Safe?&Excursion? on NCL Spirit

[Cruisin'BusyBee]

Hi to all! We will be going on Spirit in March & made final payment, so now we have some serious questions if anyone could kindly answer for us:

1. Are there safes in every cabin (balcony)?

2. Excursion in Costa Maya will be Bacalar/7 Color Lagoon. Anyone do this one and any input would be most appreciated (good, bad, or/and ugly)?

3. Thinking of Excursion in Guatemala to be Quirigua Jade Museum & Palm Oil Center. Again: please enlighten me w/good, bad, ugly.........

4. In Belize, we will do Altun Ha & Belize River. Anyone have comments here?

5. Not sure of anything in Cozumel. Ideas, anyone?

6. Order the "honeymoon package" and want to know which nite would be best to do this (dont wanna miss lobster or prime rib in main restaurants!).

7. Anyone have the Freestyle Daily uploaded for review?

 

Thanks so much to all - this is a wonderful site that I enjoy viewing!

C/B/B

[Toyz711]

1. yes, there are safes in every cabin. except for large amounts of cash and the passports, we didn't use it. even leave the laptop out in plain sight. the ones you usually have to worry about are the fellow passengers walking by as they are cleaning the cabins.

2. haven't done costa maya yet, the spirit didn't go there last year.

3. we did the 1/2 day tour to quiriqua and loved it. very different then lamanai, in belize. a totally different type of maya history. except for the extra security, on the bus (another person who stays up with the bus driver) we didn't think about safety. quiriqua has a manned gate for the bus to go through, it's full of tour people and their guides. i would NOT want to walk through areas of town, but a secure, guides tour should not be a problem at all.

4. we did lamanai and the river safari, but any of the belize mayan sites get rave reviews.

5. we did nachi cocom for a beach day...loved it!!

6. haven't done it

7. mine are from last year

be sure to check out the port-of-call boards, great info there.

[bakerintn]

Here is a link to the Pearl Freestyle Dailies from October - western caribbean

 

http://community.webshots.com/album/568342645oXGghV

 

at least these will give you some ideas of the restaurant hours, typical activities and what the dailies look like. The Spirit of course will be somewhat different.

[joteacher]

Here is a great link to the Freestyle Daily and pictures from each day of the cruise during Christmas week.

 

http://www.zydecocruiser.com/NCLSprit08/index.htm

 

We are on the Spirit in February and these pictures have really given us lots of information. We can't wait to go;)

[Cruisin'BusyBee]

Thanks for answering my questions and if anyone else reads: Please put in your responses!

 

joteacher: u will be going a few wks before us! Keep in touch & let us know all the good, bad, indifferent stuff about the Spirit. Loved the forward for Spirit Info - thankx

 

C/B/B

[joteacher]

Thanks for answering my questions and if anyone else reads: Please put in your responses!

 

joteacher: u will be going a few wks before us! Keep in touch & let us know all the good' date=' bad, indifferent stuff about the Spirit. Loved the forward for Spirit Info - thankx

 

C/B/B[/quote']

CBB: I'll let you know what we thought as soon as we get back--we sail on 2/15-22. I see you are also from NYS; where in NY are you? We're in the Finger Lakes area.

 

Joanne

[Cruisin'BusyBee]

Hi Joanne: yep, a fella NYer - near Albany. I love Finger Lakes - my hubby's father's family originally from Oddesa & we go up to Lakes (nice wine!) every fall to restock our wine cellar. Which lake are u on? Only 68 days for us for Spirit - we are thinking of doing Alaska in fall. We have been on 8 (counting Spirit) cruises; Norway was our 1st & hooked!

 

C/BB (ANN)

[newmexicoNita]

Hi to all! We will be going on Spirit in March & made final payment' date=' so now we have some serious questions if anyone could kindly answer for us:

1. Are there [u']safes[/u] in every cabin (balcony)?

2. Excursion in Costa Maya will be Bacalar/7 Color Lagoon. Anyone do this one and any input would be most appreciated (good, bad, or/and ugly)?

3. Thinking of Excursion in Guatemala to be Quirigua Jade Museum & Palm Oil Center. Again: please enlighten me w/good, bad, ugly.........

4. In Belize, we will do Altun Ha & Belize River. Anyone have comments here?

5. Not sure of anything in Cozumel. Ideas, anyone?

6. Order the "honeymoon package" and want to know which nite would be best to do this (dont wanna miss lobster or prime rib in main restaurants!).

7. Anyone have the Freestyle Daily uploaded for review?

 

Thanks so much to all - this is a wonderful site that I enjoy viewing!

C/B/B

ok, my opinion only: yes, there are safes in every cabin.

The excursion in Costa Maya sounds good, I am sorry we didn't do one on our Spirit cruise or at least sorry we didn't do the beach thing just to get the massage.

We were a little disappointed in Guartamala, I don't know what we would do if we go there again.

The Belize thing sounds good

As for the romance package, you can check with the reception desk about the days for Lobster and Prime Rib. We had Lobster on the 3rd night. As we expected it on the second night we did miss it. Prime rib was the 5th night I think.

