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Carnival Miracle in St. Maarten, St. Lucia and St. Kitts Review with pics!


elsplace2

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We sailed on the Carnival Miracle to St. Maarten, St. Lucia and St. Kitts from Feb 6 to Feb 14 to celebrate my 50th birthday which was on the 7th.

 

Highlighting our cruise for those of you who don’t like detail. Following will be more detail and photos. As most of you know The Miracle just came out of dry dock 2 weeks before we set sail. I cannot compare the difference since we never sailed on her. But it did look like she got some fresh paint, carpets and they did a great job on the Serenity Deck. The only problem is there really isn’t enough seating for the amount of people who want to relax back there during sea days. But that is true with any ship. We were fortunate enough to snag a seat during a couple of the sea days, but not until later on in the afternoon and one cool morning on the last sea day. As far as décor we liked it, so no complaints there.

 

We had cabin 7258….this was an awesome cabin. The cabin itself was your average size, but it was an extended balcony but it was not your typical extended balcony….it was 3 balconies long….I think there are only 8 cabins like this….if you enjoy hanging out on a balcony and if you can get one, it is definitely worth it!! It was wonderful! (Of course we learned of these cabins via Cruise Critic!) As I always say, a great wealth of information.

We did Your Time Dining where we ate in the MDR 3 times. We never had any problems getting seated at a table for 2. If you go around 5:45 to 6:00 pm, the line is long but it does move quickly. I guess if you go around the same time every night they try and seat you at the same table with the same wait staff whether you ask or not. We went around 6:30 one evening and they said they couldn’t give us the same table or wait staff….which was fine with us. We really weren’t expecting to have the same table or wait staff every night anyway.

 

We did the Chef’s table one night (more detail on that later) and buffet 4 nights.

 

Food in the buffet was good. Pretty much the same as they have in the MDR although not everything on the menu is in the buffet. They did only have one station opened with the main food for dinner and the carver was the one that was replacing/filling some of food that was running low…which I thought was kind of strange….but we usually sail on larger ships and they definitely seem to have more staff at the buffet and more than one station opened for main dining. Fortunately the lines weren’t too long when we went. There really wasn’t a big selection as I have seen on other cruises, but it was good enough for us. For example they would have about 4 main courses to choose from, 1 soup, 1 vegetable, 1 rice, 1 potato selection. They did have a salad station and dessert station as well.

On our port days we did the following.

 

St. Maarten – Bernards Tours - A private tour company on the island with a very good reputation. We had a great tour with them. We went to Orient Beach and Maho Beach and a couple other stops. More details later, but St. Maarten had 6 ships in port that day one being the Allure of the Sea, so the island was very crowded.

 

St. Lucia – Land and Sea Combo to Soufriere – Again a great tour where we saw a lot of the island. I believe there were 3 ships in that day.

 

St. Kitts – Just walked around the port area. Great for shopping, as far as being right near the pier. I believe we were the only ship in port.

 

So now for the details! Enjoy!

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A little about us. This was our 8th cruise. It was only my husband and I that traveled on this cruise. We flew in to FLL 2 days early seeing it was our first winter cruise and we didn’t want to take any chances with long travel delays, so we decided to start our vacation early, if all went well and not stress if things didn’t go well. Fortunately all went well, thanks to a mild winter. We stayed at the Best Western Oceanside in Ft. Lauderdale. Not a bad place to stay for the money and being near the beach but it’s no Ritz. We enjoyed long walks on the boardwalk, and hanging out at the beach.

 

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We took the trolley to a Total Wine for some wine later at the hotel and our 2 bottles for our cruise. (We decided not to bother trying to sneak any booze on the ship, this time.) We had dinner at Duffy’s Sports Bar. It was a really nice atmosphere if you like sports and they had good drink specials.

 

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The 2nd day we spent on the beach and headed to Bubba Gumps for dinner. We were a little disappointed with Bubba’s because of their prices and the small portion sizes. So needless to say we were able to eat everything on our plate. The food was pretty good, but nothing special.

