‘Miracle’ our Carnival Cruise Ship

The ‘Miracle’ was our ocean-going vessel for a week. We left Long Beach, CA on Saturday March 26, 2016 heading south to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico: also know as the Mexican Riviera. I was concerned because I had not been on a cruise ship before. I had no idea whether or not I would get sea-sick or if I would even like cruising, let alone how I would react being out in the ocean without any land in sight?!?! I had been on boats, like ferries, before, yet I could always see land ahead or behind. It certainly did not help that we had recently seen “Finest Hours” (a movie about the Coast Guard rescue of a tanker that had split in two on the ocean during a horrific storm!). Patti assured me all would be fine!

We had spent Friday night at the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach where we met Patti’s daughter, and brother who were also sailing with us on the cruise. The Hyatt was a beautiful hotel right on the harbor where we had a view of our ship which was docked right next to the Queen Mary. The Miracle dwarfed the Queen Mary! The Hyatt was very nice with a roof-top pool, a restaurant/bar where you could take a meal and drink up to the pool, and it was very close to harbor restaurants . If you look closely at the pool-side photo, you can see the Miracle in the background. This time I remembered to take a pic of the room…

The next day, Saturday, around 1:30pm we went down to the pier to board our ship.  It was a mad-house with people, kids, luggage, and porters. The check-in process included checking identification, passport, having our picture taken, and giving either a credit card or cash for purchases on the ship. No cash is transacted on board: I can see how handling cash would be a nightmare! After we received our ‘on-board ship n sail card’ (which looks like and is about the same size as a credit card and works the same way): we walked up the gang-plank boarding the ship like cattle. Since we could not go to our cabin yet, the room stewards were still cleaning rooms from the cruise before us… we wandered up to the Serenity Deck and I walked around the decks taking photos.

Luckily, I was on the deck before it was packed with people & kids. The kid’s & parent’s deck had 2 pools with 2 hot tubs, the Serenity Deck had it’s own pool & hot tub (for those over 21) – a basketball half-court, miniature golf, a track (the blue in the picture of the miniature golf course) and the red whale-tail that looks down at least 6 floors into the piano bar.

We were able to get into our cabin, #6181 (meaning 6th floor room 181), around 4:30pm. When we boarded the ship we had to leave our suitcases with baggage check and they informed us we would not get them until they were scanned (just like the airport) which would probably be 8-9pm: so we kept our personal items with us. Food was served on the 9th floor and most of the entertainment happened on the 2nd floor, (I guess if the ship sank you could have a last meal before you met Neptune…) LOL. Our room steward was Newbon, from India, and every night when he turned our beds down he would leave a stuffed animal, made out of towels, on one of our beds – we had an elephant, frog, swan, dinosaur, turtle, and lastly a monkey (which was our favorite). He told us he only makes the ‘monkey’ for his special people because it takes at least 10 minutes to make one monkey (and he had 30 rooms to steward). We felt very lucky!

An interesting fact Patti discovered was that the service employees on this line make minimum wage from their own country and they rely on tips for the rest of their wage! We were shocked, but not surprised. Of course their lodging was free as well as their food.

Later on I took pictures of the ship at night which is always lit up, for safety I’m sure.

Nowadays on ships, they do not have life boats or rafts, they have ‘life-pods’ (my name for the craft). We had to do an evacuation drill that first day and everyone HAD to attend. The life-pods are unsinkable. These are the same kind of pod seen in the movie “Captain Phillips”. While we were sitting on our deck one day we saw an engineer going from one pod to another making sure everything was copacetic. We were very happy to know they check the pods every time the ship sets out to sea.

We were scheduled to leave Long Beach at 4:30pm, yet there was a delay that was not explained, so we left the pier around 6pm. The ship would travel Saturday night, through Sunday and Sunday night and arrive in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico at 11:00am on Monday. The Captain made up all but 15 minutes of the time we lost leaving Long Beach late.

As we set sail, saying good bye to Long Beach and the USA: we watched land get smaller and smaller on the horizon and the ocean became larger and larger – dwarfing our ship. It was too late to jump as I am not a good swimmer! I was a captive of the ‘Miracle’ for the next week…

Next stop – Cabo San Lucas…