Embarkation from Vancouver was relatively painless - total time from getting off the plane to sitting on the Lido Deck with a "beverage" was 3 hours. The luggage went directly from plane to ship which was both nice and scary. Nice because we didn't have to mess with it and scary because I feared that it would disappear and we'd spend the entire week wearing the same clothes! However within 2 hours of when we first stepped on the Spirit, our luggage was outside our cabin door. We had booked a 8a guaranty. When I received our docs, I checked the back of the Sail & Sign card. It showed our booking number and then 7178 which in fact turned out to be our assigned cabin (Veranda Deck; Portside with a nice balcony).
Although the Spirit is quite large, we found it easy to navigate and it never seemed crowded. We spent a lot of time on Lido Deck and occasionally had the outdoor pool to ourselves. Food on Lido was good - enough variety to keep everyone happy. Only used Dining Room a few times. Again food was good, but we just didn't want to have to stop whatever we were doing to dress for dinner.
Kids enjoyed the ship and joined a lot of the teen activities - including disco, trivia games, putting contests, and especially the late night dodge ball games. My 17 y/o felt there were a lot of things geared toward her age group, but my 13 y/o didn't. Most of the stuff was either for under 12 or the 15-17 age group. He tended to just do the sports things in the 15-17 age group and stayed away from the rest of the activities.