Some thoughts on our 11/6 Spirit Cruise

Just wanted to say a few things about our 11/6 cruise on the Spirit out of NOLA.

This was our second cruise in a row on this ship. We were on her back in March when we got off to a very bad start. That was the cruise where the ship had been diverted toward Key West due to a medical emergency and didn't arrive in New Orleans until after 5:00 p.m. We finally got into our cabin around 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning. We got to Costa Maya late in the afternoon and many tours had been cancelled. Etc. etc. etc. What I'm saying is that even though no one blamed NCL for the ship being late, lots of frustration ensued and I'm sure it colored our perception of the cruise.

What a difference this time. They actually left 10 minutes early. I joked to my husband that they now only owed us 6 hours and 50 minutes from the last time.

I'm not sure what they did in dry dock, but they didn't work much on our cabin. The first foot or so of the lower grout in our shower was covered in something black, maybe mildew or just the stain from it. The shower itself only put out luke-warm water. They did fix it for us after a couple days of us just putting up with it. There was no string in the clothes-line in the shower. The glass on our balcony was cloudy and no amount of wiping would clean it up. And there was paint everywhere on the glass around the metal holding it up. I didn't remember from last time, but aren't there usually two nightstands? We only had one and a floor lamp thingy that you had to turn on and off by stepping on a little round switch on the floor on the other side. Of course, the floor lamp was on my side, and I really would have liked to have a night stand.

But ... otherwise the trip was just great. The weather was so much better than last March. I know ... NCL doesn't control the weather. Since we took this same cruise twice in a row, we didn't go for any exotic tours, just beach breaks. But they were fine. Did you know that four free margaritas on an empty stomach isn't a good idea? We found that out after the first stop. And we also found out that bug spray is a NECESSITY on Roatan. I'm still itching from no-see-um bites.

But the biggest surprise, I guess you'd call it, is how much we enjoyed eating in the main dining rooms. We got there early, always got a table for two by the window and the food was just fine. After reading a lot of posts on this board, we elected to eat only in the buffet last time, but this time we didn't and were very, very happy with both the food and the service. We aren't gourmands, we eat fairly simply, so we weren't expecting or desiring really fancy food. We even started eating breakfast in the dining room, something we haven't done on any of our previous fifty cruises on any line. The only complaint, if you can call it that, was that the food wasn't really hot when it was served.

We spend a lot of time in our cabin, so our cabin wasn't usually ready in the evening when we got back from dinner. But I understand the amount of work the poor stewards have to do, so we just worked around it by going out on the balcony when he arrived to make up the cabin.

We have already made arrangements for this same cruise AGAIN next March, total of three. My hubby keeps getting offers for "free" cruises through the Caesars/Harrah's chain of casinos. We had another one waiting in the mail when we got home. That will make four. I suppose we'll do the Spirit again the fourth time. We just love cruising out of New Orleans, staying at the Harrah's Casino Hotel before and after the cruise and just enjoying the French Quarter.

Thanks for the review. We are going (next!!) :D Sunday on a Harrah's certificate too and have also upgraded to a balcony. It is our first time and I can't decide whether to spend more of my gambling budget at Harrah's or on the boat. I def. want to keep the "free" cruises coming and I do love the idea of spending time in NO before and after the cruise. :)

Did you have a flat screen and new carpet in your cabin? I don't like the idea of not having a nightstand either. I have what may be a silly question - when we travel we usually only have our room made up every other day - will we have that option on the ship. Many days we would rather not have to deal with housekeeping.

Yes, I do believe we had new carpet (hard to tell) and a flat screen. The only problem we had with the flat screen was getting the remote to work while lying in bed. You had to raise your hand way up to get it to recognize the remote.

We decided to spend less on the ship and concentrate on the land casino. We mostly play the slots although I did pretty well at 3-card poker. The slots were 1) extremely busy and had to get on the better ones and 2) were pretty tight. So we saved our major gambling budget for Harrah's.

I've never heard of anyone only asking for service every other day. It never occurred to us. There were plenty of times that having the steward come in was fairly useless, especially in the evening.

Thanks for the review. We are going (next!!) :D Sunday on a Harrah's certificate too and have also upgraded to a balcony. It is our first time and I can't decide whether to spend more of my gambling budget at Harrah's or on the boat. I def. want to keep the "free" cruises coming and I do love the idea of spending time in NO before and after the cruise. :)....

We're also Harrah's Diamond players and NCL CAS members. I think it's "6 of one, half dozen of the other" as to whether you concentrate your playing on Harrah's or NCL.

If you play more at Harrah's, you'll get the cruise offers, but you'll also get their other offers as well. If you play more on NCL, you'll mainly get NCL's offers, but if you want to do a lot of cruising, that could be better for you.

Over the past 2 years, we have concentrated our play on NCL cruises, and have enjoyed the results in our future cruise offers and ability to get better comps and cheaper upgrades. However, the downside to doing this is that our Harrah's offers have definitely gone downhill.

I think it's all about what you'd be able to prefer to do with your hard earned comps!

Thanks for your review!

