I Love Comedians with Guitars, a Magic Trip Report

[ChuckElias]

I had to get some shots of good old Walt. Something learned on a tour later in the week ….there is something missing from this famous picture ….do you know what it is?

Yes, I do. And, in fact, it was still in the picture when we first sailed on the Wonder in 2001. The next time we cruised on the Magic in 2003, it was gone!

 

[ChuckElias]

That is the COOLEST video. Thanks for sharing. And did you see the Tower of Terror guy in there. He's the one on one of the travel channel specials and I had my daughter and niece get a picture with him in Nov.

I'm glad you liked it. The Tower of Terror guy has become a bit of a celebrity since the Travel Channel special, hasn't he? I've only seen him once in person. He's pretty funny.

Since you liked the video, here's the sequel. I'll stop hijacking your report after this, I promise!!

 

[jenseib]

Yes, I do. And, in fact, it was still in the picture when we first sailed on the Wonder in 2001. The next time we cruised on the Magic in 2003, it was gone!

Really! I had wondered if it was originally there and taken out or if it was not in at all. The guy kind of seemed unsure, but acted like it was erased before they even put the tiles on.

 

[jenseib]

I'm glad you liked it. The Tower of Terror guy has become a bit of a celebrity since the Travel Channel special, hasn't he? I've only seen him once in person. He's pretty funny.

Since you liked the video, here's the sequel. I'll stop hijacking your report after this, I promise!!

I love that one too. I have never seen that one.

 

[ChuckElias]

Really! I had wondered if it was originally there and taken out or if it was not in at all. The guy kind of seemed unsure, but acted like it was erased before they even put the tiles on.

I'll go through old pics and videos and see if I can find a frame with it. I'm 99% sure it was there, but if your guide thought it was removed before sailing, I may be wrong.

 

[jenseib]

We were excused from the drill and we went to the room once again…I am not sure why we made a stop there, but I have pictures to prove we did …Probably to use the bathroom.
Here is what the beds look like separated. I think we also each took bonine at this point in time …just in case.

This is a terrible picture, but it shows that we had our port adventure tickets on our desk along with a movies guide.

And I took another shot of this picture.

And it was time to go to the sail away party.

I took a shot of these drinks. We didn’t get any, but they looked so pretty.

Lisa was in charge of video. I am HORRIBLE at taking video. I make myself motion sick whenever I watch whatever I have taped. Lisa said she was bad too, but I said it had to be better than mine…well it wasn’t. Not worse, but no better.
I will post random video she took. I won’t feel offended if you can’t watch it all because you are feeling sick.

And some more pretty drinks.

And more video.

 

[jenseib]

I'll go through old pics and videos and see if I can find a frame with it. I'm 99% sure it was there, but if your guide thought it was removed before sailing, I may be wrong.

Well he had only been working on the ship for 7 months, so he might've had the wrong info too.

 

[jenseib]

We spot Brook and Susan not too far away. They wave us over, but we decided to just stay where we are and not bud in on others views.

Now let me tell you, it was VERY hot this day. You could see the sweat pouring off these poor dancers.
Do you see the black girl? I went to a class she had a few days later. She is so nice, by the way. She is a theatre arts major if I remember right and is from California and plans to take her Mom on this cruise around Thanksgiving ….anyways. She was talking about how hot it was that day. She said she was like melting chocolate. They had just come from NYC and she said this weather just threw them for a loop. They hadn’t had much heat like this in a while.

And some more people near us were having some nice ice cold beverages.

Peter, our cruise director came out. I really liked him.

I see Carolyn now too.

And the characters are about to come out!!

 

[jenseib]

I had described the horn to Lisa ….I also told her that some of us “fans” sometimes tear up when we hear it …or at least get chills from it. I had her tape it.



More pictures form the party.

 

[jenseib]

There go some more drinks!

And there is Carolyn and Susan.

Looking around

After the characters left, the dancers kept going…those poor people. They played quite a few catchy tunes and I spotted this lady down on the deck below us. She was an older lady, with short grey hair. And she had the moves! This lady could dance. We watched her and were amazed at how good she was. We ended up seeing this lady a lot on the cruise, though we never talked to her. Yep, we became stalkers. We just loved her and we ended up nicknaming her “Jazzy”. We pointed her out to Brook one day and she started referring her to Jazzy too and I think she even pointed her out to Carolyn and gang.

I didn’t get a picture of her that day, but I think she might be in one many days later while we were doing a tour. I’ll point her out if I do.

