Carnival Miracle Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,356 reviews

Why not Carnival?

Review for the Mexican Riviera Cruise on Carnival Miracle
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lbcruisermartin44
2-5 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Feb 2017
British Imperialist motif.  Nice view though.
Chef's table.  Wagyu beef and bone marrow souffle.

My wife and I took the Mexican Riviera cruise from Long Beach for our anniversary. We chose this cruise because we love Mexico, but mostly because we live in Long Beach and skipping a flight to Houston or Miami saved us a ton of time and money. And the cruise port is 15 minutes from our house. So, this was an easy choice.

We have cruised once before with Carnival, and once with Norwegian, so only have a little comparison to make here. I've heard that Carnival is the Motel 6 of cruise lines, but until I see something different I'm liking what they offer. Some of the negatives of Miracle: the Bacchus dining room is the ugliest dining room I have ever seen. LOL. You can't miss the grapes all over the wall and ceiling... almost every light is covered with a round, purple cover, on a beautiful velvety background of... purple. It's just too much, but all 3 cruise ships I've been on have had over the top decor throughout. Also, the adult pool deck needs to be larger. Many, many adults seek the sunning solace of that kid-free environment and it was packed for most of the day. Finally, I was disheartened by the number of huge people riding around on those little carts. But they were probably just as disheartened by the number of drunk people stumbling about the boat (me!).

On the good side: the food was excellent and so was our waiter. Every night something weird was offered, something people rarely eat but might want to try. I had oxtongue and frog's legs, among other things. We did not eat at the buffet, except for a late night hot dog once or twice. We highly recommend the Chef's Table excursion. Most of us have never had a meal prepared and presented like that, and it is totally worth the money if you enjoy food beyond just the eating of it. The ship itself has plenty of bars on floors 2,3 and 9. Sometimes I had to wait a few minutes for a drink, but it was also pretty easy to find a less busy bar and not wait at that one. Also highly recommend the Cheers program if you know you will drink a lot. There are so many nice, quiet chairs on this ship. We were impressed with how uncrowded the boat felt even when we were at sea. We found quiet places by a big window easily, and saw whales and dolphins off the boat. We saw 2 comedians. One was really, really funny,(Azeem) and the other (Derek) was kinda funny but lectured us about race for the first 15 minutes of his act before he got to the really good jokes. It's hard to go wrong with comedians on these cruises, I think. I don't know about the other shows. The live music was excellent. This cat David Oates was playing all over that boat, both solo and with the cover band, and he was top-notch. Great guitar player and singer. There were a number of other live performers as well, we just happened to end up in front of Oates a lot. We also enjoyed the trivia activities.

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