Just Returned On Spirit 9 Nighter

To put it in a nutshell....G. R. E. A. T... Now we know everone won't agree, but this is our story..

We arrived @ urami Port at approx 1120 and was in our cabin approx 11.45..Easiest embarkation ever... just go in the Lattitudes line. We went to

look around the ship and before 2 we had our 1st piece of luggage. (the only contents was sodas, wine, rum and a bottle of whiskey, pair of sandals)

(I can hear the comments now) and we met some folks that had everything confiscated until the last day, but ours got through, so its up to u whether you try or not. Nuff said... We grabbed a bite to eat at the Raffles and before 3 the other 2 bags were outside the door, so we had everything put up before the life boat drill.. (oh yeah.. there is a drill at 4pm and if you don't go you will go to the make up at 10 am on the next morning.. your choice.

Plenty of room.. closet space is more than adequate as well as plenty of drawer space. We put 4 suitcases under the beds with no problems. Put both beds together in front of window and asked for a egg crate mattress cover and it was fine. Our cabin was one of the best for location and noises etc.. we had cabin 5100. The room stewards were the best ever, kept everything up and would do anything to make your stay more pleasant. I had a small cooler bag and wanted them to keep it filled.. The Steward went and got an Igloo cooler (lots better) for us to use and it was never empty of ice.

Ship is beautiful and clean clean clean... OK go ahead all you white glove enthusiasts that want to pick everything apart and you will find something wrong i am sure,,, but to us it was clean, neat, well taken care of and just in great shape.

You do tender into Grenada and St. Lucia... The rest are at the docks.. we didn't do any tours etc; so we don't have any comments about them..

The Windows and Garden Restaurants are superb.. the service puts most other lines to shame.. (our opinion after 12 cruises) We tried the Bistro and the food was excellent, but the service was better in the Windows or Garden... They will get you whatever you want.....we had onion rings from the kids menu, cobb salads substituted for a regular salad and however you want to mix it up you can go for it... they are really super or at least the ones we had were..

Just to enhance the sailing trip we had a lovely storm for approx. 100 miles that was gale force 9 winds and seas 12 to 20 feet... that lasted from in the early evening until the wee hours of the morning when we left Tortola coming back.. The wife didn't like it and even the Casino Workers were grabbing the Sick Bags, but the ship came through fine and it was a beautiful day afterwards.

There are so many selfish kids (over 30 - 80 years old average) by the main pool saving chairs that we used the kids pool and jacuzzi area and it was fantastic... no fuss no hassle and just a nice area... If you do use the main pool and the chairs beside yours hasn't been sat in for an hour or so..please do everyone a favor and when you discard your towels, pick up all the ones next to your chairs and put them in the used towel bin as well.. this helps open up a lot of seats and fun to do as well.

We can only say as most of you have also, that a cruise is what you make of it.. and we had a great time.. lots of beautiful and crazy folks aboard and the crew is fantastic in our opinion..

If you have a bad time its cause you allow it.. most of the time we noticed that the real pushy, bad tempered ones wound up being the most miserable and caused most of their own problems.. thank goodness we didn't see very many like that..

Disembarkation...... this will depend on where you were and how you got treated. there will be hundred of stories on this one... we wound up arriving at a different terminal than the one we left and it wasn't prepared to receive the ship....we were fortunate to be by the elevator on deck 7 when the Cruise director said that everyone was going to have to go to deck 4 to get off.. wow...lines & lines of folks on the outside deck had been there for hours.. we got on the 2nd elevator and walked off the ship and was through customs in less than 10 minutes.. I am sure you will hear all kinds on stories on this one, but it was great for us..

Until we sail again..

Happy Sailing and don't worry about the Spirit.. it is worth the trip..

Bud & Brenda

Thanks for the review...

I leave on the 28th for the 5 night cruise, and I can't wait!!!!

Thanks for the review. I have 2 questions. What time did you leave Tortola and what time did you disembark the ship? Thanks for your help! :)

Happy Sailing and don't worry about the Spirit.. it is worth the trip..

I have to admit, Bud, that I have worried a little bit about some of the problems I've read . . . especially the freestyle comments - long lines, long dinners, mediocre food, etc. After reading your review, my worries have eased a bit!! Thanks for the wonderful comments.

I'm glad you mentioned the igloo cooler - my husband was wanting to bring a small one on board to have cold beers on hand in the cabin - now we won't have to bring it.

Had to snicker at your comments regarding the pool chair hogs . . . I'll keep that recommendation in mind! We are cruising with our five year old son so we will probably frequent the kids pool also. Glad you liked that area.

Thanks again-glad you had a wonderful cruise!

Libby

Tell your husband to still bring his cooler!!

Bud & Brenda! Glad you had a great cruise! I did too on the 10/22 sailing! But the ice bucket had to be the worst on record!! ;) It held ice no longer than 2 hours!! I asked for a second one from the cabin steward and was told to call room service for extra ice!! That didn't work either! They must have filled the ice glasses first because by the time the order was delivered the ice was almost totally melted! :) Just wasn't meant for me to have cold drinks this trip! :D

We arrived at the dock at Roadtown approx 7-7:30 AM and had to be back onboard by 12:30 as we sailed at 1...not much time to spend there. All the disenbarks were quick and fairly smooth..

Happy Sailing

Bud

Libby,

You are probably correct.. Our room stewards were just the best..I did see several folks with the little yellow buckets filling them up at several places around the ship from time to time..

Happy Sailing to all of you and thanks for all the help from the posts before we went as well..