It depends on how high a roller you are, of course. If you can afford to really gamble heavy on both, that would be best of course. But we cruise a lot (obviously) and as long as we keep getting the Harrah's free cruises, we really don't feel the need to go all out on the ship. We'd rather keep up our standing with Harrah's.

This is our fourth "free" cruise. One was an 4-day RCCL one I actually won in a drawing at a Harrah's casino in southern Indiana and the three 7-day ones on NCL. We have one scheduled in March and another free offer we will pick up at Caesar's Windsor on Dec. 4. Not playing heavily on the ship itself doesn't seem to be affecting our offers.

Nice to see you had an enjoyable trip.

We enjoyed our trip on Spirit also. We ate all of our meals in the main dining rooms and buffet, and thought both were very good. Our main dining room meals were some of the best we've had on NCL.

We sailed in an inside cabin and only had one nightstand. There was an upholstered chair sitting where a second nightstand "should" have been . I ended up moving the chair to another location in the cabin because I didn't like the idea of having my nose close to it. I placed our suitcases close by and used them to hold my eyeglasses, papers, and book. I would have rather had a second nightstand then I could have set my iced beverages there too. Oh well. I peeked into my relatives cabins (a couple of oceanviews and one balcony), but didn't think to note if they had a second nightstand or not :(.

I'm green with envy over you and many others sailing Spirit more than once. I love the ship, New Orleans, Roatan and Belize and would love to do it again!

Wishing you another awesome trip!

My husband and I were just talking about the cruises out of NOLA over breakfast this morning. Neither of us sees any reason to stop going on that itinerary just because we've been numerous times. Seriously, though, we are going to have to rethink the beach break on Roatan. I still have several open sores (TMI?) from the no-see-um bites and quite a few that aren't serious but still itch occasionally.

I know the Spirit cruises from NOLA will come to an end when she gets transferred to overseas cruises. When we had only one nightstand on a ship ( can't remember which one ) I used one of the life jackets as my nightstand. It worked pretty well. Set it up on end vertically. Just an idea.

Just wanted to say a few things about our 11/6 cruise on the Spirit out of NOLA.

 

This was our second cruise in a row on this ship. We were on her back in March when we got off to a very bad start. That was the cruise where the ship had been diverted toward Key West due to a medical emergency and didn't arrive in New Orleans until after 5:00 p.m. We finally got into our cabin around 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning. We got to Costa Maya late in the afternoon and many tours had been cancelled. Etc. etc. etc. What I'm saying is that even though no one blamed NCL for the ship being late, lots of frustration ensued and I'm sure it colored our perception of the cruise.

 

What a difference this time. They actually left 10 minutes early. I joked to my husband that they now only owed us 6 hours and 50 minutes from the last time.

 

I'm not sure what they did in dry dock, but they didn't work much on our cabin. The first foot or so of the lower grout in our shower was covered in something black, maybe mildew or just the stain from it. The shower itself only put out luke-warm water. They did fix it for us after a couple days of us just putting up with it. There was no string in the clothes-line in the shower. The glass on our balcony was cloudy and no amount of wiping would clean it up. And there was paint everywhere on the glass around the metal holding it up. I didn't remember from last time, but aren't there usually two nightstands? We only had one and a floor lamp thingy that you had to turn on and off by stepping on a little round switch on the floor on the other side. Of course, the floor lamp was on my side, and I really would have liked to have a night stand.

 

But ... otherwise the trip was just great. The weather was so much better than last March. I know ... NCL doesn't control the weather. Since we took this same cruise twice in a row, we didn't go for any exotic tours, just beach breaks. But they were fine. Did you know that four free margaritas on an empty stomach isn't a good idea? We found that out after the first stop. And we also found out that bug spray is a NECESSITY on Roatan. I'm still itching from no-see-um bites.

 

But the biggest surprise, I guess you'd call it, is how much we enjoyed eating in the main dining rooms. We got there early, always got a table for two by the window and the food was just fine. After reading a lot of posts on this board, we elected to eat only in the buffet last time, but this time we didn't and were very, very happy with both the food and the service. We aren't gourmands, we eat fairly simply, so we weren't expecting or desiring really fancy food. We even started eating breakfast in the dining room, something we haven't done on any of our previous fifty cruises on any line. The only complaint, if you can call it that, was that the food wasn't really hot when it was served.

 

We spend a lot of time in our cabin, so our cabin wasn't usually ready in the evening when we got back from dinner. But I understand the amount of work the poor stewards have to do, so we just worked around it by going out on the balcony when he arrived to make up the cabin.

 

We have already made arrangements for this same cruise AGAIN next March, total of three. My hubby keeps getting offers for "free" cruises through the Caesars/Harrah's chain of casinos. We had another one waiting in the mail when we got home. That will make four. I suppose we'll do the Spirit again the fourth time. We just love cruising out of New Orleans, staying at the Harrah's Casino Hotel before and after the cruise and just enjoying the French Quarter.

Too bad you only have about 5 more months to cruise her out of NOLA> As for your mildew or whatever, that was our only objection to the Spirit earlier this year: mold in the showere and rust on the balcony, otherwise like you, we had a great cruise and the cabins were, basically in good condition.