Let me first preface this by saying that this was my wife and I's first cruise. We figured we would take a 4 day cruise to see if this kind of vacation suits us. We had heard positive things in the past from other cruise goers and thought we would give Carnival a shot. Getting onto the ship was ok. We were 5 minutes early for our allotted time and instead of letting us wait, which would have been the much faster line the person outside chased us down and forced us into the early line which was quite long. We got on board around 1pm. Entering the boat we were ushered to the lido buffet. Into what could only be explained as a mad ant pile of humanity, it felt more like a sardine can than a boat. It took us 30 minutes of stalking people as they ate to find a seat. Finally we did. The buffet food overall was similar to an average all-inclusive resort in Mexico, bland and cold. The shining star in the buffet was the Deli, amazing sandwiches. We could have lived off the sandwiches and Guys' burgers alone.
We then went to find our stateroom. It was as we expected small but functional. We were mid ship 7 deck E135. The windows were so filthy that we could barely see out of them. We chalked this up to the joys of being at sea. Clearly a disadvantage of being on a boat that does not have any balconies. The TV only had 4 stations, TBS, TNT, TCM and one movie channel. My wife's luggage was waiting for us outside, but mine did not show up until 4 hours later. Definitely not ideal but not the end of the world.
We saw several shows on board, by far the best was the comedy club, B.T. was hilarious both times we saw him. The other entertainment was very lack luster.
No TV Channels(only 4), toilet made weird noises. noise for the galley above you was heard in early morning and at night,
shuttle was a sham - we walked back to the boat.