Bud

Thanks for the info. What I was actually wondering about disembarkation, was what time the ship came in, and how soon you were able to get off the ship. We originally booked our airfare based on the old time of arrival, but our tickets now say that we are getting into Miami at noon. Just wondering if I'm going to miss my flight. Thanks!

Jenn

I have a question about time. Did the ship time correspond to the island time? For example did the sun set at 4:45 pm ship time or 5:45 pm ship time? Did the ship arrive at 7:30 a.m.EST in roadtown or 7:30 am island time?

The ship sets its time back for all the islands either on sat. or sunday and that

is what is used for the trip.. then you set them back to regular time on the way back..after leaving Tortola which would be on Friday night. So we were on Island time for each port.

coming back we were off the Coast of Miami at approx 8:30 AM... Docked at 10:53 and those of us who were taking all of our own luggage with us started gettin off around 11:30... I don't have any other times on Debarking as we were on the way home at 11:45..

Happy Sails to you all

Bud

Thanks for the review, let me try to get this time thing straight. When did they want you back on the ship when you left Tortola? Was it 12:30p.m. island time, so it could leave at 1 pm island time, or was it 1:30 p.m. island time. So did the ship dock at Tortola at 6-6:30am Eastern/Miami time, if so that's early :(

The ship was running on Island time until just north of Puerto Rico when we changed the clocks back to EST on the saturday.....

You will only have at the most 5 hours at Tortola if everything goes well...

hope this will help..

Bud

you arrive at approx 7:30 and back on board at 12:30...

sorry I left that off

Bud

Hi -

I was just reading about the 1st few cruise ships that are again visiting Grenada and your post caught my eye.

My husband and I had received our tickets and itinerary which stated we would be visiting Kingtown, St Vincent and the Grenadines rather then Grenada. Did you know before you sailed that you would be visiting Grenada ? I was holding off on booking any shore excursions for Tuesday, 12-07-04 as I still do not know which port we will be visiting for sure (St Vincent or Grenada)

Thanks for any information that can be provided.

We are on that cruise also, Spirit leaving Miami on 12/3. My phone conversation with NCL indicated a Grenda visit. The website does also. My $.02.

Yes, the original itinerary had Grenada instead of St. Vincent. Then Ivan came along and it was switched. Now, it has switched back to Grenada.

Budcat2130

Just a question: did NCL give you a reason for tendering in to St. Lucia? I stopped there last year on the Sky and we tied up at the dock and there was quite a nice shopping area and dock where the excursions left from. The NCL itinereary also lists the port for docking. Any explanation? :confused:

By the way, my compliments on a great review. ;)

I too was wondering why you tendered at St. Lucia!

I was on the 10/22 Spirit cruise and we docked there.

We were told that Princess lines has priority to St. Lucia and the the second major pier had to be repaired. We were also told that a number of ships may pull out of St. Lucia due to tendering.

Our experiences on Spirit 11/5 were a little different from budat2130. We ate in the alternative restaurants the first 3 nights and found the service superb...almost omnipresent! We always ate early in all the restaurants. On the fourth night we went to Windows at 5:30 and waited in line for a few minutes. That night we chose to eat with another couple and it took two hours with us wolfing down our coffee and dessert to get to the early show. The following nights we arrived at either Windows or the Garden about 5:20 and waited a little less to be seated by ourselves....dinner took about an hour. Even so, our last night was bizare as we were traded at the dessert course to another waiter who brought our dessert and never returned...one cup of coffee is all we received.

Disembarkation was an "organized" zoo. We had acquired more carryons than we embarked with so we did not want to carry everything around with us for hours or have to rush down stairs from our cabin. We avoided the atrium, as instructed, and found it difficult to get a seat on a deck close to the atrium. We ended up sitting in the window on deck 8 and eventually went to the atrium to take a vacant seat at the Cafe. A few minutes later we had to get up and wait in line by color-coded baggage tag. The waiting in line was especially bad for my wife because of a bad knee. Lining up really was not necessary.

We thought that you could wait in your cabin until disembarkation so we had left our carryons in the cabin. When we returned, the door to the cabin was propped open...didn't make us feel too secure. We passed a cabin where the door was propped open and the people were laying on the unmade bed watching TV!

Twaincruisers:

Did you find reservations for the alternative restaurants hard to come by? When did you usually have to make your reservations?

Regarding dining in the dining room, I see that it is best to eat early to avoid the rush. And I've been reading that if you are a party of 2 and agree to share a table with others, the wait time is shorter. But if you share a table with others in order to get seated quicker, the service is much slower?

We would actually prefer to eat with others for the company, but if it drags the meals out longer, maybe not??? What times are the shows - are there 2 each night?

Also, what were the "special" nights in the dining room (i.e. meals not to miss - filet mignon, etc.) so we can figure out when to make reservations in the specialty restaurants.

About embarkation & disembarkation, if you are being dropped off/picked up at the pier, how much trouble would it be to carry on/carry off your luggage to avoid the wait? How far is the walk from the car to the ship?

Thanks for the info!

I thank those that have already answered all the questions, and I apologize for not getting back sooner, but I had to work today.. it's a tough life but someone has to do it...

I agree with all the answers that have been given..and our tickets showed Grenada but we were told St. Vincents... The 1st sailing I believe did that route but we went to Grenada..

St. Lucia already had a big boy at the dock so we had to tender...

The dining experience I can't explain as we went at different times and never had to wait very long.. just good for us I guess. We did share tables and maybe that helped as well.

Happy sailing to you all..

Bud

We were able to eat at a table for 2 when we went down to the Gardens at 6PM and put our name on the wait list for 6:40... We always returned at 6:40 and were seated right away.