Disney Magic Experienced a Temporary Power Failure at Sea

This evening, we were alerted to a minor issue aboard the Disney Magic. From what we have been able to gather thus far, the Disney Magic experienced a temporary power failure (2 to 3 minutes) which left the ship dead in the water north of Cuba. Approximately 45 minutes later, it was reported that the Disney Magic had already resumed forward motion.

Around 5:15 PM EST, Pete Werner posted the following on Facebook.

The Disney Magic is dead in the water on our way to Cozumel. Huge puff of black smoke seen from the front of the ship followed by power failure.

The Facebook post was geotagged with Viñales, Cuba shown below by the red pushpin on the map below. Note, the Disney Magic was last recorded by terrestrial AIS receivers about 9 hours prior as she was passing south of Key West.

Marine Traffic Disney Magic 20141201

Approximately 45 minutes later, Werner posted that the Disney Magic is already moving again.

The Disney Magic is currently on day 2 of a 7-Night Western Caribbean Cruise (Itinerary B). Today, the Magic was at sea on her way to Cozumel.

Another report surfaced that there may have been a event on Saturday regarding the generators aboard the Disney Magic.

During the Disney Magic’s 2013 re-imaginationing a auxiliary generator was installed in what was previously the deck 7 aft open deck area.

Disney Magic Aft Verandahs Closeup Port Canaveral

We reached out to Disney Cruise Line for a comment, and will share any news we receive in an update to this post.

Thank you Cam Dezak, Dustin Burton and the many others on Twitter for your help collecting the details for this story.

17 Replies to “Disney Magic Experienced a Temporary Power Failure at Sea”

  1. Pam

    We embark on the Fantasy on Saturday! However, nothing like the Magic being “dead in the water” to bring back a sense of reality that Disney can still have problems from time to time. THAT incident would scare the “BeeGeeBees” out of me! And in the dark too! Ugh! Soooo glad the problem did not last long and the ship has regained her course for Cozumel!! Oh… by the way Scott… We will be in stateroom #9648! I found pictures of the stateroom last night from when your family stayed in the same number on the Dream! Now I know which wall the bed is against! Thanks for that!

    Reply
    1. Chris

      Priorities. Look at it this way. When a ship loses power, first thing is to determine why, then get power to the bridge and main propulsion, ship communications, then hotel services with internet probably somewhere last. It may have taken 45 minutes before power was restored to the internet before he was able to post. Though the actual issue may only have been 5 minutes long.

      Reply
    2. Lisa

      Someone else posted from the ship that DCL cut internet access when they were made aware of the first post reporting the problem. This is why the next post wasn’t made for 45 minutes. Scott says it was only out 2-3 minutes as well.

      Reply
      1. Scott Sanders Post author

        Lisa, This was my fault for the way I worded the timeline. Originally, I referenced the original post and the follow up which resulted in the assumption that it was a duration of 45 minutes. I was attempting to gather the information as it was available and overlooked this. As the actual duration of the outage was revealed I updated the post to clarify the situation.

        Reply
        1. Tracy Whipple

          I think Lisa has this correct. The timeline probably was power outage, power back up, post about outage, cut internet access, 45 minutes elapsed, internet restored. I question how someone can post from the ship if there is no power. Satellites, wifi, etc. would all be down if there was no power and the ship was “dead in the water”.

          Reply
  2. Pingback: Disney Magic Suffers From Minor Power Failure - Cruise Hive

  3. Liz

    I used to perform on the Wonder; regarding the post about an announcement of a fire, the crew does regular drills to make sure they can handle emergency situations when they arise. My guess is she heard an announcement for this but missed them saying “for drill, for drill” before announcing “red parties”.

    Reply
  4. Alistair

    When we were on the inaugural cruise out of New York in 2012, the computer network failed on our last sea day before New York and we came to a dead stop, it took the crew a few hours to re-boot the system and bring it back online and off we went again. Captain John kept us fully informed and the crew ensured any impact we felt was minimized, in fact we were all a bit disappointed the problem was resolved so quickly as we were rather hopeful of spending another day at sea.

    Reply
  5. Steve

    Yes the power went out for less than 5 minutes during the first dinner seating. Lights out, emergency lighting and the staff at the restaurant “NEVER SKIPPED A BEAT”. Emergency lighting came on. A few minutes later the lights were back on. The following day there was an announced “TEST”. It had no effect on my party. As USUAL the Crew Members were exceptional. That is why I have cruised with Disney before and will continue to cruise with them in the future.

    Reply
  6. Amy

    I was on the Magic during this and it was not a big deal…some people made a bigger deal then needed to be and made families of those on the ship worried….

    Reply

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