This was the first cruise my wife and I took, and I suppose we were victims of hype. We experienced many positives and some negatives, which I had never heard expressed by cruising fans.
It started with leaving our luggage basically unattended in the care of strangers; Carnival employees who seemed to pay little attention as was proven by the fact that we walked away then came back and rummaged thru our luggage about 10 minutes later. We were not questioned. Then the disorganize check-in process where the nice lady behind the counter snapped at me when I asked if she was sure our luggage would actually get to our room since she changed our cabin assignment.
We actually got a much nicer accommodation than we had paid for and that was wonderful, but sure enough our luggage was left in the hall outside our original cabin. (Again this is a security thing since my wife's jewelry, my Minolta and all our other stuff was there.)