Carnival Spirit: Sanitation Record & Health Report

Carnival Spirit turns 25 this year, but you'd never guess it from the paperwork. A 2025 refurbishment freshened up the oldest ship in the Spirit Class, and the CDC seems unbothered by the ship's age either way: a 99 on the books as of February 8, 2026, matching the 99 it pulled back in August 2025. Two inspections, two near-perfect scores, trend reading "stable" — which for a two-decade-old ship bouncing between Seattle, Mobile, and Galveston is the nautical equivalent of acing the same pop quiz twice in a row.

Stack that 99 against the fleet-wide averages we track across 162 ships — a 96.7 mean and a 98 median for latest scores — and Spirit isn't just clearing the 86-point passing bar, it's sitting above both the typical ship and the typical *good* ship. The catch is the sample size: two inspections is a thin file to build a reputation on, so treat "stable" as encouraging rather than ironclad. We also don't have usable outbreak data for this ship right now — CDC's outbreak reporting is unreachable at the moment — so we're not going to pretend we can vouch for a spotless illness record. What we can vouch for is the inspection scorecard, and it's a strong one.

Who it's for: sailors who want the classic Carnival fun-ship formula from a smaller, more intimate hull without gambling on cleanliness — Spirit's numbers back up the confidence. It's also a solid pick if you're anywhere near Seattle, Mobile, or Galveston and don't want to fly to Florida just to board a ship. Who should skip it: anyone chasing the mega-ship waterpark arms race — at 85,920 tons and 13 decks, this is a mid-sized workhorse, not a floating amusement park, and its 13-knot cruising speed isn't winning any races either. If you need outbreak history to make your final call, hold off until that data's back online rather than assuming no news is good news.