The bar staff hard at work.

I really like this picture.

This party was completely different than the one on the Dream. Of course we saw that one indoors due to rain as well.

 

[jenseib]

i like that guy but i had an embarrasing situation talking to him once.. i belive he has a slight speech impediment and i asked (in all seriousness) if that was part of his act..it wasnt .. so felt pretty bad lol

He talked in a creepy voice to us, but now that you say that, some of the stuff he said was a bit hard to understand clearly. I thought it was part of the act too.

 

[jenseib]

As we were about to sail away, Lisa said she was going to go inside because it was so hot. I told her I was just going to stand at the railing and watch us go. Well wait…She said she better not miss this too and she stood out there with me and we just had such a nice time watching us leave the real world.
I totally enjoyed it. If you read my trip report about our Dream Cruise, you know it rained that day ….very hard, and the sail away party was inside in the Atrium. It was also at a later time because the ship stayed late to let passengers who had flight delays because of the bad weather able to make the ship. (Ironically I had the same experience on the last NCL ship I sailed too) We left late and we didn’t start moving till it was time for us to go to the first show, which I did not want to miss, so all we saw from our balcony was us moving away from the dock.

Lisa and I hung towards the back of the ship and we were practically alone back there.

We were making news!

We first watched them untie us.

We did lots of waving!

 

[jenseib]

And we blasted the horn once more if I remember right.

We did walk from side to side at times to take it all in.

Lisa and I both grew up on farms and then married farmers, so we had to get a picture of all the tractors lined up.

Lisa told me to be sure to get a picture with the John Deere’s and combines in it.

While we were standing there, we noticed that the windows into Palo looked like a mirror and we easily each lost 20-30 pounds while looking at ourselves in them. We wish we could walk around with those reflecting our images all the time. It doesn’t take much to excite us.

 

[jenseib]

I was so amazed at how many ships we saw out at sea.

And I really liked this sail boat.

And we then decided to head back to the room and relax a bit, get showers and get ready for the show.

 

[jenseib]

We showered and just hung out and watched the world go by on our balcony.
I remembered to take a picture of the goodies inside of the bag.

We then headed off to the show ….All Aboard, Let the Magic Begin.

This is the Disney Magic Performers…A.K.A. the cast that would be entertaining us at the main shows, and also a comedian, David Williamson and a Venquilotrist, Lynn Trefzger. The performers had a small storyline and then the other entertainment would come out.
I really enjoyed the show. I am at such a lost that we can no longer take pictures of the shows though. I love taking pictures of things like this, and I was soooo tempted, but I refrained. The Comedian was really funny and brought kids up on stage. The Venquilotrist was good, but she kind of over did her 2 things and it became a little too long.
We were happy to see the show and Lisa got her first taste of what a Disney show is like ….and she liked what she saw.

After the show we headed back to the room once again. We had a little time to kill.

Our beds had been turned down and we had a new friend & chocolates.

Something about chocolate left on your bed make it tastes so much better. We ate them each morning …breakfast of champions!

We had a little time to kill so we went down to the shops before heading to dinner.

I was happy to see a few Galveston related items.

I loved this hat. I was so tempted to buy it. I loved the look and color …but I am not a hat person. I never wear them, they look horrid on me and my head must be weird shaped, because they never sit right on me.

We weren’t inspired to buy anything, so we headed out and explored a bit more before dinner.

We saw Minnie out for a greet.

I had a thing about trying to take the perfect chandelier picture. You will notice this is a theme for me. I did it on the Dream as well, and also of a few other items as well on that cruise.

We stopped and learned a little history about the Magic.

 

[jenseib]

And we walked through Studio Sea since we hadn’t yet looked at it. This is more the family type club.

It was close to 8:15 now so we headed towards dinner.

Lumiere’s was our restaurant for tonight.

I will forewarn you now the lighting is bad and my pictures are not that good.

I believe our table number was 41 and we checked in and were led to it. Mary’s gang was there and I think Brook, Carolyn and gang followed us in.

We all introduced ourselves to Mary’s friends, Chris, Erin, and Julie, and then set to the task of figuring out what to eat.
I took pictures of the menus…they are horrid, but here they are.

We started out with some bread that was very good.

I think this was an olive spread. It was good, but not great, but I am not a fan of olives. I can eat some olive spreads, and like I said, this was good, but if I liked olives it probably would’ve been better to me.

