Although this ship was called the Magic it was not not very magical compared to previous cruises on the the Carnival Conquest. First of all it was not decorated for the holidays IE: Thanksgiving or Christmas and when the crew was asked why not? they responded by saying it was to early however, they had it snow in the lobby several times, go figure, especially when the Conquest was always decorated for the same type of cruise and the same time of year. We had asked for late seating but was assigned to anytime seating although we always showed up at the late seating time (8:15pm) and thus was always given a different table. The service on the first might in the Northern lights was OK but not up to the Conquest's service and the second night was really bad, not once was there bread on the table just the butter and forget about the Ice Tea it looked like they took one tea bag for one gallon of water it was that watered down and after we were having our desert they finally decided to refill my glass even though I was drinking coffee by then (which by the way, I had to remind the waiter that I had requested it along with the deserts). The menus were very limited compared to past Cruise's IE: we always had shrimp cocktails for appetizer's and they only offered it one time during this cruise, the food was good but not up to their previous standards and the deserts weren't much better, their so called signature warm melting chocolate cake was not the same IE: past cakes when dug into was gooey with warm chocolate sauce and this time it was just a moist (almost dry) chocolate cake. They even tried to pass off what looked like whip cream (tasted like it to)as meringue on the their Baked Alaskan. We had a sit-down breakfast in the Southern lights dining area one morning, the service there was better but, again the food was so so. My wife had ordered eggs Benedict and when they arrived instead of hollandaise sauce on them it looked like what appeared to be two slices of yellow American cheese on them. We did eat in the Cochina del Capitano restaurant twice and both times the service was excellent the food was great and the desserts were to die for. The only thing we found bad about this restaurant was the so called ice tea again it was very watered down, but it was still worth the extra money.

We really enjoyed the adults only area up on deck 14 called Serenity (well named), plenty of seats, deck chairs and even hammocks. They had two hot tubs and a bar located there, the only down fall was no ice cream dispenser (love their ice cream) if you wanted some you had to go down to deck five mid ship in the buffet restaurants to get it. The rest of the ship facilities including the shows and activities and also the crew were great. The cruise director could have been better, he wasn't all that funny as other cruise directors were. We never did get to see the Maitre' D as we did on past cruises, just his voice when he announced "it's show time" down on deck 4 of the Northern lights restaurant, none of the escapades were done on deck 5 like on deck 4 of the restaurant except for birthdays. We had talked to several other guests to and they said the same thing and that had it been their first cruise it would have been their last. Overall the cruise wasn't bad just not like the past six cruises.