If I could I would download the Freestyle Dailys but have no idea how to do it.

 

Nita

[cruisingforsix]

We are also sailing on the Spirit in feb. We have not been on ncl before and are a little unsure after reading alot of negative info. but we will have a wonderful time no matter what. We have done western carribean a couple of times. We took our 4 kids (ages17 to 24 ) at the time to Lamanai ,which we all loved. Costa Maya we do on our own. Cozumel we did a snorkel ,zip-line and tubing combo.My husband and i love to snorkel and they say Belize has wonderful snorkeling, but we always seem to have something else planned. Also different lines offer different excursions.We also used a company called belizecruiseexcursions.com. They also offer excursions in Cozumel and Costa Maya.

[fabuloso]

I saved some of the dailys from our cruise--Spirit 2 weeks ago. I will try to scan them and post them here by tomorrow afternoon.

 

We did Altun Ha when we were in Belize and our family really enjoyed themselves. We used Action Boys Belize and the guide (Donald) was fantastic. Very knowledgable about the site and the history of his country. One piece of advice, if you go up the stairs of the main building, DON'T rest your weight on the wooden railing. It isn't very sturdy. You are better off using the rock wall for support.

 

I swam with the dolpins in Cozumel, boyfriend went fishing and the rest of the family went snorkling. The snorklers had a really good time. I don't remember the name of the company that they used, but if you're interested, I can email them to find out. Mom is 77 and one of the deck hands put her in an inner tube and towed her around the area they were all snorkling in.

 

You're going to have such a great time. We had so much fun and have decided to go back in November for a land vacation--dividing time between Livingston, Guatemala (we did a Go With Gus excursion and just loved it!) and Belize.

[joteacher]

Hi Joanne: yep' date=' a fella NYer - near Albany. I love Finger Lakes - my hubby's father's family originally from Oddesa & we go up to Lakes (nice wine!) every fall to restock our wine cellar. Which lake are u on? Only 68 days for us for Spirit - we are thinking of doing Alaska in fall. We have been on 8 (counting Spirit) cruises; Norway was our 1st & hooked!

 

C/BB (ANN)[/quote']

Hi Ann...we're on Seneca Lake, at the northern end. Next time you're up here restocking, check out White Springs Winery on Route 14, just south of Geneva. It's fairly new and has excellent wine. It has become one of my favorites!

 

Norway was also our first cruise and hooked us as well! We're down to less than seven weeks--can't wait!

 

-Joanne

[Cruisin'BusyBee]

Hi Joanne, yes, we have been to White Springs Winery just this Oct. - very nice building and loved their spiced mulling wine (bought some for Christmas!). We visited Billsboro which was also a new one for us this year. Seneca Lake is beautiful and we have some real favorite wineries there: Miles (related to my hubby), Bellangelo, Hickory Hollow, Ventosa - just to name a few. Sorry: I am "off the cruise chat", but wine makes me pretty happy, too :):D:) Hope we can keep in contact to discuss our Spirit Cruises and wine, of course!

 

C/BB (Ann)

[zedneser]

Hi to all! We will be going on Spirit in March & made final payment' date=' so now we have some serious questions if anyone could kindly answer for us:

1. Are there [u']safes[/u] in every cabin (balcony)?

2. Excursion in Costa Maya will be Bacalar/7 Color Lagoon. Anyone do this one and any input would be most appreciated (good, bad, or/and ugly)?

3. Thinking of Excursion in Guatemala to be Quirigua Jade Museum & Palm Oil Center. Again: please enlighten me w/good, bad, ugly.........

4. In Belize, we will do Altun Ha & Belize River. Anyone have comments here?

5. Not sure of anything in Cozumel. Ideas, anyone?

6. Order the "honeymoon package" and want to know which nite would be best to do this (dont wanna miss lobster or prime rib in main restaurants!).

7. Anyone have the Freestyle Daily uploaded for review?

 

Thanks so much to all - this is a wonderful site that I enjoy viewing!

C/B/B

 

I can answer the question about the Bacalar Highlights and 7 color Lagoon. This is a cut and paste from my short review of the Spirit in December 08.

 

Bacalar Highlights and Seven Color Lagoon - The first half of the tour was ok (bus ride & San Felipe Fort tour). Problems didn’t start until lunch when we were told drinks with our meal (water, pop) were not included in the expensive price of the tour. After that the tour went downhill. We didn't get to go in the lagoon (too cold) so we all agreed (after much discussion) to see the sinkhole which wasn't that great either. The tour guide was terrible and didn't have a plan for this excursion. If he said “whatever you want to do, it’s your tour” one more time I was going to throttle him. Miraculously bottled water appeared for the drive back to the pier. Hmm... Why wasn’t it available for lunch? Steer clear of this tour!!

What I forgot to add was that he also kept trying to get all of us to do a boat tour of the Lagoon which of course would cost us more $$$. We all had to agree, he couldn't come back and get the ones who wanted to stay. It was VERY disorganized. Soda/Beer $4; Water $3.

It wasn't a total waste (Fort, food at meal, nice pix of Lagoon) but the tour is not as advertised and should only cost half the price.