Okay Here It Is Spirit Review 11/19-11/30

[Randy Flagg]

Gomez,

 

I guess with the staff I don't really require my staff to overly nice without reason. I do recall a lot of the staff saying hello to me as I walked the ship. My concern for staff was that they were friendly and competent when I interacted with them and this was the case most of the times.

 

About the room, ours was always clean so I cannot comment. About the varnish, as I stated in my review they re-varnished early in the week. The glass on the balcony was being cleaned when we entered the room on debarkation. I kind of laughed about the because after a half a day at sea the sea water caused the glass was dirty again. I tried to be realistic about this kind of stuff. I really didn't expect them to clean the glass every day.

 

For food it sounds like you only ate in the free restaurants. If this is the case I can understand your being upset. My question is if you were unhappy with the food did you try try the pay places? I felt that the pay restaurants were part of the trip and had no problem paying for them.

[Randy Flagg]

I screwed up the heading on the last part of my review. I meant to review the cruise itself not the ship. So anyway here is the review for the cruise.

 

Cruise In General Rating Good

 

As a first time cruise it was very hard for us to pick an itinerary/cruise line/length. We did throroughly enjoy ourselves on this trip but I do not think it was the correct itinerary for us. The 11 days seems to lend itself to an older crowd. We talked to a lot of the staff about this and confirmed that if it had been a 7 day cruise the crowd would have been more to our liking.

 

The good part was that we loved departing from NY because we did not have to fly. We also love the freestyle in general. The freestyle concept fit us perfectly. We dress how we wanted. We could eat when we wanted etc. This concept and the fact that they sail out of NY will surely have a cruising with NCL again.

 

Crew and Staff in General Rating Good to Very Good

 

Just so everybody knows, I am kind of like Steve Martin in "My Blue Heaven". If you remember his response to the people in the supermarket who keep telling him to "have a nice day" you see how I feel about customer service. My definition for good staff is the you are friendly and competent when I interact with you.

 

Almost in total everybody we spoke to was very helpful and knew what they were doing. This extends to the room stewards, wait staff, front desk people etc. Joel and his staff were our room stewards and they really were good to very good. They really weren't overboard but when we asked them for something we got it every time without fail. There were a couple of times that they missed things like getting us ice every night but that was not the norm. They really got some extra points when they made us a puppy towel animal. They must of noticed the picture of our dog we hung up and took the initiative to do this. My wife (who really missed our dog) loved this.

 

Where NCL missed was with some of the waitstaff and bartenders. There were instances where it seemed that some of the waitstaff or bartenders didn't know what they were doing. This didn't happen often but it did happen more than I would have liked. Again, these were isolated incidents and weren't the end of the world.

 

The other poor service issues were in the casino and the jewelry shop. I didn't subtract points for this from NCL's overall staff rating because I do not believe these people work directly for NCL. I will review those issues when I review those individual areas.

 

Well, this is it for now. I should be able to post more later tonight.

 

Thanks for listening and keep all the questions coming.

[judyf]

Nice review. Thanks for taking the time to share.

[Mariner Mike]

If you sail out of NYC again...

Go to nypst.com to find your exact pier and berth.

Find the Port Calendar link and look up your date and ship. It will say something like "Pier 90 Berth 3"

 

I really appreciated this post. It is a great bit of info. I used the site to get directions (really from MapQuest), and to find out that my sailing date has only one ship in port!!! Good news. However, I would like to know exactly where you found the pier info. I could not locate that myself.

 

Thanx,

---------

Spirit 1/13/07 (41 days to go!)

[Randy Flagg]

Okay here we go again.

 

Dress Very Good

 

I want to review this particular part of the cruise because I read about so many people have questions and comments about.

 

I really think the requirements and dress code for this cruise was great. It really boiled down that you could wear whatever you wanted withing in reason. I started out the week with the early formal and enjoyed wearing a suit and my wife in her gown for the formal dinner in Windows. I then started wearing most nice slacks and dress shirts to dinner. Later on in the week I wanted to be a little more relaxed and dress down to khakis and golf shirt.

 

I was really surprised to see everyone else wearing semi-formal clothes almost every night. It seemed like everybody just dressed up when they felt like it. That is exactly what we did and really enjoyed have this choice.

 

Now for the Room Rating Good to Very Good

 

We had a little bit of shock at the size of the room. We live in a 3600 sg ft house and it is just the two of us and our dog. We didn't really expect the room to be bigger but like I said it is a little bit of a shock to think we would be living in this small space for the next 11 days.

 

After the initial shock and we got everything settled away we realized the room really was as big as we needed. There isn't any extra space but in reality there was plenty of room for everything we needed. We especially enjoyed the balcony and I think we will always be booking balconies from now on. The balcony almost acted as an extra room for us. It was nice to have a private space separate from the room. I spent lots of morning drinking coffee and having fresh fruit on the balcony. Also, we are smokers and do not like smoking in the room the balcony was almost a requirement.

 

There were only a couple small issues with the room. The bathroom is a little tight. I am 6'1" 265lbs and really felt a little tight in the toilet and shower. I think if you are bigger than me you might want to look into a different kind of room. Another issue is that with everything I read on the boards I had heard that the bags would fit under the bed. This was not the case. I really had to work to fit our garment back and carryon size bag under the bed. There was no way our two big bags were going to fit under the bed. We ended up putting the bags behind the big chair and it ended up not being the end of the world.

 

The last bad thing was that I think we got hosed on our balcony chairs. From what I heard and saw it looked like other people got the nice wooded chairs that might have actually reclined. We had the basic metail chairs that were common in the pool area. I think my wife would have like the chair that lays back so she could take in the sun. Obviously this wan't the end of the world or else we would have asked for better chairs.

