Norwegian Spirit Cruise Reviews - Reviews

This is my second time doing the same intinerary.  NCL made a couple changes, instead of Turkey, they added Kotor-Montenegro and Dubrovnik-Croatia....Amazing places. I love the Free Style theme, dress up if I want to. The food was ok. The shore excursions are over priced BUT some are worth it; e.g.: Naples: if you ONLY want to go to Pompeii, you pay $15 per person for a bus and at Pompaii  you can get a guide for $15 extra.  BUT if you want to go to Capri,Sorrento and Pompeii, it is better to pay a NCL shore excursion $325, includes lunch and its worry free that you are going to miss the cruise ship.  Like I said before the shore excursions are over priced but you pay for a unique service.  

I particularly enjoyed Pisa with its leaning tower, Dubrivnik which was so picturesque, and finishing with a cruise into spectacular Venice. There was plenty to enjoy onboard with fine restaurants, music, and shows

This is my second time doing the same intinerary.  NCL made a couple changes, instead of Turkey, they added Kotor-Montenegro and Dubrovnik-Croatia....Amazing places. I love the Free Style theme, dress up if I want to. The food was ok. The shore excursions are over priced BUT some are worth it; e.g.: Naples: if you ONLY want to go to Pompeii, you pay $15 per person for a bus and at Pompaii  you can get a guide for $15 extra.  BUT if you want to go to Capri,Sorrento and Pompeii, it is better to pay a NCL shore excursion $325, includes lunch and its worry free that you are going to miss the cruise ship.  Like I said before the shore excursions are over priced but you pay for a unique service.  

ThE stops we may on our cruise were fabulous.  The cruise it self was just okay.  

The food was okay.  The boat itself was just okay.  We did have a nice time

We loved our cruise!  The food was delicious, the service was great, the excursions were amazing.  We would do it again in a heartbeat!  Our only complaint was that there is a charge for Room Service, and that sometimes we smelled sewage in the bathroom.  

It was a trip to remember with great memories.  Everything was fantastic.  We met great people on the cruise and the staff was very friendly.  Would highly recommend this ship and destinations for anyone.  

Having taken prior cruises on the Norwegian Jade and Jewel, we were overall very disappointed in our experience on the Norwegian Spirit.

Until the last 2 days of our cruise, we were unable to dependably use our cabin toilet regularly.  Every morning, it would refuse to flush.  It wasn't clogged, it simply refused to work and it was not until evening that the problem was resolved, only to repeat the following day. This lead to our cabin smelling like an outhouse for much of our vacation.

Another disappointment was the quality of the food served on the voyage. It was not good, unable to compete with a Hometown Buffet in terms of appeal and proper cooking.  In the main dining rooms, the menu descriptions would lead you to believe you were ordering one thing only to be completely surprised by the result (eg. grilled beet and shallots as a side dish was pickled beets served cold, baked potato soup was pureed into a bland paste like offering) Steaks were dry and tough and fish was overcooked. One lasagna would have been rejected by Hungry Man frozen dinners. The service staff was excellent as always, but the food prep was amateurish at best. The sole exception was Cagney's Steakhouse specialty dining room which was very good.

 The entertainment was hit and miss. We've come to expect excellent entertainment offerings on Norwegian, but generally this cruise did not hold up to that standard with only a couple of exceptions.

On previous cruises, we took advantage of making a deposit for future cruises on Norwegian. This trip we decided we will forgo future Norwegian offerings following this experience.

Montenegro Croatia and Mykonos stops.

Special dining package.

Friendly and attentative staff throughout.

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Absolutely fabulous cruise.

Only two critisms that the air conditioning is way to cold and makes evenings on board in bars and restaurants uncomfortable.

The entertainment could do with being a little more mixed.  The deck party music needs to cater for a wider audience.  Too much Latin American dance music towards the end of the cruise.

   This ship was very clean and the staff helpful. One thing I would like to see offered is pay per view movies in your room. My husband and I aren't into the nightlife scene and prefer to spend our evenings relaxing with each other. It would be great to be able to select a movie to watch! The television options are terrible.

   We both had the ultimate beverage package mainly to get sodas (although the alcoholic beverages were nice, too!) I see no reason why one should pay for the sodas in the minibar! Why go downstairs to a bar to order a diet pepsi when you could just drink the ones in the fridge? That's inconvenient and a bit of a rip off.

This cruise is absolutely AMAZING from start to beginning. The staff gives you every single day a personalized royalty style treatment and goes above and beyond what they can to make it the best trip of your life. The trip is guided for an older crowd, but as a 25 year old couple, we had the most amazing time. Our only issue was directly with out booking agent (JetBlue) so it is always better just to book directly with Norwegian or any other service. We are so pleased with the trip we got back 2 days ago and are already planning next years adventure. 

10 of our family joined and enjoyed the cruise. The service, food, shore excursions were so good. We ate dinner at the main dining room, and enjoyed great food and services in Garden Main Dinning room. Very relaxed or you can dress up to the max. A lot of opinions to do during the day or night if you want.  

