I have to say Carnival Miracle was a good experience, however, there were so many things that my husband and I did not expect, we are not sure if we would book a cruise again. The day of travel leaving from Long Beach California my husband and I had traveled a long way, and so wanted to have a little snooze. As soon as we laid down we heard a plethora of running foots steps obviously from a young child, jumping off what we thought was the bed onto the floor, and the metal on metal sound of the deck chairs being pushed around. The noise was non stop making us think the kid must have been on a sugar high or something. We waited for 15 to 20 minutes for the kid to run out of energy, but he or she did not. Finally I called our room steward. He said he would take care of it, but a half hour later the kid was still going spastic. Finally I called guest services and with in five minutes there was no more noise. We did hear the kid thumping every once in a while through out the cruise, but no where near as much. The art work on the ship was exquisite. Our steward greeted us by using our first name everyday and cleaned our room for us making our bed up with clean sheets every day, and left a folded towel display that was different every day which was a real treat to look forward to. I am claustrophobic and hate elevators, but the ships elevators were so roomy and worked without any glitches I felt just fine using them. The multiple food items looked fantastic, but sadly were not very good. The fruit was flavorless, the drinks in the dispensers tasted watered down so much it was like tasting lightly flavored water. The coffee was so strong we had to add hot water to it. The chocolate milk had good flavor but was grey in color when poured into a drinking cup. The pork roasts were full of fat and were so tough they were hard to chew. One time we decided to have some sub sandwiches made for us. The gentlemen making them did not understand English very well and made both our sandwiches the same. They ran out of mayo while making our sandwiches and when another man came back out of the kitchen with a fresh bottle, they just poured the fresh mayo into the same stainless steel container. Clearly there was little understanding of what safe handling of food was. I realized that we were not the only ones dissatisfied with the food. So much food was wasted everyday, enough to feed double the amount of people on board, if not more.

The food in the restaurants were not much better, and what was good was served in very small portions. We had the unfortunate opportunity to have had the same waiter twice. He was absolutely horrible, could barely speak English, and brought our main course with out clearing our appetizer plates first. I ordered a hot drink that came after my dinner was served, and it was cold. And this waiter received a share of the 15% gratuity I feel we were forced to pay. There were two waiters, however, who did give us fantastic service and gave us a free dessert which normally had to be purchased because we celebrating our honeymoon.

The photography company on board, Pixels, captured wonderful pictures of us with the best quality of photos I have ever seen. The one real down side was the smoking, especially in the casino. I believe smokers went to the casino instead of going outside because it was a bit breezy during that sailing and much warmer inside. We avoided going anywhere near it, but the smoke eventually filled the entire ship. Read more