This was our first cruise and I had high expectations. I was told by our travel agent that Inspiration was an older cruise ship, but assumed that it would have had some sort of upgrade since 1996...boy, was I wrong! It looked like an old, cheap Vegas casino and smelled equally as bad. We were told this was from the water system. It did disappear eventually once we left Tampa or we just got used to it! There were always people cleaning the ship but, they should have been more concerned with the broken windows covered with wood and the rust that needed to be painted.
The food was marginal at best. It was plentiful but, lacked in taste and quality. When I can get a better meal at Red Lobster, there's a problem. The pools were very small and were closed much sooner than the 10pm designated closing time.
Our first port of call was Grand Cayman. I was told it was beautiful but, we never really had a chance to see it. Our itinerary said we were there from 7am to 2pm. We weren't cleared to leave the boat until 9 and needed to return by 1. It didn't leave much time to explore the island. Cozumel, our second port, was gorgeous. We went against the advice of Carnival and took a private taxi to Paradise Beach. We spend the day there and if I had a passport, I would have stayed and said the heck with the ship. But, back to the boat we went.