The Spirit is a great small ship experience with recently refurbished spaces and exceptional service. This itinerary was great with 4 Alaskan port cities and one day cruising Hubbard Glacier.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
We arrived at about 5 pm on the bus from Anchorage, and had an easy time boarding and finding our cabin.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
4 out of 5
Typical cruise fare; food for the masses. The main dining room was fine, and we ate there most of the time. The buffet is smaller than on the mega ships, but was never crowded. We ate at Cagney's steakhouse twice with our included meals, and the quality of the specialty restaurants on NCL has definitely declined over the past decade. The sides at Cagney's were cold; they serve them in aluminum ramkins (small metal pots) and even the baked potato was barely warm. It had one third cut off and placed on top to make the potato fit into the ramkin, so there was no way to "mash it" like you can a foil wrapped potato. The best side was actually the french fries, that arrived hot. The steak is good, although I suspect they are no longer using USDA Prime beef. It's basically lower than the quality you get at Outback Steakhouse.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
The smaller ships have less activities overall, but you can expect the usual audience participation game shows and things like Bingo.
Entertainment
4 out of 5
The singers and dancers were good, but the material they are given seems a bit lacking. The "Blazing Boots" country music show featured the "sex, beer and country music" genre of songs, and the artists did a good job. The content is more adult because of the choice of songs, but not too risque for the kids. The show suffers from the music arrangements, though, as they all sounded alike, with much more percussion than usually found in country music.
The Elements show doesn't seem to have a story line; it's a bad mash up of interpretative dance, trance style music, aerial acrobatics and overly-dramatic illusionist acts (think David Copperfield, but more dramatic and cheesy). We didn't finish it.
The live musicians were talented, but the acoustics in the atrium are horrendous, and they should move from having amplified acts there to just acoustic musicians (piano, or guitar duos would work).
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
As usual with NCL, we found the service fantastic, with great interactions throughout our cruise.
The one incident that appalled us, which we reported to the safety manager, was during tendering in Juneau. The tender behind us decided to "race" our tender, overtook us, and cut off our pilot, so that he had to decelerate and perform evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision. We weren't alone in complaining about it; at least one other passenger was there to complain about it.
Ship Quality
5 out of 5
The refurbished Spirit is beautiful. What a great, smallish ship (compared to the behemoths with 4,000 passengers). You don't have to go through a smokey casino to get to anyplace other than the comedy club. Evidently, the casino is non-smoking on the Spirit, which is a nice change.
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
The cabin is smallish, but our only real complaint are the small bedside tables. Rather than drawers, they are open-backed shelves that allow things to fall through too easily. There is one USB port built into the very nice reading light on both sides of the headboard.
The balcony is small; probably about 30 to 36" deep, so that a chair cannot fit facing the ocean. They have to be positioned facing each other.
But the cabin itself is nicely appointed, with new furniture and finishes. The bed was firm but still comfortable.
Ship tip
We like to put a nightlight in the bathroom so we don't have to turn on the main light during the night. There is an outlet in the bathroom, for shavers, that is in the cieling. We didn't notice it for the first night. It's a two pronged outlet that works for small LED nightlights.
Wow, are hotel prices high in Anchorage! We paid $321 for a single night at the Fairfield Inn, the cheapest of the options we saw. I think the same cruise from Victoria to Seward would be less expensive, if you could get an afternoon flight on disembarkation day and not have to stay over.
Alaska is always a luck of the draw kind of place because of changing weather. Our day cruising Hubbard Glacier was foggy, and the glacier wasn't actively calving. We visited Hubbard Glacier on a prior trip and it was clear and the glacier was active. Not a slam on NCL or Alaska at all, just the nature of the beast when viewing nature.
While NCL advertised this as a dock, it was a tender port. We took a private excursion with Harve & Marv's Alaska Adventures, and they warned us back in April that the Spirit was tendering in. NCL, however, continued to list Juneau as a dock port up until sailing. We had a tight schedule so paid NCL an extra $179 for priority tendering, because we didn't want to miss the private excursion we paid for.
The Harve & Marv's excursion was a small 6 person boat with captain, and we only had four people. It was a great intimate way to go whale watching without using a big boat. Highly recommended.
Vancouver is a great city, and we had some time before our flight. So we walked around the well developed harbor to visit the parks, fountains and other things of interest like the seaplanes before heading to the airport using the Canada Line subway. The Canada Line subway goes from the waterfront, in front of Canada Place, directly to the airport in about 20 minutes. The fare for us, as seniors, was $3.05 each. Can't beat the convenience and economy of the Canada Line.
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