Ship: Carnival Miracle | Sail Date: 11/21/08 | Destination: > Southern Caribbean

With 15 cruises, 9 on Carnival, under my belt in the last 6 years, I have experienced all types of ports, crews, and ships. After sailing on the Miracle, I experienced a whole new level of disorganization and disappointment, and this ship is now at the top of my "Never Sail Again" list. Here's a brief summary of just some of the things that we experienced while on the Miracle: -Port Everglades, Ft Lauderdale, was a mess and we were forced to park on the opposite side of the port which took about an hour to just drop off, park, and return via shuttle to the cruise terminal. -Once in the cruise terminal, it took 3 hours to check in and get our keys, which were wrong. This usually takes 20 minutes, but the excuses made to us for the long wait were the system is down, we're short on agents (there were 40 of them), and there are lots of passengers checking in. All of the passengers and agent counts were the same as all our other cruises that managed to get us checked in within 20-30 minutes. -Finally aboard, we barely caught the lunch buffet since it was 3:45. I got 3 bites down when the horn sounded for the lifeboat drill. I had to leave my food to attend only to discover they did not have the right child's life jacket in the room. We never did get the right size. At this point, my kids were really whiny because we were all hungry, tired, and hot from standing in the sun on deck during the drill. -Dinner service was slow and unorganized. We would be served our food but it would take forever to get the condiments that were suppose to come with the dish, such as au juis, sour cream, peppercorn sauce, etc. Our waiter would serve all the tables first then come back with the condiments. We were always served first, so our meal was done by the time he came back. On many occasions he would serve us, but be missing one persons meal who had to wait an additional 10+ minutes for their food while the rest of us ate. -Carnival has always had fruit punch as one of the free beverages in the cafes. We love that they offer it, but apparently not anymore because "too many people said they didn't like it". Now all they offer is watered down lemonade, unsweet instant tea, and water. My opinion is they got rid of the fruit punch because it is more expensive and they are cutting costs. My last 3 cruises this year alone, I remember seeing the majority of people drinking punch especially the kids. This may seem petty, but my family hates lemonade and I am the only tea drinker, but the tea is just nasty tasting, and I hate for my kids to drink soda all the time. There was no alternative and I was disappointed by the excuses given by crew members which were all different. And you can forget about getting a soda in the morning, if you are like me, and drink soda as your morning coffee. -Ask the same question to multiple crew members, and get a different answer each time. That was extremely frustrating, and the Carnival Caper didn't help, because a few of the times for some things were wrong in it. -There were a lot of little things that had recently changed from our normal Carnival experience that made you feel like they were just cutting costs and didn't care how it affected the passenger experience. The most noticeable was the quality of the food, especially beef. -There were also quite a few unhappy, grumpy crew members. I even had a bartender yell at me.The only great crew member we met was Anthony Johnson in the casino. He was a fantastic person and always made a point to stop by and speak with us. -The computer system that runs most everything on the ship kept going down, which delayed purchases, information access, and shore excursion tickets. It was amazing how nothing could happen if the system was down. I had to make several trips to the pursers desk just to complete one task because of this. To say the least, we were not happy with the overall experience. There were a lot of things that could be done on this ship to improve the quality of service and make it what we veterans are used to when cruising on Carnival. We did still have a good time and truly enjoyed the itenarary. The ports were amazing and the fellow passengers were lovely people.