Norwegian Spirit?

Question

My family and I are going on an 8 day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean in late August on the Norwegian Spirit. My brother and I have only been on one other cruise (Carnival Triumph), and this is my parents' third cruise. What are the good and bad aspects of this ship?

A lot of people have complained about the whole "freestyle" thing... but I'd like unbiased opinions please. :]

Answer 1

I have been on many Norwegian ships and at one time NCL was my favorite cruise line. I cruised on the Spirit to the Southern Caribbean a few years ago.  The ship was just "OK" in my opinion; not one I would want to cruise on again.  After a few days on the ship I noticed that it had a distinctive oriental flavor.  Almost all of the paintings and decorations in the halls and stairways were oriental.  Then we found out that the ship was initially launches as the Star and had sailed in Asia before NCL bought it.  Then we found out that an Asian company actually owns NCL cruise line.  That aside, the one thing that I did like about the ship is the terrace on the back where you can lounge around and/or eat from the buffet.  

Freestyle Cruising is not as unique as NCL portrays it to be.  The only difference between NCL cruises and the other cruise  lines is that on NCL you can go to dinner whenever you want are there is more emphasis on being informally dresses.  But other cruise lines like Holland America, Princess and Royal Caribbean also offer the "go to dinner when you want" option.  

Freestyle means that you do not have to specify a dining option when you book your cruise and thus don't have a table and waiter assigned to you.   It means you can go to dinner in the main dining room, or any other alternative restaurant, any time of the evening after about 6:00 PM.. BUT, you will have to reserve a time in the alternate restaurants. It also means that you don't have to "dress up" for dinner, but just go "sports casual".   It also means that you MAY be standing in line awaiting a table on some days (like we had to do a couple times); not what I want on a cruise.  On our last NCL cruise they were actually passing out buzzers to the people in line waiting on tables.  Since you go when you want, you rarely get the same waiter and so never really get to know your waiter and he/she never learns what you prefer as is done on “traditional” cruise lines.

The option to traditional dining on NCL is their optional dining restaurants. However, these dining options can cost $5 to $20 a person for dinner each night. The optional restaurants are very nice, including French, Chinese/Sushi, Tex-Mex, Italian, and steak house restaurants. We always skipped the optional restaurants and just got to the main dining early. That worked fine, except on "at sea" days when everyone wanted to go eat early. We later found that we could reserve a time in the main dining room, but we still got a different table and waiter for dinner each night  and we could only reserve in the main dining room 2 nights at a time.

NCL  has, like the other cruise lines, migrating away from the procedure of letting you pass out your gratuities to your wait staff and cabin steward on the last evening of the cruise and now just add a $10 per person gratuity fee to your on-board tab.  But since on NCL you generally get a different dinner table and waiter each day you never get the opportunity to recognize really good service; all of the tips juts go into a hopper for everyone to share.

Just remember that the main dining room food is good and there's no need to pay to eat in the specialty restaurants.  If you want to you can reserve a table in the main dining room, i.e., for 4 or 6, so you can go at the time that you want and can have just your family at the table.  I found that its always best getting a table quickly if you go as soon as the main dining room opens.  

The ship has a nice gym and as I remember it was open 24/7 so you can go do early workouts if you want rather then having to wait for a 7:00 or 7:30 AM opening.

I hope this opinion is unbiased enough for you.

Answer 2

Well I have a really strong feeling that we're going on the exact same cruise. I'm going on the spirit out of Manhatten on August 23rd.  I'm on a cruise critic roll call and we're talking about everything about the cruise. There's a couple people who have been on the Spirit already and a bunch of others who've sailed with Norwegian. I personally hate when people answer my questions and not have a clue about it, which is what i'm doing now, but on this roll call all of your questions will be answered. If you have any more, you can ask them because there's a lot of experienced Norwegian cruises on the board.  even if you're not going on the same cruise as me and this board you can still look at the board and ask questions and such.  If you do already have a cruisecritic account then you go to this site to get to the roll call.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthrea...

And if you don't here's what you can do:

1) go to http://www.cruisecritic.com/

2) in the upper right hand corner is a blue box and inside of the box it has a smaller orange box which says join now. click on that and make an account. it's free and enables you to access the entire site.

3) go to the link that I just gave to in order to get to the roll call..here it is again just in case

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthrea...

Again, i'm really sorry that I answered your question without any experience on Norwegian cruise lines or the Spirit but this roll call/board will anserr any question that you have- there's many experienced norwegian and spirit cruisers joined.  If you have any more questions you can either send me a message here, or  my cruisecritic user name is NikkiAlexisNJ.

Sorry  again and hope this helps!! (:

Answer 3

Hi; I have sailed on the Spirit many times & everything was Great. As for the other guests that could happen on any ship. FreeStyle Cruising is the best and other may call it something else but, all the same. You are investing your money, time & saftey to them on this vacation & Norwegian was the first to realalize this. You can wear jeans 24/7.As long as there are no ones in them you can go anywhere on the ship you wish. If you want to get all dressed up you can. As for the Spirit the Buffet is on deck 11- threw the sliding doors is an open deck where you can sit & enjoy your meal & view at the same time, Deck 10 is a pool & hot tubs on open decks where you may also enjoy the scenery. Deck 7 is the Sports bar & Casino & just before the Casino agreat place to get A Hamburger etc. Deck 12 forward the Spa's, gym, dance floor & just passed the band stand oversized chairs with windows everywhere so you may sit & relax or read or whatever.

A cruise has many factors on if it is a good cruise or not. You are abig part of that. Go enjoy the ship,people,scenery,ports of call or just getting away.

Answer 4

i personally loved it =D

the crew was sooo nice, so many things to do, etc.

Answer 5

I have had alot of complaints about NCL.  Not about Freestyle dining but about the lack there of activities and deck events.  I had a large group sail on the NCL Sun (20s-40yr olds) and all they were disappointed. I think it is geared more towards the older crowd. They  said that the whole ship was basically a ghost town by 10pm and there were no 24 hour food venues or midnight buffets.  They were all kinda bummed about cruising b/c this was their 1st cruise.  Then some of them went on Carnival and said it was way different than NCL.  They got bored on NCL but had a blast on Carnival.  Some of NCL's newer ships look really nice though and I feel that cruisers would have a different view on them.  They seem to offer more.  This is just the replys that I have gotten from former clients of mine.  I however, have not sailed this ship. I always sail Carnival.