 

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While we were waiting at our hotel to leave to go to the port we were watching the news and saw that 3 ships came down with the Norovirus…. 2 from fort Lauderdale, fortunately not Carnival . Luckily I brought plenty of hand sanitizer and we will be sanitizing our hands at every opportunity we have although unfortunately sanitizer does not work on Norovirus, only soap. Hopefully when we get to the ship we are not told that we have to wait for them to sanitize our ship!

We called for a cab around 10:15 and one came within 5 min or so. The port was only a couple of miles from our hotel, although before we got through the security gate, there was a line and it did take several minutes to get through the security gate. Have ID’s ready, to get through the gate outside the port. My husband and I forgot about that and he had his ID in his carry-on which was in the trunk of the cab….luckily while we were in line waiting to get through he was able to get his carry-on out of the trunk.

Embarkation was very busy for a 10:40 or so, appearance. The busiest we have ever seen. While we were still waiting in a long line to get in the building it started to pour…..luckily we were under an awning, but the wind was blowing in our direction, so we were getting a little wet. It took about 45 min to get through security and checked in. They didn’t start boarding until around 11:25. We were zone 13 and were on board around 11:50.

 

 

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We headed right to the buffet, no problem finding a seat outside at the pool area and took turns getting our food. After we ate we went to check out the new Serenity deck to wait. It looked really nice and had several comfortable places to relax. We found a spot and sat there and chatted with someone who was on her second part of a back to back cruise.

 

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At 1:25 we started heading to our room, no announcement was made saying they were ready (well at least we didn’t hear any). As I said earlier, we were in room 7258. The room was average size, but the balcony was 3 balconies long. We LOVED it! It had 2 loungers and 2 chairs and a little table. We spent a lot of time out there!

 

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Those light blue rocking chairs under the Miracly sign are a great place to get a birds-eye view of the Lido deck. We tried once to get chairs around the pool area (chair hogs a'plenty), after that we just went one deck up and found all the lounges we wanted, and a great view of everything happening below.

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After checking out our room and dropping off our carry-ons, we headed out to explore the ship. It is a very nice ship with beautiful artwork all around. I know a lot of people don’t care for the Miracle’s décor…..but we liked it!

 

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Muster drill was around 3:30 and was done around 3:50 or so. Just before Muster my bag came then after Muster my husband’s came…..we didn’t get a chance to put our stuff away because we were meeting with the Cruise Critic folks at 4:00.

 

Not many showed up but I really didn’t think many would, anyway. As always they were a great bunch of people and it was nice putting the face with the name……we didn’t stay very long, because we wanted to get out stuff put away and get settled in.

 

We did Your Time Dining for the first time on Carnival and really liked it better than traditional dining. We got down there around 6:00pm and there was already a fairly long line. But fortunately it moved quickly and we were seated within 5-10 min. We chose to dine at a table for 2 which was no problem. We ended up chatting with a very nice couple sitting next to us. There was maybe 2 feet between tables, which wasn’t bad compared to what I’ve read, where some people say they were 6 inches apart. (Unless those are in a different area). Dinner was very good and fairly quick compared to what we have experienced in regular time dining…..we were out of there by 7:20. .

After dinner we walked around the ship a bit and waited for the TV/Movie theme trivia game at 8:30 in the Phantom Theater. We poked our heads in there around 8:00 and they were starting a dance lesson of Latin Dance mainly the Cha Cha Cha, so we decided to stay. It probably would have boring to watch but it ended up being very entertaining, because one person could not get the steps AT ALL, yet she hung in there until the end…so kudos to her!! I too am not very coordinated, but I think I would have walked off the stage a lot sooner, but it was fun to watch. That was only half hour, so then the Movie/TV Theme Trivia started…..not as easy as you might expect….we were like, huh? as were most people, on most of the songs they played. 9:00 they started the game Game Show Mania where 3 players got up on the stage and competed against each other…it was Ok. Not as funny as I was hoping it would be.

