Magic-al Thanksgiving Cruise - And the Eating Begins

We headed into Parrot Cay for our first vegan meal attempt onboard. Ben and Chris plowed through the buffet while I asked a server what was vegan. He asked us to wait to one side as he went to get a chef to come help us. After speaking to a chef, he promised to bring something vegan to the table for Kylee.

Although vegan, this isn't exactly inspiring.

It was a little unnerving ordering the first plate of vegan food and having the fear of a week of steamed unseasoned veggies settle on me. I can do it, but I wasn't thrilled about it. I raided the salad bar and fruit bar and made a mental note to come up with ideas for future meals. Thankfully, this problem seemed to be short lived.
We headed to Rockin' Bar D to make sure our reservations noted the proper dietary restrictions (they did) and then wandered around the ship for a bit to let the kids feel oriented.


Tiny child sized sinks and mirrors in the Club

They loved the Oceaneer Club, were unsure about the lab and loved the large porthole windows on deck 3.

Our room was ready and our bags were already waiting, so I plowed through the unpacking before the safety drill started. I also started browsing through the Voyage Navigator, entertainment schedules and checked out excursion tickets and Palo invites. I think this is around the time we sent our last few phone calls to let everyone know we'd made it onboard the ship.
More exciting, we got our first Castaway Club gifts, a backpack, keychain and snacks. (The pretzels are vegan!) Then we headed up to the sail away party and saw one of the oddest things. Chris started really getting into the dancing and steps. He has NEVER done anything like that before, and we were even halfway expecting to have to take him up to deck 10 if the crowds were bothering him. Instead, he was busy dancing right by the ropes, spinning around breakdancing and even heading up on stage when they let the kids join the crowd at the end of sail away. After lots of dancing, we headed up to deck ten to watch as the ship pulled out of port and turned our phones onto airplane mode. Then we headed back to 5020 to get ready for main dining and decorate the door.

Lumiere's is lovely, although it is a bit odd to see Lumiere’s instead of Triton's.  I've found that even after three cruises on the Magic, I still halfway expect to find things the way that they were themed on the Wonder.  I think that is because so much of these sister ships are similar or even identical that it makes the differences almost surprising.

We met Giuseppe our server and Patricia our lovely assistant server. She seemed quite well pulled together and joyfully assisted in any way possible. The menu seems to have a lot more vegetarian and healthy options than I recall from our previous cruise, but I may not have been looking as hard for them. So I ordered the citrus salad and the grilled marinated tofu, roasted zucchini, eggplant, and red peppers on lime-cilantro couscous from the menu. And we amused ourselves by taking goofy pictures while waiting for our food.

The tofu was pretty good, although the plating size seemed a bit ridiculous, I could easily have shared this plate with Kylee and still had plenty leftover. Never mind the fact that each of us ended up with a full salad in addition. However, since they brought us two full orders, I felt like I had to make the best of it and eat up. I'll blame it on the tiny lunches, but somehow we managed to make sizable dents in our meals, despite the overwhelming nature of the portion size.

Mmmmmm.  Balsamic vinegar!

After dinner, our head server Luis dropped by to help us preorder food for the next day. We opted to let Kylee eat in the Oceaneer Club the next day, so we preordered her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some apples for delivery around noon. I think we let the kids play at the clubs for a little bit after dinner, but honestly, don't remember. We ended up altogether in our room well before the second "All Aboard!" show started.

A stingray towel waited for us and the kids pretty much collapsed after all the excitement of the day. This night began a tradition of me reading the following day's navigator quietly with Ben after the kids were passing out to cartoons on the TV or the broadcast of the evenings stage show.
This post is Post 2 of an Ongoing Trip Report Covering Our Thanksgiving Cruise 2012