Our 12 day cruise started in Honolulu, toured the Hawaiian islands for 7 days, 5 days at sea and ended in Ensenada, Mexico. We had cruised often before but not for 12 years, we had retired young and moved to Mexico so always seemed to be on holidays. Anyway after 10 years we decided to take a one month holiday, 2 weeks touring islands in Hawaii and end with this 12 day cruise on the Carnival ship called the Spirit. I can assure you we were both very excited about this trip and did a lot of planning for it. Unfortunately with the fond memories we had of past cruises, including Carnival, we automatically assumed the cruise would be fantastic. That was not the case and I honestly hope Carnival reads this.

I have always admired how cruise lines can get their passengers aboard and into their cabins as fast as they do and on this ship it was the same, quick and efficient. Once aboard we went touring the ship to get a feel for our next 12 day surroundings, sadly that was when we began to wonder about our choice. The Spirit at some point may have been wonderful but today the ship seemed dated and incredibly gaudy, the best description I can come up with is Caesars Palace gone plastic. It was a bit sad since we had decided in advance to use all 5 star hotels which had been fabulous and now this, oops. Now to be fair we did have a fantastic room on the Spirit, we had a stateroom with a balcony which had plenty of room for all our things. The only negative was the totally old and out of date TV.

The person we all see and hear from the most on any cruise would be the cruise director and always in the past I have found this person to be the individual who can truly make the cruise more fun and exciting with the planned events. I am sure everyone would agree this person and these events become so much more important when there are 5 sea days. Well on our cruise the events were almost non existent and very uninspiring and to us it seemed the cruise director had become this constant person on a loudspeaker trying to sell us drink specials, shore excursions, spa treatments, store merchandise, upgraded restaurant, bingo, photo's, etc. On previous trips we had always enjoyed the galley tour, well now there is a price for this, a high price with limited people. Read more