{"id":8650,"date":"2011-07-04T01:47:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T08:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=8650"},"modified":"2011-07-04T01:47:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T08:47:50","slug":"galveston-carnival-magic-disney-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=8650","title":{"rendered":"Galveston Preps for Double Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>You know what they say about Texas? Whatever isn’t big is bigger. So if one king-sized ship called the Magic is big, imagine what two would be like. And so it is that the Disney Magic<\/a> (big) and the Carnival Magic<\/a> (bigger) will make their homes in Galveston<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is Galveston ready?<\/p>\n

Steps are being taken in the right direction. We’ve always been fond of Texas and on our last visit there fell in love with the funky island city, which is on its way to becoming a major cruise port. It was still a wannabe then, and the embarkation process was the slowest we’d ever experienced, anywhere.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t a big deal\u2026we just felt like we were in one of those Disneyland\/Disney World lines. You know, the kind that snake back and forth between the stanchions linked by ropes that make you feel you haven’t really walked as far as you have. It may take 40 minutes but you’re moving, so it feels like\u202620?<\/p>\n

As it prepares for the arrival of the bigger Magic (Carnival, above) and its 3,690 passengers in November, Galveston is spending $190,000 of a $12 million facelift to triple the number of places for people to sit in the Texas Cruise Ship Terminal. Presumably this \"\"<\/a>means that passengers boarding the ship, as we did on Carnival’s Ecstasy<\/a>, will be able to avoid the Disney-esque lines and simply sit until its their turn to board.<\/p>\n

The bigger Magic carries about 1,600 more passengers than the Ecstasy and is the star of the ships that will sail from the shores of south Texas. The big Magic (Disney, right) carries about 2,400 passengers, or will when it arrives in September 2012. Carnival is also dispatching the Triumph<\/a> (2,758) to make its home in Galveston.<\/p>\n

Royal Caribbean<\/a> is replacing Voyager of the Seas<\/a> with Mariner of the Seas<\/a> (3,114 passengers), four months from now, and the Crown Princess<\/a> (3,080) will join Galveston’s fleet in December 2012.<\/p>\n

That’s five ships that carry 15,042 passengers, and they’re adding 3,640 seats \u2014 almost exactly the capacity of the biggest ship. Either the ships will all have different departures, or there will be a lot of people sitting on knees.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if they’re spending $12 million on the terminal, the entire embarkation process is likely to improve beyond the chairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know what they say about Texas? Whatever isn’t big is bigger. So if one king-sized ship called the Magic is big, imagine what two would be like. And so it is that the Disney Magic (big) and the Carnival Magic (bigger) will make their homes in Galveston. Is Galveston ready? Steps are being taken… Continue reading Galveston Preps for Double Magic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,31,19,15],"tags":[154,390,391,647,648,51,86,28,287,385,649,64,33],"class_list":["post-8650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-ports","category-ships","category-stories","tag-carnival","tag-carnival-ecstasy","tag-carnival-magic","tag-carnival-triumph","tag-crown-princess","tag-cruise-ports","tag-cruise-ships","tag-disney","tag-disney-magic","tag-galveston","tag-mariner-of-the-seas","tag-princess-cruise","tag-royal-caribbean","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}