Just off the Spirit: extended review

[tikkas]

We are a family of two 40-year-old adults and two children between the ages of 7 and 9 years, and we are just off the Norwegian Spirit after cruising from Barcelona to Casablanca, Madeira, Tenerife, Lanzarote and Malaga. We are European, although my husband and I come from different countries, the children were born in another country and we now live and work in yet another different country, Spain. I hope this extensive review will be useful to some people with our same profiles. We have been on 6 cruises in all, on NCL or Royal Caribbean.

 

The Ship.

First of all, something about the ship. The layout is excellent, with many outside terraces for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Spirit is one of NCL´s smaller ships, which mean you´re never too far from anything onboard. The drawbacks are that the entertainment possibilities are quite limited during sea days, unless you're into bingo, line dancing lessons and the like. So, no climbing wall or surfing, although you do have golf cages and a basketball court. The ship is not a young and sprightly one, and in fact you can see rust in some places, although you see ship technicians doing small renovations all the time. The ship´s number one quality par excellence is the terraced decks at the aft – fantastic outdoor space with lovely panomaric views.

 

A word about the ship in turbulent seas. We did feel that because the ship was smaller than the ships we´ve been on before, we felt the movement more than usual. On this 10-night cruise, we had agitated seas, from a little to somewhat a lot, on 7 nights. Then again, this was the Atlantic in March. The weather was warmish to hot most days, with cool nights and a question of ¨what shall I wear today¨ every morning! The crew in the restaurants was friendly and they seemed happy (happier than on some other ships). Our steward Francisco delighted our children with the towel shapes he made every single evening for them. The captain (Roger) did not make many announcements – we must have heard him a three or four times throughout the trip, with other bulletins being made either by the cruise director Jill or by one of the Captain´s second-in-commands.

 

Guests

Bearing in mind that these were Easter holidays, not summer holidays which is when most families cruise, we still felt that the average age of passengers on board is quite high. There were around 100 children on board with their families, but one saw a predominance of retirees, many of whom were not first-time cruisers and were used to classic style cruising. This is not an issue in itself, but I have to say that a number of times we were made to feel like our (pretty well-behaved) children were in a place they should not be, although the only thing they´d be doing is dancing in their seats at the end of a show, or running into the lift when it opened. Grumpy and sour is not too strong a word to describe a few of the people on board. We had the impression that they were used to classic-style cruising, and they did not appreciate NCL´s attempts to have a young and Freestyle culture on board.

 

We also felt that the public’s response to most of the shows was shamefully absent: unable to laugh, needing to be prompted many times to clap, etc. This was not because the quality of the shows was bad. The nationalities were predominantly British, Northern American and Northern European, with a minority of Spanish or South American passengers. Part of the lack of reactivity was a language problem, possibly a cultural problem, but this by far does not explain it all.

 

 

 

Cabin

Compared to the Gem, the Jade, the Epic and RCCL´s larger ships, the balcony cabins are VERY small. We had cabins 11666 and 11668, which, location-wise are simply perfect. They are a deck down from the Raffles restaurant and terrace, and a deck up from the chlidren´s club, with a sliding door to one of the back terraces just outside cabin 11666. The children were in this cabin, and I do think that this is a somewhat noisy cabin (although being children, they slept through the sounds of people using that door at night). However the pleasant surprise was that there are NO table tennis tables on the other side of the wall of cabin 11666 – these must have been moved to the other side recently, and in their place there are Raffles tables, which on our cruise were always empty (people were on the upper decks, although the ship was at full capacity).

 

When we boarded we asked for the connecting double doors of the cabins to be opened. Bear in mind that because the rooms are tiny, you have to perform some Houdini manoeuvres if you wish to push one of the doors flash against the wall (basically you will have to lift the bed while someone else pushes the door against the wall). In our opinion, the cabin absolutely cannot take 3 persons unless one of them is a toddler or unless you’re prepared to get on one another´s nerves. Although we were only 2 in the cabin, on a 10-day trip, we really found we were in each other´s way, stepping on each other´s toes, and bumping our hips against the table when we were passing the bed to head to the balcony. One word about the balcony: it is small – forget putting a reclining chair, it just about fits two chairs and a table. The door between the cabins does NOT open, which is a pity given that the cabins were connecting and we could have had one big one. And by the way, the bed is pretty uncomfortable. I also had to wonder how moderately and extremely overweight people can get through the doors of the shower and the toilet....

