Background Information DH and I were on the 6/28 sailing of Carnival Miracle out of NYC. We are both 27 years old, and this was a first cruise for each of us ~ as my user name suggests, this trip was for our honeymoon. We basically wound up selecting a Carnival cruise through a process of elimination, as they were the only line offering a Caribbean itinerary that we were interested in out of NYC during the week that we would be taking our honeymoon. We flew into NYC on Sunday, June 24 and spent three (wonderful!) days there before leaving on the cruise.

Embarkation Embarkation was absolutely flawless for us. We had a car service pick us up from our hotel in Midtown Manhattan shortly after 10:30 am. The drive to the pier was uneventful, and we arrived right around 11:00 am. We were immediately greeted by a very friendly porter who assisted us in getting tags for our luggage, as I had somehow managed to forget to pack those (oops!). After turning over our luggage, we headed inside where we found that they had already begun checking people in. We had a very short wait in "line" behind one other group of travelers. We found the staff member who checked us in to be quite friendly, and before we knew it we were having a seat to wait to be able to get on the ship. Much quicker than I expected, we were being called to start heading through security. We were on the ship, enjoying lunch by 12:10 pm. We chose not to bother trying to get into our cabin prior to the listed time of 1:30 pm, but I did overhear others saying that they'd been able to drop off their bags.

Ship Information I found the Miracle to be a beautiful ship. Yes, it was very over-the-top in many areas, but somehow that added to the appeal for me. We both also found the ship to be quite easy to get around, and it didn't take long before we didn't even bother to bring our little deck map with us. Read more