 

That is for now. I will continue tomorrow.

[Cosmopolitan]

Randy ~

 

Your review is a pleasure to read:)

 

Well balanced and rational.

 

DH and I do find that the 7 day cruises do have younger passengers than the 11 day.

Not to say that anything is wrong with the older cruisers...they are always very friendly, amusing and experienced. Very enjoyable company as well as the younger ones.

 

I'm sure you and your wife will be enjoying many "freestyle" cruises in the future.

[Randy Flagg]

Cosmo,

Thanks for the comment. I agree with you entirely about the older cruisers. I certainly didn't mean to put them down. I enjoyed speaking with and spending time with almost everybody we came in contact with. It really boiled down to some of the activities were not geared towards a longer crowd and that the ship closed up pretty early.

 

 

I spoke to my in-laws last night and we are trying to set up a family cruise to New England. Looks like we're hooked.

 

The review will go on. Watching the Eagles game now. Maybe I will post the next installment at half time.

[Cosmopolitan]

Cosmo,

Thanks for the comment. I agree with you entirely about the older cruisers. I certainly didn't mean to put them down. I enjoyed speaking with and spending time with almost everybody we came in contact with. It really boiled down to some of the activities were not geared towards a longer crowd and that the ship closed up pretty early.

 

 

I spoke to my in-laws last night and we are trying to set up a family cruise to New England. Looks like we're hooked.

 

The review will go on. Watching the Eagles game now. Maybe I will post the next installment at half time.

 

Ha ha...I agree..a "look" at the dailies gives you a good idea of the age group on the ship.

 

Canada/New England is beautiful. I love it.

 

We've done it on the Dawn and Jewel (when she was in NY)- each had a few different ports.

 

I'm looking at it again for the Dawn as it has a few ports we haven't hit yet.

 

Eagles game? Off to check the score.

One nephew goes to the Eagles games, the other to the Giants games.

Quite funny comments from them both:)

[Cosmopolitan]

AHA...I know where you are...game is tied!

Interception...WOW!

 

Just wanted to let you know that the Dawn is doing the Canada/New England next fall before she moves to Miami port if you want to sail her before she leaves NY.

 

Dawn is a beautiful/great ship.

 

Back to the game:)

[Randy Flagg]

Yeah, the Eagles won. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

 

This is really the part of the review I wanted to get to. At this point I am going to start reviewing the individual areas of this ship one by one. I really want to do so everybody could get a good idea about what each section is about.

 

Okay, the much maligned Raffles. Rating Good. Personally I am very much anti-buffet in general. Unfortunately, the fact that they were pretty much always forced me to go there especially for breakfast (I am a late riser). The reason why this buffet gets a good rating is simply for the food. As I think I stated before I am pretty much food snob. The Raffles was much better that I expected. It was far from gourmet but certainly edible and I even enjoyed most of the dishes.

 

My particular favorites were the omelette station, waffle station, meat carving station (ham, turkey, beef). I also enojyed the little mini sandwiches that were there in between meals. I even had some pasta that was cooked al dente (I am Italian this is grande importante).

 

Now of course for the bad parts. I can understand how people would give raffles bad review. Especially, if you went there during the busy times. The organization is horrible. I know it has been said a dozen times but they need to just block off the lines so everybody goes through each section and there is no jumping in line. I think they ran out of tray once while I was there and yes it is annoying but they literally refilled the tray

holder about 2 minutes after it emptied.

 

I have heard it before but one of my other issues was the coffee machines. The coffee was pretty good but I think I always went to the wrong coffee machine first. I forget which one where but if I was in the middle of the buffett and I had a 50-50 chance of picking the decaf or regular I always picked the decaf. Quite annoying, there were two sides to each coffee machine. I would imagine they could make one side regular and one decaf. Not the end of the world but I chose poorly often.

 

Last couple of the things, the plates and tables were cleaned fairly often unless it was rush hour. Also, the outside seating by the Raffles bar was a very nice area to eat or hang out in general.

 

Long story short, do not eat at Raffles during the rush times. You will be dissappointed.

 

Okay, I am going to post the next part in a minute. Don't want to lose this part.

[CruiseLunatic]

Randy and those who may have an interest.

 

:( Sorry you felt as you did concerning our group and the passionate ones (most likely me). I don't believe anyone intended to cling or bother anyone else and from my experience it ended up little more than greetings from time to time by most. Yes, some folks paired up and those that did so seemed to enjoy themselves. We meet some some great folks and did indeed spend some time with a few but only by mutual agreement.

Frankly, it is why I get into ROLL CALLS. I haven't been on a ROLL CALL in the past 4 cruises that didn't gather quite a group and have a rather long list of names for the meetings and have never seen anyone burdened by it. OK, once in a while there is that exception and you have to run the other way, but rare and not on this cruise. I only say this as you may have missed more than you gained. First names are all that were ever asked for and then only to see just how many showed for the meet and greet (this helps with such meetings on future cruises).

In fact the list was also used to better help us when the Captain offered us 30 seats at the Captain's Cocktail and Dinner. An event that was enjoyed a great deal by all and made possible due to our gathering as the Captain and Staff showed up and made the offer at the Meet & Greet.

Again, sorry I may have come on strong with the group meeting thing but many do benefit, so I just don't want to let it sway others who use the roll call for the purpose of meeting people!

Best always,

Matt

[Dolphins]

How do you get 80 teens on a cruise ship for 10 days at the end of November? Aren't schools in session at that time?

[travelmoxie]

How do you get 80 teens on a cruise ship for 10 days at the end of November? Aren't schools in session at that time?

 

Believe me, I was wondering that same thing around day 3 after watching them hang out around the stairwells on our floor.