 

The main show was at 10:30. It was the Welcome Aboard Show. It was a quick show introducing some of the acts for the week, plus the dancers and singers did their routine. It was over between 11:00 11:15. We even stayed up to watch the comic Eddie Capone at 11:45pm. He was pretty funny…but not hysterical. This show lasted about ½ hr to 45 min.

 

After the comedy show it was off to our room for a well-deserved good night’s sleep.

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I was up around 6:00-6:30…which surprised me seeing we didn’t get to bed until around 1 am. I stayed in bed until 7, because my husband was like …..”Are you kidding me are you really up at 6:00am?”

 

Anyway, I couldn’t take lying there much longer seeing my brain was twirling on all I wanted to do today. We went to the breakfast buffet….plenty to choose from Pastries, French Toast, bacon, fried potatoes, omelets etc. There were several omelet stations, I know of at least 4. The only thing I was really disappointed with was the scrambled eggs….they were runny and did not taste very good (when I finally did get a scoop several days later because they didn’t look runny.) I usually have no problem with scrambled eggs on ships but unfortunately, these weren’t so great in my opinion.

 

After breakfast we went to the gym (yes I went to the gym on my birthday!) :rolleyes: and also walked a few laps outside on the upper deck where the miniature golf is. I believe its approx. 15 laps equal 1 mile. It can get very windy up there.

 

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After that we ventured out to the Serenity Deck. By this time it was about 10:00 am. As expected, there was nowhere to sit. (I wanted to yell out, “Hey it’s my birthday, anyone willing to give up your spot??" But I knew that wouldn’t work, so I didn’t bother.) :D The serenity area is nice but very limited on seating. We found a spot on an upper deck near the slide. We only hung out there for about 1 ½ hrs because I wanted to go to the cooking demonstration at noon and DH wanted to go to the Sports Trivia at 12:30.

 

So I headed to the Cooking Demonstration at 11:50. It was being held at Nick and Nora’s. I should have left earlier…..I forgot how to get to Nick and Nora’s and seeing my husband is so good at learning the ship so quickly, I just rely on him……well I was on my own. :eek: I headed aft….opps too far aft…came back… asked a bus boy where Nick and Nora’s was, all he said was that way…so I headed back to the direction I just came from….again too far and got to the spa and asked a spa person….she said it was in the direction I came from and to look for the glass elevators, well I guess I missed the glass elevators and ended up right where I started…..so again I asked the woman at the podium and she was more specific and told me to head to the mid aft and in the middle I will see the glass elevators….yay finely found it….Luckily the Miracle is a small ship!!! I really would have been late!! LOL By this time, it was 12:05. I had already missed the first course. Geez, talk about getting started right on time….anyway, I sat next to this talkative, young man…..needless to say I missed just about the whole demonstration because he was talking so much, besides I was sitting about 4 or 5 rows back and you really can’t see much from back there…..go early if you want a good seat!! They passed out small servings of a mushroom cappuccino which I missed, and it didn’t sound very appetizing anyway, baby leaf spinach salad and fresh mushrooms, broiled supreme free range chicken and for dessert, tiramisu ….all that I got to taste were very good. The whole show was about 20-25 min long. I was surprised at how fast it was. They demonstrated how to make it, while servers were passing the samples around.

 

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After the show I went back to our room and waited for DH. He showed up around 20 min later….awww no ship on a stick which he was hoping to win….but he came in 2nd……then we headed to the Serenity Deck hoping to find a spot….of course no luck, so we just sat in the pool and waited to see if anyone was ready to leave….one person did get up so we both sat in the lounger for about 10 min., when another spot opened up….we couldn’t move the chairs together but that was ok because we were both reading anyway….then 10 min later one of the rounded loungers opened up in front of my DH, so he snapped it up and I came and joined him….Yay! we were together again! So, we laid out for about 2 hrs.

