Galveston offers easy access to routes

Like purring cats, these affection-seeking stingrays are brushing up against our legs in the waist-deep crystal clear waters surrounding Grand Cayman.

We’d like to think these angel-winged sea creatures the size of a dining room table simply adore us.

But the reality is, while these rays are wild, they like nothing more than the arrival of humans armed with a bucketful of smelly squid.

And that’s where our tour group aboard the Beauty II comes in.

We’ve ventured out to Stingray City Sandbar, 25 minutes offshore by speed boat, to pet and feed these magical fish.

“Hold it like an ice cream cone,” says Captain Sean Ebanks of the slimy squid he’s handing around.

“That way the ray won’t eat your fingers along with it.”

He’s only half joking.

Stingrays vacuum up their food and have bony plates for a mouth rather than teeth, so the chance of losing digits is unlikely even if you hold the squid wrong.

It’s these same raw squid consuming mouths we are expected to kiss.

Yes, smooch a stingray.

“Local legend says if you kiss a stingray you get seven years of good luck,” laughs Ebanks. “But no French kissing. I think that’s bad luck.”

So my wife, our 10-year-old daughter and I each lay a big one on Blueberry, so named for her fetching blue-gray colouring.

Seven years’ good luck, here we come.

We’ve been deposited in this paradise by the Disney Magic cruise ship on its inaugural itinerary out of Galveston, Texas.

Yes, Texas is an up-and-coming port and is billed as the quickest and easiest way to get to the Western Caribbean.

There will also be stops in Costa Maya and Cozumel, both in Mexico, but Grand Cayman, Blueberry and her posse will forever be the highlights of the cruise.

“Now that Disney has four ships in its fleet [the Dream was launched in 2011, the Fantasy earlier this year] there was the opportunity to deploy the Magic to another port to offer greater variety,” says the Magic’s hotel director Thomas Praxmarer in his charming Austrian accent.

“Texas was a natural for us because it is so handy for both the Western Caribbean [Grand Cayman, Costa Maya and Cozumel] and Castaway Cay [Disney’s private island in the Bahamas], Port Canaveral, Florida [close to Orlando for a day at Disney World] and Key West routes we are doing out of Galveston.”

Galveston is a one-hour shuttle south of Houston, which has non-stop flights from Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, for fast Canadian access to Western Caribbean cruising.

Naturally, 80 per cent of the cruisers are families after that unique offering of floating Disney resort with destinations.

All too soon we’re back on the Beauty II speeding away from Stingray City chattering about the awesomeness of what we’ve just done.

While it can’t quite top the rays, a stop at the Cayman Turtle Farm to feed 500 pound giant green sea turtles and get right in the pool to snuggle baby turtles is pretty amazing too.

The rest of the cruise is no slouch either.

In Costa Maya we’ll bump over sand roads through the jungle in dune buggies to find a secluded beach to swim and nosh on the most incredible tortilla chips and salsa.

In Cozumel we’ll swim with dolphins.

No offence to the dolphins, but we’d done that before in Hawaii and Jamaica, and they couldn’t top our new experience with stingrays.

Aboard the Magic we high-fived Mickey Mouse, posed on the promenade deck with Donald Duck, lounged poolside, took in the Broadway-style shows and ate, ate, ate at themed restaurants from Animator’s Palate, Parrot’s Cay and Lumiere’s to the adults-only Palo on deck 10.

Oh yes, there was also a kickin’ sail away party as we pulled away from the pier in Galveston and a Pirates in the Caribbean party on night three featuring Mickey and Jack Sparrow on zip lines and the only fireworks at sea.

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