This was our 4th Carnival cruise, and the best thus far. After having been on the Destiny, Triumph and Inspiration in the last year, the Spirit was a totally different and a markedly improved experience for us. We were worried slightly about this trip after some negative reviews we had read, and I am pleased to give you this glowing review.
The Ship:
Magnificent. We loved the dEcor, very rich and classy. We liked the layout of the atrium and all of the social floors being on level 2 and 3. They gave the photo area its own section on deck 3, which avoided the traffic jams which occurs on the Destiny class. The shopping area had its own section, also, and was never crowded. We noticed that with a full ship, we were never over-crowded anywhere. The ship was very smooth, and we thought it handled the seas wonderfully. There were a lot of non-smoking areas, in fact smoking was in designated areas only, which is in bold print in the capers everyday. As non-smokers, we truly appreciated this. The topless deck had a design flaw, as it had a weird "observation" deck above it that always had a couple of people lurking over the topless women. The showroom was great, with very few problem areas for viewing the shows. We loved the many bars and lounges throughout the ship. The Versailles lounge, on deck 1, under the Pharaoh Showroom, was a very unique but under-used lounge that we walked through several times. My favorite element of the ship was a glass staircase that protruded out of the Nouveau Supper Club right under the funnel at the highest level of the atrium. When you walked down this glass staircase and looked down through the stairs you could see all the way down to the atrium bar.