In May 1994 the Walt Disney Corporation decided to enter the world of cheap cruises and to much fanfare 4 years later Disney Magic embarked on her inaugural voyage for Disney Cruise Lines sailing from Port Canaveral on 30 July 1998.
Disney Magic was built by the world famous Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri in 1998. She can hold up to 2,400 passengers in her 875 staterooms, weighs in at 83,000 gross tonnage and has a crew of 945.
Registered in the Bahamas, her home port is Port Canaveral, Florida. The cruising speed of Disney Magic is 21.5 knots but she can build up a head of steam and reach a maximum of 24 knots. She is 964 feet long and 106 feet wide at her widest point.
Ecologically friendly, Disney Magic has the facility to distill 1,200 tons a day of fresh water from sea water and collects all the water it needs for its laundry from the ships air conditioning system, some 280 tons a day is retrieved in this way.
Disney Magic was refurbished in 2005, when amongst other features, a massive LED screen was mounted to the forward funnel for the showing of movies and major sporting events and three new spa treatment suites were added.
In 2010, Disney Cruise Lines will reposition Disney Magic into Europe for 5 months of the year. Cruising from Dover, England, she will visit popular capital cities on a Northern European itinerary and ports of call in the Mediterranean. Other cheap cruises in the region will include two transatlantic 14 night repositioning cruises, a seven night cruise between Dover and Barcelona.