Disney Magic 5-night Spring Break Cruise - Day 1 - Travel

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Travel Day: Austin, TX to Fort Lauderdale

Off we go on another cruise. This time we head for the Bahamas on the Disney Magic on our fourth cruise with DCL. We’ve previously sailed on the Dream (3-night Bahamas), the Magic (5-night Caribbean Halloween), and the Wonder (7-night Alaskan). We booked this cruise from a placeholder we made while on the Wonder. We weren’t planning on using it for this cruise, but my parents decided they were ready to see what all the fuss was about and so we booked this one to take together. We had two staterooms on deck 2 midship, oceanview category 9B. Our rooms weren't connecting. Their room was just slight forward of the midship elevator lobby, starboard, and ours was a little aft of the midship elevator lobby, also starboard. This was our second time on deck 2 and we love it! This cruise featured stops in Key West, Nassau, and Disney's private island, Castaway Cay.

Steve (my mom's husband) and my mom picked us up to go to the airport in his car. He gets 5 days of free parking at the airport as a disabled vet so we opted to take advantage of that. Our 11:10 AM flight to Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on Southwest was uneventful and we landed on time at 2:45 PM.

I had gone round and round with how to deal with transit and accommodations for this one - looking at all the different options. For our last cruise out of Miami, we took a shuttle to the Intercontinental for the night and then took a taxi the next morning. Since there were five of us, we needed two rooms and there were more people to shuttle. Eventually, we decided to rent a minivan at the airport and stay in FLL, returning the car to the Avis in downtown Miami and taking their shuttle to the port.

I found a nice time share on the beach that we rented through VRBO. We were able to get a two bedroom suite for much less than reserving two rooms. And, I thought it could be fun to be on the beach. What I didn’t count on was spring break! Even though the airport was only 4 miles from our hotel, it took us an hour to get there. All told, by the time we arrived at our hotel, even though we landed on time at 2:45, it was already past 5 when we checked in.

We dumped our suitcases and waded through the crazy wall-to-wall spring breakers to a local restaurant called Coconuts. We were worried about getting a table but we lucked out and were able to get seated right away.

After dinner we rearranged our luggage in preparation for embarkation and went to bed early.


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