Exploring the Magic: What to Expect from Disney Cruise Concierge including Disney's New Port: Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point in Eleuthera

My family and I recently embarked on an unforgettable adventure aboard the Disney Magic for a 3-night cruise to the Bahamas from Fort Lauderdale, staying in the exquisite Concierge One Bedroom Suite! I am excited to impart valuable insights that will benefit both newcomers to the Disney Cruise experience and seasoned travelers alike!

Daisy Duck on the Disney Magic

Concierge: The most important thing I learned and now will always do whenever it comes to Disney Cruises is Concierge. Now is it a splurge? Absolutely but in my opinion, there is also a lot of value that you can get of the experience. Concierge is going to look a bit different from ship to ship but here is my favorite perks of the Disney Magic.

Concierge Lounge: They just renovated the lounge on the Disney magic so there are basically three separate spaces to enjoy. One outdoor covered space, one indoor eating space near the food spread, and one indoor space where the bar is located. They even have a small TV area for kids that was great for the almost 4 year old but the 1 year old did better with the outdoor space as it was basically empty.

The three most important takeaways for the concierge lounge are the nightly happy hour, the drink fridge, and the special meet & great. The nightly happy hour runs from 5-10 which is free and you can take those drinks anywhere on the ship such as Palo or the nightly shows. The other perk is the coveted drink fridge that has a complete assortment of drinks such as Evian, Milk for the Kiddos, and I believe any soda you could desire. The most important perk was the special meet and great with a Disney character. This happened on our Nassau day at 10:30AM and the concierge staff didn't know who it was going to be but it ended up being Minnie! The only downside is that she comes by herself (aka no photographer) so have your phone ready!

Concierge Embarkation & Debarkation: On embarkation day, you usually get an early Port Arrival Time (ours was 10:30AM) and you are first go through security. There will be lines set up for Concierge and Pearl- with concierge going first. We arrived at 10AM and were at the end of the Concierge line so I would recommend getting there atleast a half hour before your Port Arrival Time (PAT). Embarkation day also means concierge lunch in Lumiere's on the Magic. If I had to do this over again - I probably would have skipped this and headed to the slides instead for the 4 year old. It was a long lunch and since we only got on the boat around 12 - our kids were honestly spent already. The only benefit is that you can talk to your concierge hosts about anything such as switching cabanas which we did! Debarkation is where the real value lies - we met in the concierge lounge to exit the ship and we were one of the first to do so. If I had to time it, it took a total of 10 minutes to get off the ship and to our car!

Concierge Perks: There are some well known and lesser known perks to Concierge. Here is my list below as I know this all is a bit overwhelming.

1. Cabana reservations - since you are the first to book, you are the most likely to get a cabana if you request one.

2. Reservations onboard - you tend to get all your preferences such as the earlier dining time, your pick of excursions, location in the main dining room, nursery times, palo brunch (I would choose this over dinner).

3. Access to show - you go through O'Gill's Pub to access the show about a half hour earlier than everyone else which means you get to pick the best seats and they have water and popcorn waiting for you. It does make you feel quite special!

4. Access to your room on embarkation day: Usually everyone has to wait until 2 to get access to your room on embarkation day but Concierge is always the first. We were able to get to our room at 1PM and our bags followed shortly after.

Room: We had 5 people in our party, aka we brought Nana along for some support! Since we wanted to give Nana some additional privacy with her own bathroom so we opted for the One bedroom suite. It has recently been renovated and it was very nice! There are two different styles of the one bedroom suite - I did my research! Most of the one bedroom suites have a smaller living room and larger bedroom to accomodate the pull down twin bed in the bedroom. We had stateroom 8532 which has the larger living room and the twin bed in the living room. I am so glad I picked this type for our aged kids because the older child was out with Nana while the baby was in with us and for nap times.

Our room was located on the port side which is my recommendation for the Magic when traveling the bahamas route. We got to look at lighthouse point from our balcony and Nassau day we were in the shade looking at other boats in port. My one complaint would be the room noise - keep in mind we had two Hatch noise machines going and because we were under one of the kids clubs - it got loud at bed time. Pro Tip: If I had to do it all over again, I would have picked stateroom 8534 but it was already booked when I did my booking.

This stateroom was also great because you get upgraded bedding including Frette sheets and beds that make you forget you are on a cruise ship! With the one bedroom suite - you can also order room service from any of the main dining rooms (no Palo though!). We ordered some breakfast on lookout cay day and some dinner on our Palo night for the kids. It was super easy and honestly quite fast. In the veranda concierge staterooms, you can only order continental breakfast so this was a definite perk for splurging on the bigger room.

Cost: To be transparent, we paid roughly 6K for our room for 5 people in our 1 bedroom suite. Our trip was mid September (it was also Halloween on the High Seas), which is usually one of the cheaper times to travel because kids are in school and its the ever fun Hurricane Season! Our 4 year old only missed one day of preschool, Friday as we were back home by 9:30 Monday morning in Palm Beach County from the port in Fort Lauderdale. I believe at the time of booking, concierge was roughly 2K more than the non concierge veranda staterooms and there was a bit more of a premium for our room specifically. This is a bit of a splurge since its roughly 2K a night but with all the additional amenities and perks - we felt it was worth it. We also ruined ourselves because we probably will never sail non-concierge now.

We truly felt like it was worth it to splurge on this particular short cruise because the perks were things we valued. With that being said, I am sure you can also have a great experience non-concierge. I plan to be writing a few more posts to provide some additional detail on Lookout Cay and the cabana experience so be on the lookout :) no pun intended!