July 29, 2014 - Hello Carnival Miracle

All packed up and ready to go, but wait it is only 8:00 so now what do we do.

Well we took the bags to the car and then headed to Top Pot for donuts and coffee.  The timing worked out pretty good because by the time we drove to the Seattle Cruise Park it was 10.  The shuttle picked us up right at our car and we were off to the port.  We arrived quickly and were able to hand over our bags to the porter just as the doors opened to allow us into the terminal. We were onboard by 11:00.

After dropping our carry on bags off in the cabin we headed up to Lido to await everyone else.  The USS Essex came into port next to us.  It was quite a picture to see all those sailors standing at rest on deck.

Most of us had Muster Station A.  These 3 were behind me during the muster drill.

After muster drill we were all to meet up on the top deck to take a group picture.  I had really hoped to have Mt Rainier as our backdrop.

Instead we have the slide as our backdrop.  We couldn't do the picture on Lido because the Serenity area is there and they do not allow anyone under 21 to be out there.

Once we were finally done with all the pictures we explored the ship.  I took the girls up to the O2 room hoping that they would join in the activities with others their age on the cruise....it didn't happen.

Thought this bench outside of the O2 room was cute with the boot legs.

We walked through Gatsby's Garden on deck 3 which is a fun little walkway inside around the front of the ship.

We then headed to deck 1 to see the Mad Hatter's Ball Lounge.  We ended up spending a lot of time in this room throughout the week.

We also picked up a little something from the Tasting Bar.  The Future Cruise Desk just happened to open up while we were sitting and enjoying our snack.  So of course I had to jump up and book our cruise for 2016.

We did a little rearranging for the seating at the dinner table so that we sat with the Gregory's and he rest of the family sat at a larger table next to us.

After dinner it was the Welcome Aboard Show, which I didn't want to miss since John Heald is our cruise director.  It was one of those shows that you laughed so hard you cried.