MisterOJ2

It's a very small island and there's not a ton to do there, but I happen to think it's pretty nice. There's a large Hilton resort/casino on the north side of the island, and Resort World, which is a beach club where you can book an excursion to. To the south of the port is Alicetown and beyond that, Radio Beach - which is nice and rustic. There is also a free beach right at the end of the (very long) pier where the ship will tie up. There's also a very small amount of shops near the cruise pier beach. Once you get off the ship, you have the option to either walk all the way down the pier, or take a tram. The tram will go north to the casino first, then Resorts World, then it will come back and make a stop at the shops and then finally, at the free beach. One of the popular things to do is rent a golf cart, since you can literally drive from one end of the island to the other in about 20-25 minutes. There are plenty of them for rent on the third tram stop. We rented one there, drove it around a while, stopped and enjoyed Radio Beach for a couple hours on the south tip of the island, and then headed back to the ship afterwards - and that was a pretty nice day overall.

The bucket of beers is a single purchase and doesn't count as six individual drinks.

You might want to make sure it's the same room number and something didn't get switched. Upper/lower is a totally different room type, not just a bed configuration.

They definitely have Mich Ultra. You won't have any problem finding it.

The others are: Cobh Holyhead Liverpool Greenock and Belfast

Thanks for the heads up. For some reason, I was just assuming that there wouldn't be any tender ports on this trip. Now I'm wondering if any of the others are.

We loved Bimini when we stopped there for the first time last month. We rented a golf cart and drove the length of the island, then parked at Radio Beach and just hung out and swam before going back to the ship. It was super chill and nice and the weather was perfect.

Thanks for all the responses! We wound up booking last night - but we chose a different week with a slightly different itinerary. We're now going in June instead of August and will visit Dublin instead of the Isle of Man. We're super excited about this trip!

Man, I've not gotten an RU1 code in years. I miss those days.

Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. It was exactly what I was hoping for when I posted!

So my wife and I have a pretty big anniversary coming up (our 25th) and we're thinking about doing a cruise of the British Isles. So far we've done 16 cruises, all in the Caribbean and mostly 7(ish)-day cruises on Carnival. The cruise we're looking at would be August of 2025 on the Miracle. Which, we love the Spirit-class ships, so that's a plus for us. It's 9 days with stops in Cobh, Holyhead, Liverpool, Douglas on the Isle of Man, an overnight in Greenock and then one last stop in Belfast. We've never been to England before at all and are just wondering how different this cruise would be from what we're used to. Will the food and activities on board be more or less the same? Or will we notice some big differences? Also, if anyone has any insights to offer on those ports, I'd love to hear them. I literally have no idea what to expect from this cruise in any way. Thanks!

Every time I've priced out an NCL cruise (with all the Free at Sea add-ons) it's always wound up being more expensive than a similar Carnival cruise with the same services - drink package, WiFi, etc. I see people talk fairly often about how they're getting these good deals on NCL, but I can never seem to find them for myself.

If your parents already have early dining reserved, you can probably get switched to that now. Just call and have them link the reservations.

I did the same thing on my cruise last month. I booked it a year and a half in advance, then forgot to choose the dining time and had to pick late dining when I did my online check-in. BUT... I was able to get it switched to My Time once I got on board. Just go to the MDR after you've done your muster drill. There will be someone there taking care of requests and ask to be switched. They might not be able to give you what you want, but I've done it twice before and got it changed. Good luck!

I had the turkey on Christmas and was given two different kinds. One piece was a roll that was like... stuffed. It was okay. It had good flavor, but it wasn't turkey. But then I had two large pieces of carved turkey that were also good. I think my wife took a photo and I could probably upload it if you're interested. The stuffing was the most interesting thing to me. It was very moist and had raisins in it. Which, I would have thought was totally weird if not for my wife. Her mom always made stuffing with raisins in it, and that was the only time I've ever had stuffing like that before. Needless to say, she was thrilled that it had raisins, since that was the first time she'd had stuffing with raisins in years since her mom passed some time back. When we were on the ship, we planned a night at the steakhouse for the night that the menu looked least good for us. We picked our last night, which had the same menu as your fourth night. And after seeing the pictures of your duck and pork chop, I'm kinda bummed that I missed those. They look really great!

It was my first time with the new menus too. I was pretty happy with them overall. I know you said you liked the BBQ Beef Spring Roll. That was one of the few missteps for me. Mine were basically just some barbecue beef in a spring roll wrapper. I sorta wondered if that was the way they were supposed to be, or if the cooks on the Spirit just hadn't gotten the hang of those yet.

Thanks for posting these! I forgot to take screenshots of the menus when I was on the Spirit over Christmas. Quick question: Did you try ordering anything from the Vegan menu at all? We tried a couple times, but both times the waiter just looked confused, left for a moment and came back to tell us it wasn't available.

It wasn't bad, actually. We still got the elegant night menu on Night 7 and it had the prime rib and lobster. I think since the menu change, there's really only one elegant night menu anyway.

We embarked on Dec. 23. So I kinda was expecting Christmas Eve (our first sea day) to be an elegant night menu and Christmas Day to just be the special menu. But on Christmas Eve, we just had a normal casual night menu.

That's what we did a couple weeks ago when we were in Freeport. We'd planned to take a taxi to the beach, but the weather was overcast, so we just decided to shop around the port area. YMMV, but we thought the shopping really sucked. The duty free liquor store was a joke (literally, the cashier had his head down taking a nap and there was barely anything on the shelves) and everything else in port was either extremely overpriced or cheap crap. It was the worst shopping area we've ever seen - and we've been all over the Caribbean.

I think it's very negotiable. Probably depending on what ship is in port and what time you go by and how their day seems to be going. I feel like I probably could have gotten it a little cheaper if I haggled, but it was just easier to hand him a hundred dollar bill and be on my way.

I've seen people post things about Soul Play that don't match up with our experience, but this is what happened on our trip. We had four sea days and Soul Play had two sessions scheduled for each of the sea days. One was a painting session at 9 am and one was a craft session at 3 pm. We noticed that you could reserve your spot for each session early on embarkation day through the Hub app. Before we even left Mobile, there were no spots left for either session on the first sea day. My daughters reserved spots for both sessions on the second sea day and one of the remaining sea days. There was no charge for any of them. The first painting session, they did a painting of an island with a palm tree. The second time it was a sunset. For crafts, they did a paper Christmas ornament they could decorate with stickers and the second craft session they made a cute little message-in-a-bottle necklace. They really enjoyed it a lot each time.

I know you weren't asking me, but Maya Chan in Costa Maya and Nachi Cocom in Cozumel are the two very favorite all-inclusive beaches that my wife and I go to. And because of that, those are our two favorite ports. When we're looking for cruises, we will often look first at itineraries that include both those ports, just because we love those beaches so much. Now, I know the prices have gone up in recent months, so I don't think it's $65 for either of them anymore, but they're still great deals. Also, the price for Maya Chan includes transportation to and from the beach, but you have to get a taxi to and from Nachi Cocom.

I won one last week on the Spirit playing trivia.

The island is super small, so you can totally do both. That's what we did last week when we were in Bimini. we rented the cart and drove it through town until the main road just ended at Radio Beach, which is a lot nicer/more secluded spot than the main beach off the dock.