As I mentioned in the subject, this was both our first cruise and our first trip to Alaska.  We did a lot of research on this site before we left, and I wanted to let other folks know about our experiences.I'll frame my review around the 1-5 ratings.One side note that doesn't really fit anywhere else, speaking of ratings...  They asked everyone to fill out comment cards after the cruise.  It's not exactly a very good system.  The only choices were Exceeded Expectations, Met Expectations, and Opportunity for Improvement.  According to our cruise director, we needed to make everything exceeded expectations unless we had an issue.  In our opinion, that doesn't really go.  I mean, there were several things that were exactly what I expected, however, I would be hurting an employee's review if I only said Met Expectations.  Also, we did the Fly Aweigh program through Carnival.  It was a little bit pricy, however, it really worked out pretty well for us.  Our flights and transfers all went smoothly.  It was especially nice for our first cruise.Pre-cruise Add-on:We booked a pre-cruise add-on in Vancouver.  This was 2 nights along with a full day tour of Vancouver and a half-day city tour before embarkation.  They booked us at the Pan Pacific hotel in Vancouver.  It's right on the bay and literally right next to the cruise ship terminal.  The hotel was very nice and had great views of the bay.  The all day tour included a brief trip through town, then a ferry ride over to Vancouver Island.  Once there, we toured Butchart Gardens and also the city of Victoria.  We spent around 2 hours at Butchart Gardens and it was really enjoyable.  It was definitely worth seeing.  After that, we drove down to Victoria and spent close to 3 hours.  In general, I don't really enjoy the type of 'city tour' where they drop you off to explore.  That's pretty much what that was.  We're not huge shoppers, so we just had dinner and walked around a bit.The next day before embarking, they took us on a city tour around town and we visited a couple of parks.  Overall, it was pretty enjoyable. Embarkation:I had read a few reviews where people had long waits and so forth in the embarkation process, however, we had no issues on this particular cruise.  In fact, we arrived at the terminal, got through customs very quickly, and through the Carnival section extremely quickly.  In fact, it was so fast that we initially suspected we had missed something.  There's not a rating for debarkation, so I'll go ahead and add that into this score.  The debarkation wasn't terribly great.  I'm sure it's a task getting everyone off the ship, but it seemed un-necessarily confusing with tons of different zone numbers and where your luggage would end up, etc.  We overheard several people with luggage mis-delivered here or there.  I actually commented to my wife that I felt like they stopped trying to please as soon as we'd turned in our comment cards.We used the 'Luggage Express' option.  It was an extra $20 per person which, at first, I complained about since it looked like they were taking care of things anyway.  However, after seeing a lot of folks having issues finding their luggage, etc, it seemed much cheaper.  Our luggage showed up at home with us without us having to do much of anything.Public Rooms:We had a balcony room and are, in general, somewhat private people.  Therefore, we didn't spend an extremely large amount of time in public rooms.  I felt like the lounges were comfortable and relatively nice.  I did, however, feel like the whole boat had kind of a funny smell to it.  Cabin:The cabin we had was pretty nice.  It was actually bigger than I expected.  We had plenty of closet space and there was more than enough room for the two of us.  The bathroom was extremely small, but that was what I expected.  The balcony was great, and I wouldn't cruise again without one.  My only real issues were that it was a little dirty out there and our neighbors smoked which blew into our space.  We were on the back of the ship and had an excellent view.Fitness & Recreation:The fitness room was nice and had plenty of machines.  They have a hot tub in there which makes the whole place really warm and humid, but hey, it is a gym.Enrichment:I'm assuming this would be the appropriate section to speak about the on-board naturalist.  Her name was Michele.  In addition to her talking over the PA system, we also attended a couple of her wildlife sessions.  She was excellent and one of our favorite parts of the cruise.Rates:I really felt the whole trip like we pretty much paid for the absolute minimum and everything else had an additional (usually high) charge.  Dining:Dining was really a tale of two locations.  I'll start with the Main Dining Room.  We rarely had anything in the main dining room that we didn't like.  The service was generally good as well.  We had dinner there all but two nights and also ate breakfast and lunch there a couple of times each.  I can understand they have a lot of folks to serve in there, however, I didn't care for their limited times for breakfast and lunch.  We showed up for breakfast at 9:15 and were too late the one day for breakfast, for example.  