Guest Trip Report: March 10, 2022 4 Night on the Disney Magic from Miami – Day 1

This guest trip report was written by Rachel, whose family sailed concierge on back-to-back sailings on the Disney Magic – first a 5 night Marvel Day at Sea, followed by this 4 night Bahamian itinerary.  This is the beginning of cruise #2.  You can read the full trip report for cruise #1 here.

Guest Trip Report: 4 night sailing on the Disney Magic from Miami

Day 1

This was the day our friends had to debark the ship and we had to say goodbye. We were sad to see them go! We actually got up early to eat one more meal with them – breakfast at Rapunzel’s Table at 6:45am. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many photos on this morning since we were juggling our own debarkation/embarkation for the second cruise.

We said an official goodbye to our friends in the atrium and then we headed back upstairs to our stateroom for a bit. We had received instructions the day before to meet in one of the lounges at 9:30am with all the documentation we would need to test and board the ship again. We chose to leave all our belongings where they were in our stateroom. (Some back to backers are opting to pack up their things between cruises just in case they test positive. If that happens, you will not be allowed back on board, and someone will pack up your things for you.)

When it was time, we made our way down to the lounge to wait for all of the back-to-back cruisers to assemble. There were 21 of us. They gave each of us one of these cards for re-embarkation.

For some reason, there was a delay walking us off the ship and the crew apologized, but never did specify why. So, we debarked a little after 10am, I think. We were led straight to the testing area and were some of the first ones to test again. At this time they were still doing PCR tests so we settled in to wait. It took about 40 minutes and when we got our results it asked us to see an Inspire Diagnostics representative. We were not clear to sail. When the representative looked up our results, they said they were inconclusive. We were baffled by that because we were careful to swab properly, and the proctor watched us do it.

We were led back to the testing area to re-test. As we were walking back we saw some of our back to back group cleared to board. And we also saw some of our back-to-back group doing the same thing we were – retesting. So, we knew then that it was not something we did to mess up the test. Inspire Diagnostics must have done something in processing the tests. There were 9 of us from the back-to-back group that had to test again. We asked if they would be able to rush our results since we had already been waiting to board for almost an hour. They told us yes, but we ended up waiting longer for these results than the first round – a full 45 minutes. Which was disappointing. We were looking forward to being back on the ship before everyone else – a fun perk of doing a back-to-back cruise.

In the time we were nervously waiting for our second results, many other regular guests were cleared to check in and boarding had started. We saw the concierge group board and then regular guests begin boarding. To say we were disappointed to not be back on the ship yet is an understatement. However, we were finally cleared to board and walked right on.

We had planned to walk around an almost empty ship before the concierge lunch started, but it was about 12:15 when we got on board again, so we just headed straight to lunch. It was in Triton’s Dining Room again.

Despite our disappointment and stressful testing morning, we were thrilled to be back on board and have 3.5 more days of cruising ahead of us!

After lunch we checked in at our muster station (using the app) and went back to our stateroom to drop our things (full stateroom review here). Our stateroom attendant had told us we could access our room any time after getting back on board since we were back-to-back guests. They were fantastic!

We took down the Marvel magnets we had for the last cruise and put up some fun tropical themed magnets for this cruise.

Then we headed back up on deck for some basketball. Most people were still eating so it was empty and we had a good time. My boys were really missing their friends since this was one of the things they liked to do together. But they rallied and had fun.

We did end up walking around the ship a bit that afternoon. We stumbled upon Rapunzel in the Buena Vista theater.

And went out on Deck 4 to catch the views of Miami from there.

We also went up to the concierge lounge to grab a snack and say hi to the hosts and servers again. When we were done there, it was almost time for our scheduled sail away. Still no sail away deck party on this cruise, but we found the same spot we had on Deck 10 for the last sail away and waited there.

And waited. And waited. Finally, the captain came on the speaker and said that our departure was delayed for some reason (he said the reason, I just can’t remember it!). We were a little bummed because it was getting close to our dinner seating time, so we knew we would miss the sail away this time.

Sure enough, down in Rapunzel’s Table during dinner, we felt the engines start to move and watched the sail away from the port holes across the restaurant. However, we were thrilled with our prime table location in the dining room this time. And we met our new servers. Usually back-to-back cruisers have the same serving team, but we had requested a specific dining rotation for this second cruise because of our Palo dinner reservation (I wanted it on Pirate Night), so the head waiter had already informed us that we’d have to switch. But that ended up being no problem for us at all because we adored our second team. They were above and beyond amazing!

For dinner that night, we tried a few new things since we’d already eaten in this restaurant with the same menu. I had the tuna appetizer, and it was so good. I’ll be getting it again for sure!

I also had the pasta dish and loved it. And the crème brulee cheesecake was delicious too.

And look how close we were to the show! So fun!

We had already seen all the shows that were offered on this cruise the week before, so we opted for other activities after dinner. Like trivia! We lost again, but it was fun!

Our towel animal that night was a frog, maybe? We watched another Disney movie in our stateroom that night before going to bed. The next day would be at port in Nassau.

Up Next: Day 2 – Nassau