Trip Report: September 30, 2019 5 Night to Maine/Canada on the Disney Magic – Day 6

You can start this trip report from the beginning by clicking here.

You can see all of the daily navigators for this cruise by clicking here.

Day 6:  Disembarking the Disney Magic

I don’t remember what time we woke up this morning, but it was definitely early due to the noise of the thrusters, probably somewhere around 6:00 AM.  We quickly got ready and my husband and I ran up to Cabanas to bring back some breakfast for us.  We prefer Cabanas over to going to the MDR at our assigned time on the last morning, mostly because we are not big breakfast eaters and only need/want something tiny that early in the morning.  They don’t really advertise it, but Cabanas is always open for breakfast on the final morning of a cruise.

I didn’t take notes this day, so I am going from memory and can’t recall exact times.  I think we left the room around 8:00 and went to the atrium.  Surprisingly, they were not letting people off the ship at the moment.

Our flight wasn’t until 2:00 PM so we weren’t in a hurry and tried to find a spot to make ourselves comfortable.  The next sailing was a DVC Member cruise, and they had already put up the banners:

After a few minutes, we heard people saying that the computer system was down and they were unable to scan cards.  We waited a little while longer, and they eventually began letting people leave the ship as they wrote down room numbers by hand.  Right as we got to the exit, the system was back up again.

Finding our luggage was pretty easy and we grabbed a porter to put it all on a cart. Customs was very quick.  Now, we had to find our driver.  We had reserved a private car transfer to the airport with Execucar (I was very pleased with their service) but I had no clue where they would pick us up.  Luckily, their service sent me an automatic text once the driver got close to our location and it included the driver’s phone number, which came in handy later.

I didn’t take any pictures this day, but I did 5 days earlier on our back-to-back day when we left the ship to spend some time in the city.  I am going to includes those photos here because before our cruise, I wasn’t able to find much information online about the debarkation process in NYC (hence why I didn’t know where to meet our driver) and I think people might find it helpful. After clearing customs, you walk down this long walkway towards the street:

Once we reached the street, we had to decide where to try and meet our driver.  When doing research before the cruise, I learned that some people said that private cars had to pick people up across the street, near where the taxi line is.  In the photo below, the taxi line is across the street (there is a cross walk) behind that white truck.

You will notice that there is a sign above that says “private pick-up” but I have no clue what it is referring to – perhaps the DCL bus transfers to La Guardia and JFK?  Not sure.  I was pretty sure that I had seen car services picking people up where we had been dropped off on the first day of our cruise, so I decided to take a gamble and go there first rather than cross the street.  I knew it was right above us, and there was a large elevator just to the right in the photo above.  We got on the elevator, but I wasn’t sure if it we needed to go to level 2 or 3.  We first went to level 3 and discovered that it was the parking level, for those people who parked their car at the port.  By the way, most porters would probably have been pretty helpful with wayfinding, but ours was brand new and this was his first day on the job so he didn’t know where to go either.  So, next we tried level 2 and it was the correct one.  We were right at the spot where people are dropped off for boarding.

There were both private cars and taxis waiting here, so I felt good that we were in the right spot.  Note that this area is covered, so if it raining, this would be a much better way to catch a taxi than walking across the street! We thanked our porter and because I felt bad about taking up so much of his time as we wandered around, I gave him an extra big tip.

We waited for a few minutes and saw lots of private car services pick people up, but none were for us.  So, I called the phone number from the text and reached our driver.  He didn’t say where he was, but asked where we were so I told him level 2 of Pier 88.  He must have been in the area searching for us because after just a few minutes later, he pulled up.

We loaded into the car and made the drive to Newark Airport.  The drive there was MUCH faster than the drive into the city before our cruise.  I didn’t note how long it took, but it wasn’t long.  We got checked in for our flight and then had about 4 hours to wait.  We did some shopping, got some food, and caught up with the real world.  When I booked the flight, I was worried that the wait would be difficult but it actually went by pretty fast.  Being in a rush stresses me out, and I would rather be able to take our time with a later flight than be rushed to try and make an earlier one.

As we took off, we got one last view of the city:

And the Statue of Liberty:

Final thoughts:

It was nice to be back on the Magic after 5 years and see all of the changes.  It was also nice to visit ports that were all brand new to us.  We had great weather for the most part and calm seas.  It was a wonderful surprise to see Leo and Danny again!  Also, sailing in and out of NYC was a great experience.  The only thing I wish we had done differently was to go to Horseshoe Bay Beach in Bermuda as originally planned.

Thank you for following along!  Our next DCL adventure will be sailing from Hawaii to Vancouver in May 2020.