To preface this review, we'll go on record that three of our first six cruises were on Carnival. We’ve been on 24 cruises on seven cruise lines prior to this one. After our third Carnival trip we swore we would never, ever go back. Two years ago we took our kids and grandkids (ages 13, 7, and 2) on the Carnival Miracle from Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta for their first cruise. That trip made us change our mind about Carnival so we gave them the benefit of the doubt and booked the Magic from Port Canaveral for our second family trip. We can now say, without any reservation, this was our last Carnival booking. Now we’ve read enough reviews to understand that all of us have different experiences and thoughts when we write our reviews. Hopefully our time aboard other lines and ships will give this a little credibility.
Traffic in to Port Canaveral was horrible, however, once we got to the porter area, things went very smoothly. We had nine passengers and 23 bags but the porter was gracious and went above and beyond for us. My son-in-law and I took our car back to the rental office and came back to the ship. My wife had surgery a week before we left and we were afforded disabled boarding. That was a real breeze and we were on the ship less than twenty minutes after we started the boarding process. The kids and grandkids efforts were a little longer. It went downhill after that.
We had your time dining which we went to four times. It never took less than two hours to complete our meals that really weren’t waiting for anyway. The waiters would not even take our food order until the bar staff had brought us drinks. That would take 20 to 30 minutes. The wait staff was worked silly and as such was actually kind of sour. More on that later. Our food was generally cooked poorly (every steak I ordered extra rare came out well done, even after sending back each time) and flavorless. Appetizers, salads, and soup were brought all at the same time, and the interval to the entrees was excessive. One night dessert wasn’t even offered to us but the bar staff was right there to ask about after dinner drinks.
As spacious as any Carnival ship. Decent storage. Three families had three adjoining cabins but we were only able to open balcony dividers between two of them.
Negotiated a van ride around the island with a local operator. Pleasant trip but bouncy, bouncy, bouncy!
Port was substituted for Curacao due to tropical storm Don. Took a snorkel excursion through the ship. Too much boat time, not enough snorkel time.