This was our (wife and I) first cruise ever. We live in San Diego and thought that it would be very simple and fun to just drive down to the cruise ship terminal, park across the street and go....which we did.
We took the 8 night Mexican Riviera trip which turned out to be a bit long for our first cruise; at really no fault of the ship's or Carnival's.
The Carnival Spirit is a very clean, well run, but gaudy ship. It is a mix of several Las Vegas hotel designs of the '70's run amuck. I envisioned ocean hues and high ceilings; a feeling of airiness aboard a cruise ship. This is not the case on Spirit. Nothing wrong with the ship, simply as new cruisers, we expected something different.