After a stormy night and final packing, we were all excited that the boarding day for our cruise had finally arrived. At around 9:00AM we started taking our luggage down to the lobby. We split into two groups: One that would go up and down to our room to get luggage and the other that would stay in the lobby with the luggage. We enlisted the help of one of the hotel porters, but most of the carts were being used, so we did many trip up and down to our room. After checking out, we waited for our transportation to the port. We had arranged pickup at 10:10AM with Blai Limousines (had been recommended by the hotel 8 months ago). We had gotten a 15 passenger vehicle. While waiting we noticed a shuttle had stopped in front of the hotel. The driver did not speak any english, but we suspected that this might be our transport, even though the vehicle did not have the Blai Limo logo anywhere. After calling the Blai Limo number and handing the phone over to the driver we were able to make positive ID. It was our van. The driver opened up the luggage compartment and there was hardly any room there. Even though a large section of the relatively small compartment contained a large toolbox, we were able to fit five of our large suitcases with the help of the hotel porter. The driver was quite unresponsive to our loading activity. We loaded the kids in the back of the van and loaded the remaining luggage on the remaining seats. We were all stuffed in like sardines. We then took off to the port. Initially I was worried that we might end up in a different port, but, when I saw the Disney Magic ship, my fears were put to rest. Our driver proceeded to take us to the hotel that is located nearby the port. I indicated that this was not the drop off location. Ann and I were not very pleased with the service so far. I proceeded to indicate to the driver where he might want to turn. The guy was totally lost. I used my gut feeling regarding the path to the ship, keeping our car GPS navigator on the ready in case we really got lost. After a couple of turns and repeatedly telling the driver that whatever ship he was getting close to was not ours, we finally made it to the boarding area for the Magic. The port porters were ready to help us unload, and, after giving the very confused driver a very small tip (which was much more than he deserved) we were ready to start the boarding process. It was not raining at this time. We entered the terminal and went thru the very short lines to take care of the boarding paperwork. We were quickly in a line to have the boarding picture taken. And off we went to load the boat. At this point it had started to rain lightly. We boarded the boat from a gangway on deck 2 toward the front of the boat. From there we were rushed to deck 9 where our family name was announced and some of the crew member welcomed us. We the went back to deck 3 for the concierge welcome reception where we were greeted by Jonathan, one of the concierge coordinators, and by a very nice buffet. After reviewing all of reservations and getting the remaining registration process for placing the kids in the children clubs, we were ready for lunch. We left most of carryon bags with the concierge staff and headed for Parrot Cay (one of the sit down restaurant onboard) for lunch. There we had our first buffet lunch. All of the kids were particularly excited about being on the cruise. We then made our way to our room. We have two connecting room, one is a suite (room 8080, category 3 in Disney Cruise parlance) and the adjacent room (8082, category 4). The suite has a separate master bedroom with a 26 inc TV, a sitting area with a nice chair, a small desk, a walk-in closet, a jet tub, two sinks, a shower and toilet. The suite also has a living room with another 26 inch TV, a couch and two chairs with two smalltables, a large table with four chairs, a minibar area with sink and refrigerator more closet space, and another bathroom with shower. There is also a large balcony. This area also contains the door to the other connecting room.  The other room has a split bathroom (the toilet and  sink in one section and the shower and sink in the other section), a master bed, and a couch that can be turned into one bed. In this room there is also a bed that comes down from the wall and one from the ceiling. We have designated this room as the children’s room since it can sleep 5 (Susanna and Michela in the main bed, Phillip in the couch bed, Christian in the bed that comes down from the ceiling, and Rebecca in the bed that comes down from the wall. Once everyone in our group got acquainted with the room, we went back to concierge to get our bags and drop them off in the room.  Meanwhile our luggage started to come into the room. Our room steward is a very nice lady from Jamaica that was very friendly with us and the kids. One by one or bags arrived. They all appeared to have been in the rain since both the outside and the inside of the bags were wet. Ann dashed in the laundry room to get some of our clothes clean - we desperately needed to do laundry. The kids could not wait to get into the children clubs (areas where the children are provided with a supervised set of activities and are under constant supervision) so Ann checked them all in. Then Ann and I went up to deck 11 to attend a disboard meet event (disboard is a bulletin board/discussion group on the web that has threads associated with specific cruises where people can share information, ask questions, and plan get togethers before, during, and after the cruise). By now, the sky had cleared up and there was no more sign of rain, just some fluffy clouds. There we made some new friends. From there we went to pick up the kids from the children clubs. We then all got ready for the safety drill and marched down to our station as the emergency signal was sounded through the ship.  Phillip had watched on the ship channel on the TV very intently how to put on the lifevest and gave us all careful instructions on how to put ours on tell us how important it was to put them on correctly.  He was very cute.  After the drill the boys went back into the children clubs, while all of the girls, Ann, and I went to see the welcome aboard show which was quite nice. We picked up the boys on the way to dinner. We started our dinner rotation at the Lumiere’s restaurant (there are three main restaurants on the ship where the assigned dining takes place, and guests are assigned to a particular table and restaurant on boarding night, rotating thru the three restaurants in the subsequent nights in a prescribed fashion while keeping the table number and the waiters). After dinner, the kids went back to the children clubs, while Rebecca, Susanna, Ann, and I went to the sail away party. We stayed there for the festivities and then returned to our cabin. We then picked up the kids from the children clubs and we were all sound asleep.