Just got back from my first cruise. We went to Alaska round trip from Vancouver & back from 5/14/08 to 5/21/08. We were on the Carnival Spirit great ship and the cruise staff went so far out of there way to help and please you. Was really suprised about it.
The only mistake we made was to book the cruise on line contacted carnival web site and they gave us a traval agent out of Vancouver and had a bad experience with that we paid extra for for early air traval seats.Said we wanted to sit together in the front of plane 2 of the flights we did and 1 of the flights we sat in the back and was not sitting together and asked not to to be booked on the last flight but they put us on last fight just made it.
We were so upset about it,it took 2 days to calm down and enjoy the trip.The only thing not to do is book your shore trips before you go on the cruise like we did.We had bad weather and was forced to go on the shore trips in the rain.Take the chance and book the shore trips once you on the ship and know what the weather will be like and you will enjoy it better and if that shore trip is fully booked, there is always others trips to go on.
The other thing not to do is fall for the shore shopping speach they will try to sell you. It is a TRAP. You will pay twice as much for the jewelry. We did fall for it and paid so much.We had to go to our jewelry store to get a ring sized down and they laughed so hard at us for wasting our money. The jewely we bought was junk. We went to diamonds international and the ring that we bought was priced at $1900 they gave it to us for $500 and we could have bought it for around $250 in Arizona.Then found out that the gem stone was glued into the ring instead of in prongs.
Do not buy any watches on the ship unless you want to over pay for them as well.We did have fun and did get taken with the shopping but it was worth it to us just do some home work on the shopping before you go on the trip and you will save some money.