I tried to get a few shots around the restaurant, but I failed miserably and that is one regret I have.

 

[jenseib]

For appetizers I ordered the Chilled Jumbo Shrimp
White and Green Asparagus, Micro Greens and Lemon-Dill Dressing with Horseradish Cream

I think Lisa ordered this too. It was very good.

I also got "Gaston's" Escargots Gratinés
Herb-marinated Snails with Finely Chopped Mushrooms, topped with Garlic Butter.

I am not sure if Lisa ordered a 2nd appetizer or not. If so, I did not get a picture.

For entree’s, we really had a hard time deciding. There were a couple of things I wanted to try, and same with Lisa. We decided we would order 3 between us and share all 3.

I ordered the Lumiere's Seared Sea Bass
With a Mushroom Herb Risotto, Sweet Onion Marmalade, and garnished with a Potato Crisp.

This was very good. I thought the fish might be a little too fishy though. Not bad, but it wasn’t perfect to me. We both ate it though and enjoyed it.

Lisa ordered the Three-Cheese Lobster Macaroni
Lobster Meat, Gruyère, and Cheddar Cheese Sauce tossed with Tubular Pasta and topped with a Parmesan Wafer.

This was excellent. I actually liked it better than the fish.

We also ordered the Crispy Roasted Duck Breast
With Braised Napa Cabbage and Potato Cake, with Pomegranate Jus.

Well there was nothing crispy about this duck. It was very fatty and not good at all. Lisa took one bite and spit it back in her napkin. That should tell you something, because her husband is a duck hunter. I think they eat duck here and there if I remember right. She was not impressed at all.
I took a bite and it was fatty, but I got it down. I tried another bite, digging into it to find the meat. It was just OK. So I tried a third and it was yuck. That plate got pushed to the side. We found out that we do not like duck, or at least duck this way.

During dinner we all talked. We really didn’t talk as much to Mary and her group. Not that we were being rude, it was just that with 10 people at a table it’s hard to talk to everyone, and they all seemed to be in conversation about something.

Chris kept making comments about the ship movement. Up till that point I had felt basically nothing. Now I felt it slightly, but not bad at all. Most of us agreed that we couldn’t feel much. I am not sure if it was the bonine Lisa and I took, or if it really was just that great. I will say we really had very calm seas most of the trip.

While eating and chatting we looked out the window we were sitting by. Our window looked out to the Atrium and guess who we saw?

Cowboy Goofy.

I loved his costume! For the most part, I did not do any official character meets this cruise, though looking back I kind of wish I did do some. I just wasn’t in the mood to wait in line for any on this trip. I do have a few character pictures, but more on that later ……

Time for dessert now. Here are the menus. Again, really horribly shots.

 

[jenseib]

Lisa ordered the Lumiere's Sweet Temptations
A Trio of Crème Brûlée, Chocolate Mousse and Praline Petite Choux.

She liked it. She never had Cream Brulee before if I remember right. She loved the chocolate Mousse, but said she could’ve done without the sauce on top.

I had the Grand Marnier Soufflé
With Vanilla Sauce.

YUM! I LOVE this stuff. I am going to let you in on something …we went to Palo later in the week and I got the chocolate soufflé there. This was just as good. I did not think Palo’s soufflé was any better than this little .

I also got the Chocolate Mousse
With Brandy-marinated Cherries.

Again, this was really good, but I agreed with Lisa, I would rather have it without the cherry sauce.

Before we left dinner I did go and take one more picture before I left.

We then headed out. I think Lisa was feeling tired, and bloated and just very full and decided to go to bed. I told her I wanted to explore just a bit more.

At some point I went and put gift cards on my account, this might’ve been when I did it.

 

[jenseib]

I wanted to go up top and look at the ship lit up.

Warning, moving ship at night ….very windy. If you are wearing a dress or skirt …wear shorts under them. Luckily I was, or several people would have gotten a very unpleasant view.

I loved the adult area on the Magic better than the Dream.

I got a shot of the ping pong table and paddles.

I really enjoyed the lit up ship. Just beautiful ….BUT I think the Dream is prettier. If I remember right, it had more stuff lit up and it stayed lit for a longer time. I think all night long, while I noticed on early mornings that the Magic normally wasn’t lit up still.

 

[jenseib]

They did a lot of painting and repairs daily and you would see signs like this around after they were done, or the area roped off.

And some shots of the drink station.

It was just too windy up there, so I headed inside.