Chilling out on your Disney Magic cruise while the kids are off enjoying themselves, safely supervised?

Then it’s time to raise yourself from the deckchair, walk slowly to the ship’s stern and carefully lean over the side.

While you’re there, consider this:

Disney Magic and her sister ship, Disney Wonder, make up the Disney Cruise Line fleet that sails year-round out of Port Canaveral, Florida.

Disney Cruise Line made history by being the first cruise line to utilize an innovative hull coating that is both 100 per cent non-toxic and effective in increasing fuel efficiency. The coating helps reduce the ships’ surface resistance in the water, decreasing the need for propulsion power as the ship glides through the sea.

Each ship can distill 1,200 tons of fresh water each day from sea water. The water used to operate the laundry is from the atmosphere and is collected as it drains from the air-conditioning system. 280 tons are retrieved every day; the laundry uses 220 tons.

Disney is the only cruise line to feature first run films from Walt Disney Pictures, with movies premiering exclusively at sea on the same day that they are released in the USA.

The Line is also the industry leader in on-board enhanced digital entertainment with advanced Disney Digital 3-D technology in all shipboard theatres.

Purpose-built for family cruising, Disney Magic and Disney Wonder have nearly an entire deck of space dedicated to age-specific children’s activities.

The ships also feature Wi-Fi in staterooms and public spaces, allowing guests to surf the web at sea from their wireless-ready personal laptops.

Both ships were built at the legendary Fincantieri shipyard in Italy. Each has an overall length of 964 feet and maximum width of 106 feet. 73% of the staterooms have outside views; 60% of those have private verandahs.

On-board each ship are about 950 crew members representing over 60 different nationalities. There’s approx. one crew member for every three guests.

All of whom are charmed by the iconic first seven notes of the “When You Wish Upon a Star” song melody used as the ships’ horn signals.

It’s not surprising that Disney Cruise Line has won more than 50 different awards and accolades since launching in 1998, and was named the top large cruise ship experience by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine in the ninth annual ‘Reader’s Cruise Poll.’

Half of the Disney Magic was constructed in Ancona, Italy, then towed 100 miles to meet the stern in Marghera (just outside Venice) to be perfectly joined and welded together.

Both ships are painted in Mickey Mouse-inspired colors: black hull, white superstructure, yellow trim and two giant red funnels, each with the Disney Cruise Line Mickey Mouse logo.

Donald Duck and his nephew Huey are now permanently busy painting the stern of the Disney Wonder, while Disney Magic’s aft features a 15-foot statue of Goofy hanging from a boatswain’s chair.

Now I want you to think of the man who had to paint those characters onto the stern of the two ships and nervously wait for that images to dry. One smudge and he’d have to start all over again.

Which is why he almost certainly kept a web camera pointed at his handiwork.

For these may be Disney ships, but they weren’t built by a Mickey Mouse company.

James Leavey

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