Carnival Miracle Review
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LONG review, but if you want the 'bad' and 'ugly' skip to the bottom.
Well, my wife and I FINALLY managed to take a cruise to Alaska! And the itinerary was perfect for us - 2 weeks and a round trip from Long Beach, CA. made it easy on us (we live just north of LA).
After 3 days at sea, we were glad to hit some really great ports. Our favorite was Icy Strait Point - WOW! What a GREAT PLACE!! Not a jewelry store in site! That's right, no Diamonds International here! It's owned and run by the locals and they won't allow it. Nice, clean and new looking still. This was the first visit by ANY Carnival ship to this nice place. Our excursion choice was a Zipline and watching combo we found online and it was AWESOME! First a ride up to the top of Hoonah Mountain (1550 ft) and our driver narrated us with local info, GREAT jokes and stories and we saw deer as well! But THEN comes the zip line! WOW, 5,330 ft long - takes about 90 seconds at 60 MPH! Yes 60!! Mine seemed a LOT faster though as I was first at the end and had time to get out of my harness before my wife arrived! AWESOME!! But then the whale watching cruise. Because we didn't book the Carnival one, we didn't 'get' to go on the BIG boat with all the other people, ours was much smaller and only had about 10 people on it (thank goodness) though the boat could have held about 25. We didn't have a 'naturist' on board, just locals. But we got UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL with ORCAS when a pod of them swam right up to the starboard (right) side of the boat, came up for air and then went UNDER the boat! We also saw a humpback 'bubbling' for food, but those orca's were the highlight and I have the video to prove it! :)
Cabin Review
Balcony
We liked our cabin, it was at the end of the hall (sort of) amid ships and just off the elevators and the atrium. The location was great because we only had one cabin next to us. Cabin is as we've always seen them (balcony is the only way to go!) in past cruises on this ship to different locations.
We were disappointed though that Carnival no longer puts the little chocolates on the pillows anymore! Come on guys! Anything to save a buck? Also, the room stewards have many more rooms to deal with and it's harder to get ahold of them. But at least the bed is comfy and the views breathtaking! Oh, and they do still do room service for (mostly) free. But they CHARGE for pizza even though it's free on the Lido deck? Weird.
Port Reviews
Glacier Bay
Great views of the glaciers, the narration by the rangers was lacking though. WAY too monotoned and rehearsed (or not!) though the info was good. Maybe they need to record themselves and listen later to see how 'bored' they sounded.
Juneau
Just wandered around and did some Geocaching (look it up if you don't know what it is).
Sitka
Again, just did some wandering in this small little town. Very interesting. Also saw lots of salmon trying to swim up a small stream just off the pier.