|
We are fairly novice cruise travellers. In truth, I am only slowly warming to cruising as a comfortable form of travel for my family. This experience certainly helped.
We sailed from New York on the Miracle (Dec 24 - Jan 1). I understand that the Miracle is now moving to the Pacific for Alaskan cruises.
We stayed in Cabin 4227.
Here are some brief thoughts:
The room was great. Situated in a quite area of the ship on the port side at the rear of the ship. There are no inner cabins at this section, which cut down on traffic and noise. In fact, the room was perfectly silent. The room has a drop-down bunk, located over-top of the fold out couch, which worked well for us. The furniture is getting a little dinged, but I have no real complaints. The cabin stewards were attentive and effective.
The food in the Bacchus dining room was excellent. I would say that it exceeded my high expectations. It was matched by equally wonderful service. I see the benefit of having a fixed dining time, as it pairs you with the same staff each night. It was evident that they really thought about how to make sure that we had a wonderful meal each night.
The food in Horatios was good for buffet style.
We enjoyed each evening show. The individual performers were talented, and the production shows were well done. The Punchliner comedy show was generally quite good, though they have unnecessary co-branding with George Lopez (using repetitious generic taped jokes) which is odd, artificial and serves no helpful purpose.
We particularly enjoyed the roaming close-up magician (Ian Fernandez), who was both skillful and a great guy.
My two kids (13 and 11) loved the trip. They found friends on-board, and made regular use of the youth programs. This was dramatically better than our prior cruise experience, and I give full credit to the Carnival Miracle youth directors.
We used and enjoyed the spa, taking advantage of a first-day promotional discount. We also attended the morning yoga, though I think that the $12 price per person is too high - in fact, I would have expected this to be included.
Xmas celebrations were warm and fun, and New Years was a blast.
The ship does not have rock-climbing and skating rinks, etc., and I suppose that I would have used them if available. However, we were pleasantly busy with the amenities that were available, and did not notice the loss. They did have ample pool areas - one kids pool, one adult-only pool deck, and two adjacent general pool decks (one of which had a removable dome, which made it possible to swim in cold weather).
We had a wonderful cruise.
|
