My late but long Spirit Review 8/5 - 8/13

[pengu1n]

Four of us were on this cruise, myself & DH, DD (23 yo) and DS (20 yo). While we enjoyed this cruise, I don’t think I would book it again. (We loved the NCL Wind last summer in Hawaii & would love to do that one again!)

 

My adult children enjoyed the nightlife. They found a bunch of like-minded young adults and (I think) stayed up most of the night. The young men blew a lot of money in the casino & the women compared notes & decided they’d rather go shopping! They really liked the Blue Lagoon for a late night snack, although it seemed to close the same time as the bars although it says it’s open 24 hours, usually closed a couple of hours between 2 – 5 am.

 

We did not eat in any of the specialty restaurants. (I think everyone was too afraid we’d miss something good in the regular restaurants!) We ate early, 5:30 – 6 pm, very little wait except if you got there right as they opened then it backed up a little as getting people seated was kind of slow. We ate in both restaurants, found the service similar, took about an hour for the 4 of us to eat. Windows is much larger & I thought it was more attractive. I did not ‘rattling’ that others have reported although it’s pretty loud in both just from people talking, dishes and silverware clanking, etc. Portion sizes, especially on the vegetarian plates, were very small, and if you were to order a second entrée after eating the first, it would take a while before you would get it. An example of size: an eggplant roll was a sliver of eggplant about a ¼ in thick, 1 x 3 inches long with a ¼ cup of rice.:eek: I can’t imagine how the chef viewed that as an adequate serving size. Most were not quite that small. I found most the food to be tasty, although some of the sauces were not what I would have expected & would have preferred the food without them. I have seen previous reviews from others that state something like “I’m from New York & so I am used to gourmet food & the food on the Spirit is comparable to the NY gourmet restaurants.” Well, I’m not from NY, and maybe you all ought to come eat in the Midwest because I think most restaurants here serve food of better quality than what was on the cruise in the regular restaurants. It was pretty obvious to me that it was mass prepared food, it looked pretty but was often overcooked, tough or not as hot as it should be. That being said, I did not go hungry.:D

 

Raffles Buffet serves the same menu every day for breakfast and lunch. While I’m okay with this for breakfast, it seemed boring for lunch. I have seen complaints about runny eggs on all NCL ships but I thought these were fine, bacon was nice and crisp but not burnt. Lunch was cold cuts or stir fry, hotdogs or some kind of fish. I never tried the stir fry it smelled too strongly of garlic for me. I preferred eating lunch in Windows (for the chilled soup, mmmm!) but DH didn’t so we alternated or split up.

 

Our room stewards were great (Jonathan and Andre) and our rooms were always cleaned & made up. They greeted us by name and joked with us. We had 2 balcony cabins on deck 10. Some friends my kids met had a balcony on deck 11 & their room was not made up regularly.

 

We had seen Alfred and Seymour last year on the Wind and my kids had partied with them. They said they remembered my son, as well as some things that happened on that cruise. (We also had a waiter named Robert in Windows who thought we looked familiar & he had been on the Wind last summer too. Isn’t that amazing that he would remember!) Anyway, we enjoyed Alfred & Seymour, but this was their last week on the Spirit. If you had seen them before, the show didn’t change much but it was still very funny. None of us cared for Ed Alonzo – very juvenile humor & not much magic at all. (Here’s an example: he swallowed a red balloon & pulled a brown one out of his behind. It doesn’t get much better than this.) We were not too impressed with the production shows either; although the volume on the speakers was so loud it distorted the singers’ voices so maybe that was the problem. I enjoyed Jose & Patti, especially their Neil Diamond show. Besides singing, they told something about each song, which made it more interesting.

 

I don’t know anything about the chair hogs; we’re not much for lying in the sun as we burn too fast. I enjoy reading & people watching and there are lots of places for this. If you like a quiet place, there are lots of those too. The ship seemed clean to me and well maintained. For the girls wondering about the hair dryers, unless you have very short thin hair, I’d suggest bringing your own. My hair is only maybe 2 inches long, so it dried okay, but my daughter would dry her hair first in her room until the handle got too hot to hold then come over & use ours until it also got too hot & her not-quite shoulder length hair would be almost dry. It blows a lot of air, has only one setting (i.e. on-off), making styling your hair difficult also. Although the handle gets very hot, the air coming out doesn’t seem warm at all.

 

Two of us paid for the soda stickers and felt it was well worth it. The tea in Raffles was very strong & it’s hard to dilute when the cups only hold about 4 ounces. We all liked the Blue Lagoon. As everyone says, order more than one order of chicken wings, I think the wings were plucked off of baby chicks -- they were the smallest ones I’ve ever seen but were delicious and the waiters would bring as many as you want.

 

As far as the ports, we’ve been to St. Thomas several times before so that was just as we expected. The ship stays there until 1am although everything closes by 7 pm. I think it’s just to save gas because Tortola is only 30 miles away. Tortola was having a holiday, so everything was closed although it didn’t like there was much there anyway. This holiday lasts 2 ½ weeks and they have 32 holidays per year. (Can we get some of those here?) This was never mentioned at the ship's port talk. We liked Bermuda the best and would like to return there sometime. We went to Snorkel Park & shopped at the Clocktower Mall (not much there). Snorkel Park is small, but nice as it is such a short walk from the ship. We saw several different kinds of fish.