 

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We went back to our room, showered and headed to Maguire’s Sports Bar to try the Thirsty Frog beer that we had been hearing so much about…..we ordered a pitcher for only $15.95 (Bud lite pitchers were $14.95….so not a bad deal….the Thirsty Frog beer is really good….I’m not a big beer drinker, but I could easily drink this stuff all the time!

 

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After that we tried our luck in the casino….I was hoping since it was my birthday which falls on the 7th..I’d sit at a slot machine that had 7’s….didn’t help, I’m such a loser!! But I had fun trying to win big.

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After the casino we went to our room to get ready for dinner and have one of our bottles of champagne that we were allowed to bring on board.

 

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Then we headed to dinner around 5:45. This was elegant night and there were already at least 50 people in line. (I didn’t really see anyone dressed to the nines but neither was I.)….most women were in nice dresses, slacks or capris….and I didn’t see many men in suits…most nice shirts and maybe a tie and nice slacks). Anyway, the line moved quickly….and they sat us at the same table….not that we asked for it. The nice couple that we chatted with the other night were already there. So we again enjoyed chatting with them. We told them it was my birthday and they wanted to tell the waiter so they can sing to me….but I asked them not to!!

 

 

After dinner we headed to Mad Hatters to catch the 7:30 comedy show….it was very funny…..the same comedians were there again tonight…where they switch off on the different times. After the comedy show we headed up to the Phantom Theater to see tonights show. Generations…it was good but not great…so we left a little early so we could catch the 9:45 comedy show in Mad Hatters. We found the comedy of Steve Caouette funnier than Eddie’s. Then back to our room for more champagne.

It was a great birthday! Best one I have had in a long time!

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Up early again, I just can’t help it, my mind starts thinking about the day ahead. We were at breakfast by 7:30…..then to the gym (yes, we did try and work off those meals as often as possible!!) We came back to our room showered and walked around so our room steward could clean our room…..came back to our room once he was done and relaxed on our balcony for a bit.

 

Afterwards we did some shopping in the ships stores…..got some lunch then went and signed up for the slot tournament at noon. We thought you had to be there right at noon, but you don’t, you can sign up and participate anytime between 12:00 - 2:25. It was a quick 5 minutes at the machine but it was fun to see if you made the top 9. Well we both did. But DH quickly lost his spot after the next round. Well we went down to check to see if I was still on it around 2:00…and yes I was, YAY, but just barely….I was on the bottom and people were still able to play. So we hung around and someone wanted to play at 2:15….yikes…I could lose my spot :eek:….whew she didn’t make it…:D then at 2:25 a couple wanted in….are you kidding me??? :eek: Geez I couldn’t take the pressure. I had to walk away while DH tried to watch….he too, had to walk away for a minute. Yes I did it! :D I was in 9th place (out of 9) Finals were at 2:30…..booooo I didn’t win…the lady next to me did…but I did win a tee shirt. :)

 

 

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After that we went to the pool area for ice-cream and saw they were about to start the synchronized swimming, so we decided to stay and watch….they had a bit of a hard time to get enough swimmers….but did get a few. They gave them about 10 to discuss what they were going to do….it was guys against girls…..the guys won, because it was 3 young boys and I guess everyone wanted the kids to win. (They actually wanted 18 and up but couldn’t find 5 men to participate.)

Anyway, we went back to our room and hung out on our balcony until it was time to get ready to go to the Chef’s Dinner at 6:00 pm.

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We've always chose the later dining time; reading your review it seems like we miss out on alot of stuff during the day, and especially during 7:30p-10:00p. We usually would have just enough time after dinner to rush to the Phantom Lounge for the nightly show (trying to find seats together). Daytime has always been spent hanging on the Sun Deck.

This time I'm really going to study the Fun Times and do something other than lie in the sun. You've inspired me ;)

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(Sorry folks, we didn’t get any pics at the Chef’s Dinner.)

