Trip Report: September 25, 2019 5 Night to Bermuda on the Disney Magic – Day 1, Part 1

My family just returned about a week ago from 2 back-to-back cruises on the Disney Magic and I can’t wait to get started on this trip report! I will start with the first cruise, which sailed out of New York City on September 25, 2019 and was a 5 night to Bermuda.

First, a little background.  We have been on lots of different Disney itineraries, and I try not to duplicate them when possible.  We have done every Caribbean/Bahamas itinerary (except Southern Caribbean), Alaska, Panama Canal, and Pacific Coast (all of my trip reports can be found here).  So, when deciding on this cruise, the sailings on the Magic out of New York City (which we’d never been to – can you believe it?!?) were perfect for us.  We hadn’t been on the Magic in 5 years, and these would all be new ports for us.  Plus, NYC is a short, direct flight from our regional airport so getting there was a breeze.  We decided to do the back-to-back with Bermuda first, followed by Maine/Canada.

The day before the cruise, we left our regional airport at 4:30 PM for the direct flight to Newark. If you aren’t familiar with NYC area airports, there are 3 to choose from: Newark, La Guardia, and JFK.  Our local airport only has direct flights to Newark and La Guardia, and we had enough United miles to cover 2 of our flights.  Since United flies direct to Newark, that is what we did. Here we are doing what people do at airports:

We departed on time and before too long, we caught our first glimpse of NYC from the plane:

I was able to find a brand new hotel right next to the Newark airport that had a room with 2 queen beds and a sofa bed (since there are 5 of us) – the Home2 Suites by Hilton Newark Airport. They have a free airport shuttle, so once we found our luggage at baggage claim, I called to ask them where to find the shuttle.  They said to take the Air Train to the P4 stop and get off there, so we did and easily found the shuttle stop.  We lucked out and a shuttle pulled up minutes later.  After a 5 minute drive, we were checking in and getting settled.  The room was huge with tons of storage space and a kitchenette.  We ordered Uber Eats for dinner and went to bed.

The next morning I saw this:

The day was finally here! We got ready, went downstairs for a small breakfast, and then met our driver in front of the lobby at 9:00 AM.  I had prearranged transportation with American City Express car service and they were great.  The driver arrived early, and I received a text letting me know he was there. We loaded into the car and started on the 15 mile drive to the Manhattan Cruise Terminal.

I had read about the horrendous traffic in my trip research, so I had allowed 1.5 hours to drive the 15 miles and it ended up taking 1 hour and 20 minutes.  We were pretty much bumper to bumper the whole way.  It felt like the car ride that would never end.  At one point we saw our first view of the city:

After what felt like forever, we finally got our first glimpse of the Magic:

I know that some readers asked me to provide details about the embarkation process in NYC, so I am going to show a lot of photos here. When you arrive at the cruise terminal, there is very good signage and it was very easy to figure out where to go.

The Magic was docked at Pier 88 and there was plenty of space to pull up to the curb and unload.

A porter was right there and whisked away our luggage.

We entered the terminal building and were immediately in the security area so I had to put my camera away.  You can see the security line in this photo:

There was already a decent line at this point but it moved quickly and it only took us a few minutes to get through.  Then we saw our first up close look of the Magic:

The terminal building is very long and narrow.  We had to walk quite a distance down to the other end of the building to get to the check-in counters.

Once we got down there, we got into the Platinum line:

There were a few people in front of us in line.  I turned back around from where we came and this was the view:

Just to our right was the supervisor’s desk, which is where you inquire about upgrades.  This sailing was showing all levels of concierge rooms still available 3 days prior, so I was curious to see what would be available and for how much. We last sailed concierge 4 years ago when the prices were only slightly outrageous.  Lately they have become completely unreasonable, in my opinion, so I don’t think we will ever pay full price for concierge again but may consider an upgrade at the port (details about the upgrade process here) if the price is right.

