A short review/Spirit 6 day/ June 17th sailing

[RILIPAUL]

This was our third cruise but our first time with NCL (Premiere, Carnival). My husband and I took our four children and chose this sailing because of price and port (hate flying). Drove up from Philly on Sunday morning in our van, it took one and half hours. The ship is beautiful and staff was always friendly, courteous and kind with two exceptions not worth mentioning (so why did I?). We had a balcony cabin and the four children slept across the hall in an inside cabin (9559/9560). The beds were very comfortable as were the pillows and the room was clean with fresh ice daily and two towel animals in the week. Kids and I took bonnine first couple of days out of fear but didn't need it after that as the weather was beautiful and the seas calm. Thought the Kids Crew was superb and definitely surpassed our experince with Carnival. Rented a van to drive to Sea World (bought our sea world tickets online) which took one hour. Didn't get to see everything but it was hot and we were all glad to go back to the ship. Spent the day in Nassau at Wyndham Hotel via the #10 jittney for $1.00 per person and took a taxi back to the ship for $30.00 for the six of us. Thanks to these boards brought bug spray for the evening party at Great Stirrup Cay and suffered no bug bites. Thought the day at GSC was too short and would have skipped Nassau to spend more time on this island paradise.....none of us wanted to leave this place. Bought teen passports for our teenagers for $34.50 good for 20 sodas/smoothies and had leftover tickets by the end of the week. The Sharkbait show was so hilarious that my eight year old fell off his seat. Enjoyed the kids pool/slide area in the back of the boat. Plenty of terraced deck chairs and tables for eating, drinking, or lounging while watching your kids play/swim for hours. There was a lack of drink servers here and we ended up walking up to bar to order beverages. Biggest disappointment was the food with the exception of Cagneys (kids had to pay half price even though they ordered from children's menu) which we found to be mediocre to good. Didn't want to dish out extra money every night for specialty restaurants so ate at Windows and the Garden Room. Children's platters in the Garden Room didn't come until we were on our dessert course, very distressing to us as well as our famished little guys. On our Carnival cruise I eagerly anticipated dinner every night and can honestly say I did not have one bad food experience whereas on this cruise I almost loathed the thoughts of Windows for dinner. As far as the freesyle thing goes I definitely think it has its advantages but we felt that we were a bit stressed in trying to coordinate dinner times and places with shows and maybe prefer having a set time for dinner followed by a show....dining for dummies...less choices less stress in our case. Would definitely try another NCl cruise especially for GSC and after all are building up cruise credits on our BOA credit card.

[Retired not Expired]

Thanks for the review. We will be on this ship for the repo to NO in Nov for 15 days. We will have a balcony cabin mid-ship on the same deck as you.

 

Nice to see what others think.

[teacha50]

Going on this ship for the 07/29 sailing...after reading your post, I am thinking maybe a better idea to frequent the specialty restaurants and pay the extra $$...can you be more specific about why you didn't like Windows or the Garden Restaurant? Was it the quality of the food or the service or both??

[RILIPAUL]

Both Windows and the Garden Room have the same exact menu. Because of the bad experience with the kids food coming at the end of our meal we didn't go back to the Garden Room. With a few exceptions food was pretty average and the portions were very small. On Lobster night (the second night and a formal night of the six day cruise), my husband and I ordered one lobster each and then Beef Wellington to split, both were very good. We for the most part thought the service was slow but saw everyone working very hard to keep up with the pace. At Windows after asking our waitress and her assistant for a wine stewart to no avail we had to flag him over ourselves to order a bottle of wine. The fish dishes were all very good but the quality and cut of some of the beef and lamb dishes left a lot to be desired. I thought the hot soups to be pretty tasteless. We ate one breakfast and one lunch in Windows and both were very good. BTW, my son got tired of the kids menu so if there is something that your child might eat that's not on the menu they will try to satisfy as much as they can. For example, my son loves ravioli and they were able to provide him with cheese tortellini with meat sauce....he ate all of it.