 

By the way, it is useless taking on a travel iron on board! It will be confiscated as soon as your luggage goes through the detectors and handed back to you on the last day.

 

 

Itinerary

A general word about the itinerary: the destinations are lovely, which is why we feel the hours the ship is docked in Madeira, Tenerife and Lanzarote were too short. We arrived at 9am and everyone had to be on board again at 4.30pm. What made the experience frustrating was that then we would literally crawl to our next destination, because if the ship went faster we´d arrive some 4 hours too early. NCL, why not lengthen the days in these ports and then speed up the cruising between these days? I stand to be corrected, but I believe this would also help reduce the rocking of the ship in turbulent weather.

 

 

A word about the destinations themselves. In one word, they were fantastic. First of all I´d like to say that because we have young children we found that the classic adult sightseeing does not keep them interested for very long, so we tried to mix some sightseeing with some fun activity every day. This worked very well.

 

Casablanca. We agonised about what to do in this port. We would have liked to go to Marrakech but figured out that a four-hour trip on a bus each way, with four hours on site, was just not worth either the time or the price proposed by NCL for their shore excursions. So here we took the shore excursion to Casablanca and Rabat, and we enjoyed it. We were particularly enamoured by Rabat. The country is investing huge amounts of money into improving its infrastructure, and certainly Rabat is clean, safe and pretty civilised.

 

Madeira. We rented a car with Insulacar, which was delivered to right outside the port. The car was not in brilliant condition – almost 160 000 km and a clutch which was extremely hard to press. Yet it did the job and we were able to head to Porto Moniz on the other side of the island, on the recommendation of a very friendly local. The roads are excellent, the scenery breath-taking. In Porto Moniz we ate in the Cachalote Restaurant – do try the espada fish, particularly with fried bananas, because it is excellent.

 

Tenerife. I had booked a car with Sixt, but I made the mistake of confusing Puerto de la Cruz with Puerto de Santa Cruz! So in the end we rented a car on the spot from the port with, I believe, Comauto. The car was brand new, good value for money and the service was given with a smile. First thing we did was head to the Teide park to see the snow-clad volcano. We did not actually go into the park as it would have taken too long; instead we headed North to the Loro Parque. What a revelation! We were expecting a ¨parrot¨ park, as the name implies, but we found all types of animals. We were able to go to an orca show and a dolphin one, speed through parts of the park and then sped back to the ship. For anyone with young children, we would recommend a short trip to view the volcano and then spend most of your time in the Loro Parque.

 

Lanzarote. We rented a car with Faycan. An alert: if you rent a car from the port, then DO NOT get onto the shuttle service bus to town. All you have to do once you disembark is walk some 400m to the exit of the port, where you will find an information office and all the rental companies. The car was in good condition and the service we received was good too – we recommend this company. In Lanzarote we headed to the volcanic area which is simply spectacular. We paid the entrance fee to drive into the Timanfaya park but were shocked to be stuck in a long line of extremely slow-moving traffic. So an hour later we turned back, got a refund for the entrance fee no questions asked and drove to the site for camel rides some 5 minutes away. This was my children´s most memorable excursion by far and highly-recommendable. We then drove to the Golfo area for lunch at the Restaurante De Mar. Absolutely perfect seafood, well worth the slightly higher prices.

 

Malaga. Having been to Malaga, Nerja and Gibraltar before, we opted to just walk around Malaga and then caught a regional train (Cercania) to Fuengirola to visit the Biopark.

 

Ship Restaurants.

 

We had the ultimate dining package so we dined in a speciality restaurant every evening. Cagney’s is by far our favourite – the meat is excellent. Le Bistro is good but not great if you´re familiar with French cuisine. Shogun and Teppanyaki are worth eating at once or twice. Breakfast and lunches in Raffles were enjoyable – plenty of variety and, for buffet-style food, pretty good. What we did not like is that in general the specialty restaurants were very dark inside, with not much natural light coming through. Also, we feel that the service was in general a bit slower than usual. Has NCL cut down on the number of cooks and waiters?

 

 

Entertainment

First of all, the kids´ club: As with NCL´s kids clubs on all the ships, this is run with professionalism and on sea days and in the evenings our children did not want to leave it except to have lunch or dinner. Totally recommended.

