Disney Magic Review

Skip the spa!! Worst massage I’ve ever had.

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Disney Magic
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ChicagoMom87
2-5 Cruises • Age 30s

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Sail Date: Dec 2019
Traveled with children

This was our 3rd Merrytime cruise, as cruising over Christmas has become our tradition, however this year might be our last. The quality of DCL is clearly slipping. The Magic is dated, showing many signs of wear from the room to the pool.

The dining staff at dinner works so hard, they are in constant rapid motion. It seems they are short staffed, forced to cover more tables per server than should be humanly possible, so clearly over worked but rising nightly to the occasion. The chaos it creates is overwhelming and makes it difficult to catch the attention of your server at dinner because they are constantly dashing between their assigned tables, to the kitchen to grab food / give orders and back. Even if I could locate them, the clear stress they were under, and sense of overwhelm in the room made me feel guilty asking for anything. On other (not DCL) cruises I’ve been on the dinner time experience was calm, relaxing, and the servers were assigned a more reasonable number of tables. My children have special needs and the chaos / noise in the room was too much for them, so they were often agitated and upset at dinner, unable to eat. I did learn toward the end of the cruise that Cabanas (the buffet) was open for a sit down dinner outside of this assigned dining that was much calmer and more enjoyable - it also creates more flexibility in terms of timing if you need to eat earlier for the kids one day. I’d recommend that instead.

Having the characters around the boat is always so much fun for the kids, this team of characters was the best of our 3 cruises, and most patient with my special needs kiddos. We love the nightly family dance parties as this is something we often do at home too, however they really should relocate the photographers so they are not in the middle of the dance floor getting frustrated with little dancers who have wandered toward the posed families in front of the backdrops. Being our third cruise, the same musicals are getting a bit old, I wish they would add some new ones or mix it up! The pirate party was magical, as was the tree lighting and goodbye ceremony - I wish they could be a bit earlier to accommodate the kiddos as a 10pm start is late for most kids!

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