Our group consisted of myself, husband, daughter and son-in-law (his very 1st cruise).
My husband and I are veterans me with 17 cruises and my husband with 20. Our daughter has 6 cruises under her belt. Most of our cruises are with Royal Caribbean where we have Diamond status - whooee!
I had reservations about going on Carnival. I have to say up front that I expected a C, C+ and was happy to give Carnival a B-B+ rating. There were MINOR problems, the biggest was WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE, but that is August cruising and not Carnival's fault. We usually cruise in May and October/November but since our DD and SIL were coming we opted for August.