 

Shows: most shows were good, but the three shows by the Illusionist Cripton and his pretty wife Renata (one in the evening and two in the afternoons of later sea days) were simply mindblowing. We also thoroughly enjoyed the performance given by bizarre but brilliant violinist/singer/peformer Beverley, but unfortunately her British-style humour seems to have fallen flat on many members of the audience. This was the only show where people started walking out half way through the performance and it is an absolute shame as her show is a very good one (my husband says it was second place only to the filet mignon on his plate in Cagney’s). Again here I would like to highlight that the audience´s reaction to most of the shows was lukewarm, not because the shows were not good but because the audience was not a reactive one. By the way, the same situation was present during the one Bingo game I attended – the reaction to the jokes by the compere was practically non-existent although the place was full to the brim with people playing Bingo. I felt sorry for the compere.

 

As for the side-shows in different parts of the ship, this ship is not the best for them. Frankly in the evenings after dinner and the shows in the theatre, there was not much of interest going on, although the lounge bars with their musicians-singers did seem to attract the older crowd. I have to say that the ship also has a disco and themed nights, but if what you´re looking for the ability to wander around until you find a side-show you like, I´m afraid this is not the right ship for you.

 

All in all, a very enjoyable cruise. We will certainly be cruising with NCL again, and possibly to the same destinations, but not on the Spirit as we’d like a more active ship.

 

I hope the above helps.

[JessLCH]

Thanks for the review. We also have connecting cabins booked on Spirit for August 2016. I have the same reservations about the ship. We also prefer the newer ships, with more family amenities but the itinerary is so great we just may overlook the ship's age. I imagine Spring is not a very common time for families to cruise in Europe. I think summer will have more families. We cruised the Sun a couple years ago to Alaska and did not live the ship but LOVED and the itinerary and the cruise overall.

[tikkas]

Indeed, the itinerary may make up for the ship. I enjoyed the ship anyway, so as long as you know what to expect you'll really enjoy it!

[trvlgirlmq]

Nice review! We were seriously considering Spirit for our Med cruise in 2016 but just could not convince ourselves to overlook the lack of amenities. We love balconies and would be forced to an inside with 4 (could not afford 2 balcony cabins at full price), one pool for the entire ship is not enough, no water slide, mini golf, fun stuff for kids and family to do kind of clinched it. The itinerary was exactly what we wanted but we had the opposite reaction in that the ship is also important to our vacation so we stuck with Carnival and lost out a bit on itinerary but gained all the bells and whistles to make our ship time enjoyable.

[Frenchsnowhite]

We are booked on the Spirit for New Year cruise a family of 4 in an ocean view:eek:

 

We know that the cabins are very small, but for us, it's a do it this way or not at all, so we will take turns in the evening for showers and everything else!;)

 

But if you have pictures that would be great to see them!

[tikkas]

We are booked on the Spirit for New Year cruise a family of 4 in an ocean view:eek:

 

We know that the cabins are very small, but for us, it's a do it this way or not at all, so we will take turns in the evening for showers and everything else!;)

 

But if you have pictures that would be great to see them!

 

I'm sorry I have no pictures! Enjoy your cruise!

[tikkas]

Nice review! We were seriously considering Spirit for our Med cruise in 2016 but just could not convince ourselves to overlook the lack of amenities. We love balconies and would be forced to an inside with 4 (could not afford 2 balcony cabins at full price), one pool for the entire ship is not enough, no water slide, mini golf, fun stuff for kids and family to do kind of clinched it. The itinerary was exactly what we wanted but we had the opposite reaction in that the ship is also important to our vacation so we stuck with Carnival and lost out a bit on itinerary but gained all the bells and whistles to make our ship time enjoyable.

 

It´s the itinerary which made us choose the Spirit, after 4 years of wondering if we´d enjoy it. Unfortunately it´s the only cruise line which does those particular ports, so I suppose that if you love the itinerary then you have no choice!

[trvlgirlmq]

It´s the itinerary which made us choose the Spirit, after 4 years of wondering if we´d enjoy it. Unfortunately it´s the only cruise line which does those particular ports, so I suppose that if you love the itinerary then you have no choice!

 

The only ports that we really will miss are Venice and Istanbul. We are hitting many of the same and a couple others on a 10 night cruise beginning in Athens and ending Barcelona.