 

The young teens (13 –15 year olds) on this ship seemed really bored. As I don’t have kids that age, I don’t know what was available for them, but at night they just sat in a staircase (intentionally blocking it), and you had to push to get through them. They chased each other through the halls, with out regard for the many unstable elderly people walking by. They wrote obscene messages on our dry erase boards on our room doors on an hourly basis & stole our markers:mad: (okay, I’m assuming it was this group, as I really didn’t see them take the markers). This is the 3rd cruise we’ve used dry erase boards to communicate between our 2 cabins, but the first time we’ve had trouble like this.

 

Finally, at the risk of offending CC members from New York, but wanting to give info to others, this cruise was unlike any others I’ve been on in that the overwhelming majority of cruisers were from NY. The assumption was that everyone was from there, and rooted for the NY baseball teams, and drove to the ship. The shore excursion people weren’t sure if they provided transportation to the airport or not, although they said to check back - they’d find out. This is hard to explain, without sounding like I don’t like people from NY, which is not the case. It just seemed like New Yorkers owned the cruise & we were the outsiders. Initially, my kids were snubbed because they weren’t from NY, New Jersey or Connecticut. It was like once they said they were from St. Louis, the people moved on till they found someone to talk to locally. We have cruised out of Miami, Hawaii, and New Orleans and usually find a mix of people from all over the country.

 

On a funny note, I overheard an about 10 year old boy trying to teach another child how to say ‘car’ without the ‘r’ because you shouldn’t say the ‘r’ --- it takes too much time. It’s much faster to say ‘ca’ than ‘car’ according to him. As I am a speech pathologist (and have spent years teaching kids to say their ‘r’ sounds) I found this pretty humorous. Maybe I just should have shipped them all to New York!

 

Okay, now you can bite my head off!:D

[Dolphins]

Thank you for a detailed an informative review. As a New Yorker, I take no offense from your comments and they only confirm my decision NEVER to cruise when school is not in session. Your comments on the food have been stated by many others and my experience has also been that the quality of the cuisine in the main restaurants is not what it was several years ago. It would appear that cruise lines burdened with ever increasing fuel costs are seeking to cut costs elsewhere.

[mypyr]

Penguin- thanks for your review! We are New "Yokers" and I am a foreign language teacher and I can tell you that you are totally right-we are in a class of our own. The "typical " New York accent is quite unique(euphemistically speaking) and many New Yorkers are louder than their anywhere-else-in-the-world-counterparts! That being said we are fun people and do enjoy a good time! From my experience, mid-westerners are less vituperative and more gentle (I went to the Univ of Mich)/

 

You mentioned that the 13-15 yr olds seemed bored, but my DD is 8..Were there alot of them around? Did you meet anyone who had kids in the Kid Crew? I am hoping with all the kids that my DD will have a ball.

 

We leave in 3 days! Any hints, last minute suggestions or advice? Thanks!

[pengu1n]

I didn't talk to anyone with young kids, although I heard several 5-6 year old asking to go to camp. The kids camp is kind of out the way (not hard to find, just not on my way to anywhere) so I never saw what was going on. The kids pool is fantastic -- looks like a lot of fun! Two slides, and a very cute setting. I did not see kids under 10 running around unattended so I assume they were either occupied with family or camp. Here's a picture of the pool:

 

Have fun! Everythings not perfect, but how can anyone not love a cruise!

[postal]

Hello, first time on boards. We are going on Spirit in Sept. My husband is a huge expresso fan. Do you know if it is served with dinner nad is it free.

Thanks for your review it was great

[Maryfrei]

Hello, first time on boards. We are going on Spirit in Sept. My husband is a huge expresso fan. Do you know if it is served with dinner nad is it free.

Thanks for your review it was great

 

Yes, espresso and cappucino are free in the dining rooms:)!

[gsquaredstwins]

Great review. I was on the same sailing as you. I agree- I also saw the teenagers hanging around the staircase alot- and also had to kind of maneuver ariound them. Some ships we have been on have tenage discos/lounges (with non alcoholic bars and everything). This ship didn't have that, so I assume they ran all over the ship- LOL.

 

Great comment on the chicken wings - we said the same thing- how can they find such small wings. Oh my goodness. At least you can get as many as you wanted....

 

Gina

[sappel]

I think the Spirit does have a teen disco, as well as and arcade and movie theater. I will be going on Spirit next year with my 13 yo DS. Hanging around on the stairs is unacceptable. Parents must take a more active role in knowing where their children are and what they are doing. They must be aware that "everyone" is on vacation, not just them.

[kids1stcruise]

hi my family was on spirit 7-30.

i have a son 10 and one 13.

my 13 yr old really had a good time.

he had scavanger hunts-survivor contests-battle of sexes-some sort of team race that is after the tv show-sports.

really enjoyed. if he went and there was nothing going on that interested him he left.

fyi--let kids go the 1st night this is where they meet the others that they pretty much hang with.

my 10 yr old had it a bit different.

he had to be signed in/out so this was difficult for me to do some things.

although he enjoyed the activities the arcade was much more appealing.

he wants to go on another cruise so it can't be he was too bored-hahah