[Cosmopolitan]

This was our third cruise but our first time with NCL (Premiere, Carnival). My husband and I took our four children and chose this sailing because of price and port (hate flying). Drove up from Philly on Sunday morning in our van, it took one and half hours. The ship is beautiful and staff was always friendly, courteous and kind with two exceptions not worth mentioning (so why did I?). We had a balcony cabin and the four children slept across the hall in an inside cabin (9559/9560). The beds were very comfortable as were the pillows and the room was clean with fresh ice daily and two towel animals in the week. Kids and I took bonnine first couple of days out of fear but didn't need it after that as the weather was beautiful and the seas calm. Thought the Kids Crew was superb and definitely surpassed our experince with Carnival. Rented a van to drive to Sea World (bought our sea world tickets online) which took one hour. Didn't get to see everything but it was hot and we were all glad to go back to the ship. Spent the day in Nassau at Wyndham Hotel via the #10 jittney for $1.00 per person and took a taxi back to the ship for $30.00 for the six of us. Thanks to these boards brought bug spray for the evening party at Great Stirrup Cay and suffered no bug bites. Thought the day at GSC was too short and would have skipped Nassau to spend more time on this island paradise.....none of us wanted to leave this place. Bought teen passports for our teenagers for $34.50 good for 20 sodas/smoothies and had leftover tickets by the end of the week. The Sharkbait show was so hilarious that my eight year old fell off his seat. Enjoyed the kids pool/slide area in the back of the boat. Plenty of terraced deck chairs and tables for eating, drinking, or lounging while watching your kids play/swim for hours. There was a lack of drink servers here and we ended up walking up to bar to order beverages. Biggest disappointment was the food with the exception of Cagneys (kids had to pay half price even though they ordered from children's menu) which we found to be mediocre to good. Didn't want to dish out extra money every night for specialty restaurants so ate at Windows and the Garden Room. Children's platters in the Garden Room didn't come until we were on our dessert course, very distressing to us as well as our famished little guys. On our Carnival cruise I eagerly anticipated dinner every night and can honestly say I did not have one bad food experience whereas on this cruise I almost loathed the thoughts of Windows for dinner. As far as the freesyle thing goes I definitely think it has its advantages but we felt that we were a bit stressed in trying to coordinate dinner times and places with shows and maybe prefer having a set time for dinner followed by a show....dining for dummies...less choices less stress in our case. Would definitely try another NCl cruise especially for GSC and after all are building up cruise credits on our BOA credit card.

 

Great, well-balanced review:)

 

I believe the change from traditional to freestyle was quite an adjustment for you especially with 4 children.

 

We have only cruised NCL freestyle...our children were grown when we started cruising. No children issues.

 

We love freestyle and have the dining/show experience down to a science.

 

If you read posts by parents cruising with kids, they have some great tips on how to dine with or without your children. Children seem to enjoy the buffet. How long do they really want to sit;)

 

Good that you are building up your BOA credits...sure will help with a family of six.

 

Before you book your next "freestyle"...read all of the tips on CC.

Some great posts on these boards.

 

My sister just returned from the Dawn and also loved GSC.

 

Happy cruising and thanks for the review:)

[twofit]

Great review - and good point, Comopolitan, about kids at dinner. This is our first try at freestyle with NCL, after experiencing numerous Carnival and RCI ships. With DS, 14 and DD, 11 think might let them eat at buffet each night and "do their own thing" with friends so we can enjoy the restaurants. Was a real struggle, especially with teen, to get them to dinner last year on Carnival Miracle, since there was always something much more "fun" to do than get dressed up and sit at a table! I figure it's their vacation too...

[Damikaan]

We are considering booking on the Spirit. Do they use salt water in the kids pool? We went on the sun and the kids hated swimming in the salt water pools but loved the tiny kids pool which had fresh water. I would love to hear more about the kids pool on the Spirit. Thanks!

[RILIPAUL]

The kids pool is a salt water pool. My 13, 8 and 6 years old loved the slides and sprays and could spend hours here. There is a toddler pool next to this area but I don't know if this has fresh water or salt.

[Damikaan]

Thanks for responding about the kids pool. My kids loved seeing the pictures and are excited about it, they think they can tolerate the salt water since it looks so fun.:)