Never having cruised before, my boyfriend, a friend, and I decided to celebrate our college graduation and our last few weeks of freedom before work starts by going on the Carnival Miracle. We booked 2 rooms, one an Inside guarantee and another an Ocean View guarantee-and were pleasantly surprised to be upgraded to categories 5A and 6A. The whole embarkment process was a bit long as we had waited in line for about an hour and a half. After boarding the ship, everyone had lunch on the Lido deck. The lines for different food stations were long, but the food was pretty good. I recommend the sandwich station-the arugula foccacia is wonderful! After lunch, we checked into our rooms and found them to be very clean and comfortable. Each stateroom has a basket of trial size goods that include: razors, toothpaste, some medicine, etc. There are also shampoo and shower gel dispensers in the showers, but I'm glad I brought my own toiletries. Also, our room had a blowdryer-which worked just find, but I wish I had brought my own from home. We explored the rest of the ship for the rest of the day before dinner and were really impressed by the public rooms. My boyfriend loved the sauna and steam rooms. (also the showers in the spa are great!)The gym was big and had plenty of equipment, and the jacuzzi in the spa was nice. We had late seating for dinner, and were happy with our choice as there were few kids and we had more time during the day to do different activities and not rush to dinner. The food at Bacchus was delicious! Don't limit yourself to just one appetizer, salad, dinner, dessert-you can order a few of each if you'd like! The service was ok. Our waiter kept forgetting to bring us certain courses or brought us ones we didn't order. We went to all the shows after dinner and really loved the singers and dancers. The comedians were great too, but we could have done without the Motown show. After the shows, we usually got drinks at one of the bars (Maguire's, Frankie and Johnnie's, casino, etc) and went to Frankenstein's to hang out and dance. We did the Bioluminescent Bay excursion at San Juan. It was definitely worth the money and something you have to experience! The kayaking was a little difficult for first-timers and because you are paddling in the dark, it can be a little scary. In St. Thomas we took a taxi to Coki Beach. ($9 per person each way). The beach was small but beautiful. We snorkeled for a few hours there. Although there weren't big reefs nearby, all sorts of colorful fish swim right up to you. It was a lot of fun! That was the day we all got really bad sunburn. In Tortola, we didn't do much at the port. We walked to some of the shops, but because we were all suffering from sunburn, we headed back to the ship.