Even though there were only a few people in front of us, we had to wait quite a while.  They seemed like they might have been understaffed. We eventually checked in and got our boarding card:

I moved over to the supervisor’s line while everyone else went to find a seat.  This line was moving even slower.  There were only 3 people in front of me, but each one of them took 5-10 minutes to discuss whatever they were discussing. When it was finally my turn, I asked if there were any upgrades available.  The young man first told me that there was a 4A family verandah room available for an additional $1000.  The price is based off of your current room category – ours was 10C.  By the way, we were at a big disadvantage here because we had 2 rooms, but the upgrade prices do not reflect this.  So, 5 people in 2 10C rooms are offered the same upgrade prices as 2 people in 1 10C room, even though there is quite a big difference in initial cost between the 2 scenarios.  Anywho, I was curious about the concierge prices so I asked what was available.  He told me there was a 1 bedroom suite available for an additional $4000.  He wasn’t eager to offer me anything higher than this, but I could clearly see on the paper in front of him that there was also a 2 bedroom suite and royal suite available so I pressed him for more info. He somewhat reluctantly told me that there was a 2 bedroom suite available for an additional $6800.  I was tired of his reluctance at this point so instead of asking him about the royal suite, I just looked at the “secret chart” on the counter in front of him and thank goodness I have quick eyes because I was able to see that the royal suite would have been an additional $8800 for us.  Now, we were in one of the lowest room categories (10C) so people in higher categories would obviously be given lower amounts than these. Regardless, I though these upgrade prices were completely ridiculous so I said no thanks and went to find the others.

I found them sitting in the very small waiting area. Some characters were out in the area in the very back:

We were right next to the area where you board the ship.  No Mickey ears here! Just a tiny sign.

Quite the crowd was forming:

Boarding began at 11:45.  For the life of me I can’t remember if they announced a family of the day or not. There was a mad rush when group 1 was announced and we shuffled along with the crowd.

We skipped the photo op and were then directed outside, where we had to walk quite a distance back toward the front of the terminal building:

Next we entered the enclosed walkway and began zig-zagging towards the ship.

Almost there!

Finally, we were back home! They were still assembling the pumpkin tree since ours was the first Halloween on the High Seas sailing of the season, so instead of entering straight into the atrium like normal, they had it blocked off and we veered to the right towards the port adventures desk as they announced our name. We ended up going to the right of the midship elevators instead of the left.

When we walked around to the other side of the atrium, I could see that they actually had the entire area roped off:

We made a beeline for the aft elevators (less crowded than midship) so that we could get to Cabanas ASAP.  Cabanas on boarding day can be a scary and dangerous place in my opinion, so we always go there first.  We have learned to eat a tiny breakfast (or skip it altogether which is what I did) so that we are hungry at noon. If you are not lucky enough to board so early, then I suggest waiting until 1:30-2:00 (it closes at 3:00) to eat at Cabanas as the crowds do start to lessen the later it gets.

Sure enough, we were some of the first people there:

We thoroughly enjoyed our lunch and took some time to get our chatting set up through the Navigator App (details here) and sign up for our free 50 mb of internet (details here) which is enough to check my email daily during the cruise. By the way, DCL has recently set it up so that iMessage works on the ships without purchasing an internet plan.  If you are connected to the DCL-guest network (which is what you use for the app), then you can iMessage people on the ship or back home for free (text only, no photos or videos).  I loved this because it let us check on our dog while we were away.

After lunch, we decided to walk around the ship and see what had changed in the last 5 years.

We first went to the shops to look through the windows (they don’t open until 6:00 PM) and see if there was any Bermuda-specific merchandise. There was a small section. We noticed that they had Preludes ready for the Tangled show that night:

We took this time to document our outfits.  Our Disneybound game was strong for this cruise (it isn’t always). 

I was Anna, but the picture my daughter took of me was terrible.  That’s what I get for not checking it right away. I think I have another one that I’ll share later in the report.

Next we walked back through the atrium and saw that the pumpkin tree was complete.

I love the Halloween decor in the atrium.

Then we went to deck 3 to see the bar/lounge areas.

This is the inside of Fathoms:

And the inside of Keys piano bar:

The Magic has a couple of really wide porthole seats in this hallway.  I don’t remember these wide ones on the Wonder:

At some point we walked past the Buena Vista Theater on deck 5, which is where they show movies:

We also checked out Shutters on deck 4.  This looked totally different than last time. They have taken a large part of it and turned it into a jewelry shop:

Next I think we went up to deck 10 to take some pictures of the city.

Since I took so many pictures on this day, I am going to stop here for now and write about the rest of this day in a separate post. It will include our staterooms, the safety drill, the sail away party, the Oceaneer’s Club/Lab, and our first dinner in Animator’s Palate.

Up Next:  Day 1, Part 2