship, you often end up taking unplanned pictures causing you to miss other onboard activities. Due to the lineups sometimes taking a 1/2hr or more for photo taking, kids often end up getting cranky. If you can take turns with lineup duties, and have your little ones join you just before their photo is to be taken, you will make your life alot easier.
Cabin Review
We were lucky that our stateroom allowed a land view for all (3) ports of call that we visited (St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Castaway Cay), so we could see what was going on outside, which allowed us to gauge what we would need (ie - stroller, appropriate clothing based on weather, etc) for the day.
There was limited storage space within the stateroom, but it was adequate for the three of us (2 adults and 1 toddler). The mini fridge came in handy for milk, and snacks.
I'm not a fan of the split bathroom, just because the space was so tight. To give you an idea of size, the lavatory area was just slightly bigger than what you get in an airplane. I'm not a big person (5'5), so for a full grown man or someone a little more heavily set, the space would definitely feel cramped.
We chose this category (09B) over a balcony for the same price, due to safety concerns we had with our 2.5 year old daughter. If she had been older, I would have chosen a stateroom with a balcony, for the added bonus of fresh air in your cabin and the feeling of more spaciousness.
Overall, (for the category) it was an adequate stateroom.