We recently took our first family cruise on the Disney Magic with our 9 year old daughter. Having never cruised before, I had a lot of concerns regarding how our family would do on a ship for 7 nights. We prepared for many months in advance and benefited from so much advice on various blogs as well as cruise critic.

We had such a beautiful time that I cried when I got off the boat! We cannot wait to go back! We booked a stateroom with a verandah on the 8th deck. It was perfect. Very roomy, lots of storage space and easy to use bathroom spaces. We were extremely comfortable in our stateroom! Not to mention how wonderful it is to find it clean when you get back from your excursion and then cleaned again and beds turned down in the evening. It was fantastic! By the way, we have never slept so well. I don't know if it was the comfy beds or the hum of the boat. But I slept so wonderfully!!

On a side note, I was very concerned with motion sickness. Not that any of us have a history of it, but I didn't know if the movement of the boat would make us feel ill and ruin our trip. We took less drowsy Dramamine and Dramamine for kids the morning before boarding and for the next day or so and then decided we didn't need it. Although I could feel the boat moving at times and I could sense it while we were in the restaurants and theaters, it just was so subtle it was easy to focus on something else and forget all about it. We never had a problem. Read more