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Ross just returned from a seven-night cruise aboard Carnival Cruise Lines, Carnival Magic, out of Port Miami. It went over to the Western Caribbean, Cosamel, Belize, and Mahogany Bay. He joins us on the line fresh off the boat. Welcome back, my friend. Thanks, Doug. I appreciate you having me. Absolutely. Let's get some pre-cruised thoughts here. Now, you're up in the Wisconsin area, Milwaukee, I guess I should say. You had to make your way down to Miami to catch this ship. So give me some pre-crued thoughts. What made you want to take this seven-nighter out of Miami? So my wife is a much more seasoned cruiser than I am. She sailed Carnival multiple times. This is only, this would have been my fourth cruise. We've done Royal Caribbean. We've done MSC. And I've been just badgering her to do carnival. Just was like, oh, so many free food options, lots of cool itineraries. So I finally convinced her to get back on carnival after what's been a four-year break for her, I think. Itinerary was really good. Three ports that I've never been to before. It was the week right after she got out of school. She's a teacher. And it was our first year anniversary of cruise. So it was all just kind of their perfect storm to take this trip. I do have to ask you this. So you've done Royal Caribbean and MSC before, and this is your first Carnival cruise. Now, was your wife saying, you know what, I've cruised enough Carnival. I want to try other things. So let's check out Royal and MSC. So she is, so her parents are like diehard MSC fans. They really, really like it. They've got really high status on there right now. But me and her both, we, we like different cruise lines for different reasons and she hadn't been on Carnival for a while. So she hadn't outgrown it. Just the rest of her family didn't really like that much. So when I came into the picture, I'm like, hey, let's give this another try. So it didn't really take a lot of convincing for her because it had been a while for her. So you make your way down to Miami. Any pre-crues

time? We always try and fly in the day before. We were hoping to get an earlier flight in to be

able to go down to Little Cuba and go get some food. But our flight actually got changed to three

hours later than normal. So we got in about 940, which is, which is fine. It's as long as the other day before, it doesn't really bother me too much. So we just got the hotel shuttle, went to the hotel and just called there night. Did you all stay like on South Beach or downtown? Well, we, uh, we had a, uh, hotel by the airport. We stayed at a Clarion. I'm not going to get too much into how bad that hotel was. But more newlyweds, we're still trying to make some money. But at this point, we're like, yeah, we got to raise our hotel budget a little bit more because this one was rough. Dude, I have stayed at that Clarion multiple times over there in Miami Springs. It used to be a holiday in back when it was in good shape. And I think that the holiday in brand finally dropped it and made it a clarion. But I hear you 100% on that one. You make your way to the cruise port. How was embarkation for Carnival Magic? Pretty smooth. We were in, we got the first chuck-in time that we could which was between 1030 and 11 got there

right at about i think we got there right right uh bang on 1030 um walked through the terminal

pretty pretty smooth getting through security and all that uh got up to the waiting area and we

were still kind of early and there weren't them people on yet so uh not a lot of places to sit, lots of families, lots of crowds. So we just kind of pick the place on the floor and just sat around for a little bit. But it didn't really take too long. I did time it. Curb to ship was about 40 minutes. So I really can't complain too much about that. Yeah, that's not bad at all. With Carnival, I know every port tends to do things a little bit differently. Do you have to actually print out your boarding pass and have it scanned, or can you show them the phone these days? We did have to have our paper boarding pass out, yes. Yeah, it was weird because sometimes you can only just, you know, you could just use your phone, and then I got over to the Long Beach Cruise Terminal and I had to have the paper or go see someone who printed the paper out for me.

So it's interesting how different ports are set up differently there.

You make your way, this is your very first carnival cruise.

So give me your first impressions walking into that atrium on magic.

So I really love all the glass elevators.

That was super, super awesome.

We tried to do those.

We tried the ride those every time we cut this during the week.

My wife made the comment, and she always says with the older carnival ships that the

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