Flight to Orlando and Night in the hotel

We took the kids out of school a little early for the long weekend and caught a limo to O'Hare for our flight to Orlando. The flight was uneventful and after a quick bite in the airport, we settled into our home for the evening, the Hyatt in the Orlando airport. We've stayed here a couple of times before cruises since DCL handles your luggage to the port and the buses leave straight from the airport to the terminal at Port Canaveral.

We got up early and had a couple of Krispy Kreme donuts in the airport before going over to the DCL buses. Our luggage had been spirited away already so we checked in for the buses and found ourselves on the first bus to the terminal and enjoyed Disney cartoons on the hour-and-a-half coach ride from MCO to Port Canaveral. We checked in and then had to sit around the terminal for awhile waiting for the cruise. But we soaked in the Christmas decorations at the terminal and then boarded the Magic.

Ocean Quest

We spent most of the day walking around the ship, visiting the new Ocean Quest area where you can test your skills navigating the Magic.

Sailaway

After the mandatory muster drill, we went up to deck 9 for the sailaway party.

First Night

We purchased the "Romance at Sea Package" for the cruise which included a soft sided ice bucket with two bathrobes, two champagne glasses and a bottle of champagne, two white chocolate champagne glasses with 2 candies, a pass to the rainforest room for the length of the cruise, a romantic turn-down service on one night, room service breakfast one morning and a bottle of wine from Palo's premium wine list. Dinner tonight was in Lumiere's. The evening show was the "All Aboard" variety show where we were introduced to our cruise director and saw small snippets of our entertainers, who would be John Charles and "The High Energy Comedy of Alfred and Seymour", which seemed like it would be funny. After dinner, we were tired, so we called it an early night, with our swan towel animal welcoming us to our first night on the Magic.