We did the 'Your Time' dining option which worked out really well for us.  We were able to get a table for two every time we went and only had to wait with a pager once.  We were in there one time where they had all of the waiters dance.  I'm not sure if that's something they do every night or not.  For a nice dining room with good food, we felt like that was a little 'low rent'.Now, I'll talk about the cafeteria on the Lido deck.  As a contrast to the dining room, I rarely had anything in the cafeteria that I DID like.  The food's taste and temperature were almost always terrible.  For example, I really didn't think it was possible to make a bad pancake or French toast, but they managed to do it.  Our first all day at sea, we ate at the cafeteria for each of our three meals.  Afterwards, I was really sick for the entire night and still felt bad the next morning.  It was actually so bad, that after a couple of days, I actually skipped meals if we didn't make it to the main dining room.  The really strange part for me was that the exact same foods would be good in the dining room and terrible in the cafeteria.  For example, desserts were good in the dining room and every dessert I had in the cafeteria was very good looking but virtually flavorless.Entertainment:The entertainers we heard in the lounges were always good.  We did go to one show in the main theater, and we both thought it was pretty bad.  Honestly, the entertainers weren't bad, but the choreography was really bad.Service:I really can't say enough about the service we had.  It was absolutely fantastic!  Our room steward, Ahmad, was very friendly and prompt.  By the second day, he already called us by name in the hall and always seemed genuinely friendly.  Our wait staff was also very friendly and good.  Our main waiter for the first couple of nights was Mladen.  He was very good.  We honestly never had a bad encounter with any of the staff on the ship.Shore Excursions:As it was our first cruise, we had booked all of our excursions through Carnival.  We checked the prices on shore afterwards and they weren't horribly marked up in my opinion.  I'll detail these more below.Value for Money:All in all, I felt like the cruise was a pretty decent value.  I would have preferred, I think, to have either paid more and have everything included or have paid less and then paid for things individually.  It was kind of irritating to have to pay extra for soda or nicer desserts or the 'Supper Club'.Overall:Overall, we had a very good time.  In general, most of our enjoyment was the cruise in general and our destination, Alaska.  Things that would be specific to Carnival, other than our service, didn't really impress us much.  We will definitely give cruising another go, however, next time we'll try out a different cruise line.Ketchikan:We had a pretty good time in Ketchikan.  We did the Rainforest Wildlife Sanctuary, Eagles & Totems excursion there.  It was very enjoyable.  We had a very good naturalist on our walk.  We saw tons of eagles there and learned a lot about the temperate rain forest there.  Here, like all of the ports, however, was very 'touristy'.  If you're in the market for souvenirs or jewelry, you should be all set.  Every port we went to had about a million jewelry stores.  We had really excellent weather at this port.  It was around 65 and mostly sunny.Juneau:Here we did the Whale Quest & Orca Point Lodge excursion.  We saw many humpback whales, sea lions, and eagles.  All in all, we had a very good time.  The company running the tour (Allen Marine) was very good.   They offer excursions in all of the ports except Skagway.  Orca Point Lodge was very nice, however, the included lunch was kind of so-so. We had really excellent weather at this port.  It was around 60 and mostly sunny.  It rained very briefly early but cleared off before we go anywhere.Skagway:Here we did the White Pass & Yukon Railway excursion here.  We really enjoyed this excursion here as well.  The views in the mountains were fantastic and the trip up was narrated and enjoyable. We had really excellent weather at this port.  It was around 60 and mostly sunny.Sitka:We did not do an excursion in Sitka.  This was a tender port.  We got off the ship (which took about 45 minutes from start to shore) and walked around.  We had lunch here at a small cafe which was nice.  The weather was pretty bad this day.  It rained the whole day and was around 50 or so.  Given how nice the weather was the rest of the trip, however, it was no big deal.  We had prepared for the possibility anyway.Whittier/Anchorage:We added on the Alyeska Mountain Resort excursion since our flight didn't leave until 7:20 that night.  We had an excellent driver (Josh) who is a college student at Utah and was from Palmer Alaska.  We stopped at the Wildlife Conservation Center, which was enjoyable.  We then went on to the Alyeska Ski Resort.  It was nice there, however, with taking the tram up to the top we had very limited time.  Also, the included lunch was just ok and very rushed.  We then headed over to the Native Heritage Center.  We also really enjoyed that.  By the time we made it to the airport, we only ended up needing to kill a couple of hours.  It was well worth the money.