 

We arrived in the atrium for the Chef’s dinner about 5:50. There was someone there to greet us and we gave him our name. We sat and listened to the Atrium’s entertainment while other diners arrived and until the Chef arrived. The Chef escorted us to the galley and we all stood around a table while champagne was being poured. Unfortunately, we were at the other end of the table and could barely hear a word he was saying…every so often I would pick up what he was saying. Champagne was NOT free flowing as I have read. After about 10 min they came around again to fill our glasses….although they were only being filled ½ way….if even. It probably came to a total of about 2 1/2 glasses, which was fine for me. While he was talking we were being served appetizers. Oh by the way this was the old menu they were serving, We ate Ahi Tuna on a Wasabi crisp, Duck pot sticker, steak taco, avocado cheesecake…..all delicious.

 

After the appetizers, we were escorted to the Dr. Frankenstein room where they had a really nice table set up for us. And we had name cards as to where we were going to sit. Again, we could barely him. (He was a very soft spoken Chef.) We, again were on the other end of the table. Luckily he came over to our side every so often so we can hear what he was saying. This meal was delicious as well, and we enjoyed our dinner companions very much! Dinner was Norwegian Salmon Tarter, Fire Tomato and Poblano Chili Bisque, Rock Shrimps and Apple Beignets, Chopped Mediterranean Salad, Fillet of Chilean Sea Bass and Aged Filet Mignon. Dessert was Chocolate melting cake and a sorbet. Again, the wine was not as free flowing as I have read, but plentiful for me. They came around about every 20 min or so and refilled, but not full glasses, as expected, but sometimes not even half. There was a choice of 2 wines, a Merlot and Pinot Grigo, both very good, (I asked if I could try both and they happily obliged) At one point they did have a magician come in and entertained us for about 10 min. He was very good!

 

The whole dinner was about 4 hours, but the time went by very quickly and we enjoyed it very much. It was a great experience. Although we probably wouldn’t do it again, since we didn’t hear much of what was going on and that was one of the things I was looking forward to…hearing what the chef had to say. (We all did get a free 8x10 photo of us at the dinner table, the next day.)

 

After dinner we headed to the 10:30pm show. The show tonight was a ventriloquist; it was ok, pretty funny when he brought a few guests up on the stage.

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Today we had an excursion with Bernard Tours. There were 6 ships in this port; one being the Allure of the Sea…needless to say, the island was very crowded!

 

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Look at the difference between ships!! :eek:

 

 

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The port area.

 

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Then we made a stop by the sea where a local man would take out some sea urchins, star fish, conch’s etc. from the sea, and allowed anyone who wanted to hold them. Of course my DH and I definitely wanted to hold some….although I was a little reluctant at first to hold something where I can feel them moving in my hands. But I did and it was fun! (Be sure to bring a couple of dollars for him because he does have a tip jar there and we didn’t mind at all giving him a couple of dollars.) There was also a great spot to take photos. We were there for about 20 minutes.

 

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Then we headed to Orient Beach, we were only there for about an hour, so we could have more time on Maho Beach. I was glad we only had an hour there, I wasn’t very impressed with this beach….I’m not sure why it’s so popular. Maybe because there are so many places to eat and drink, which would probably be great if you were spending a whole day there. But the beach seemed VERY crowded because it is filled with lounge chairs which belonged to the bars in back of them, and of course you have to pay to use them….so there really wasn’t any place for anyone to sit on a towel unless you walked to the left, down the beach, for about 5 to 10 min. where there was an open area where you can sit in the sand with your towels. As most people know Orient Beach is known as “The Nude” beach. Off to the right is the nude beach and off to the left you can go topless, they are separated by rocks. There were only 2 women topless and they were of the older generation……we didn’t walk to the right side but there was a man standing there at the rocks, totally nude. He was just standing there looking at the non-nude side…..like look at me! :rolleyes: He must have been there the whole time we were there, because he was still standing there when we came back from sitting on the beach. (It did drizzle a bit while we were at this beach, but only for about 5 min.)

 

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