Would I recommend this cruise? In short ,Yes! Why? Price, accommodations and port of calls.  This cruise ship was a great way to visit fun places in a short period of time while having a place to go home every night.  You must keep in mind that you are given about 8 to 9 hours to visit the cities and points of interest, so you find yourself running like crazy.  On this trip, I wish there would had been more time at Mykonos, Rome, Naples and/or Pisa/Florence and this could had been done if the cruise line would had skipped Toulon, though a nice little town, not the best way to impress your guest.  Yet again, given that most guest were older (over 50) a stroll in a small town works just fine.

Tip of advice to those that won't take the tours with the cruise line:

- Go online and pick the places you want to visit at each city

- Search and plan the train schedules that you will use in each city you visit

- Find the best and fastest way to get to and from the port to your point of interest

- Hop - On - Hop Off types of excursions work best t if you want to take pictures  from outside the venues

- No time for long museum visits - you miss a lot if you do, save it for when you visit just one city for multiple days

- Get a SIM card for your cell phone so that you can use Google map to get around - get info from your cell phone provider

- Carry some cash for last minute taxi rides

Food

We dinned in at one of their restaurant only 4 times, servers were prompt and courteous.  Food was good and provided many options.

Most of the trip we decided to eat from the buffet at upper deck because we returned late from the excursions.  The buffet provided plenty of options to choose from and stayed open a little late.  The food was very good and always fresh.

Beverages

Plenty of options: wines, liquors, and if you are an american beer drinker then you are for a treat, order a six pack of Coors Light as the bottles are the 16 oz, rather than the 12 oz on all other beers, this will get you more for your money, but if Coors is not your beer then of course they have many more options.

Room/Restroom

We had a room with a window and it was spacious for the two of us.  It was very quite and the A/C worked just fine, no issues.  The bathroom had a sliding door separating the toilet from the rest of the restroom (keep in mind that his might be the standard for the highest price room but not expected for the $699 package that we paid for).  The closet had more than enough space for our clothes, yet we only travel with two small carry on bags but it should be good for 2 big bags.

Entertainment

The night shows were good and fun to watch from magic shows to comedian to aerial performances.

I wish they would have had events/games/group dancing in the pool deck as we had great weather throughout the trip.

In summary, great value for the price, good food, entertainment, and nice ports. 

I have to admit, I had some trepidations about the cruise after reading some mixed reviews and hearing of plumbing issues, sewage smell problems, and poor service from staff.  Our experience included none of those issues.  It was a very pleasant and smooth cruise.  I found the boat and the crew to be very good.  Everything ran smoothly and all of the crew was anxious to please.  It is only our second cruise (both with Norwegian), so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but I spoke with a number of more experienced cruisers on the ship and they all felt the same about our cruise. 

While the Spirit is the smallest and oldest ship in the fleet, it has a charm and sophistication that we enjoyed.  Our first cruise was on the Dawn 10 years ago, so it's hard to recall everything from that cruise, but I definitely enjoyed this ship and cruise more than our first. 

The Spirit is a well laid-out ship, with nice deck and pool area (which never felt overcrowded, even on sea days).  The restaurants were all very good (even the free ones - The Garden was our favorite).  The Windows restaurant was also very nice, especially the view through the windows at the back of the boat.

The ports of call were amazing (except Toulon, which we sort of skipped, other than a brief walk through the main marketplace area).  Getting on and off the ship was very well organized and was generally a quick process (the nice part about a smaller boat).

In summary, we loved our cruise, and would definitely do it again. It was a relaxing and enjoyable experience. 

Thanks Norweigan!!

One final note:  Dave, the Cruise Director, did an outstanding job in my opinion.  I don't know when he slept, because he was always up and about keeping things going.  He records his daily TV sessions at 4:00 AM.  Crazy man!!

We had lots of favourite parts - food, entertainment, staff, cleanliness, destinations, facilities, swimming pools, outdoor seating etc. etc. What we did not like was paying exhorbitant prices for drinks  of any kind  and having to pay $18 per person perday for gratuities.  The only other complaint we have is that we were unable to dock in Venice at 2.00 pm as Norwegian Jade was in our berth, especially as Venice was one of our main destinations but as we got in so late we did not get to see Venice at all.  I would still recommend this cruise as on the whole it was good value for money. only other criticism would be lack of help finding coaches for trips not booked with Norwegian!!!!!

Norwegian is quite satisfactory; we are pleased with the cleaning, the somewhat comfort of the staterooms, most of the food; most of the workers and certainly most of the shows and the band. We were disappointed with the casino, not with most of the friendly workers like Sasa and Belina, but with the amazing never winning there. Food was improved from other cruises and for us, not wanting to spend a long time eating, the buffet was fantastic - there were some excellent helpers: the guy omelet maker, the helpers: Rade, the Colombia lady, etc. The specialty restaurants now with a la carte shows the NCL CEO greed. You should remember that if people are eating at the specialty restaurants, you are saving their meals in the other dining rooms.

suggestions: 1. during the cocktail for latitude, some of the crew should stick around longer - it's a god marketing time. Not just be introduced and leave especially because food and drinks don't last long. Most of the shows (especially the Norwegian band/ dancers/ singers and Aaron Shaw) were excellent.

2. Sea days are nice but you should have some interesting stops as well. (We like your new cruises to So America; Australia and Asia)

We hope you try to always improve so cruising will be in our agenda.

My favorite part of the cruise was the excellent food served at the many restaurants.  I was disappointed that there was no announcement or assistance in observing landmarks when we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar.  Yes, I would recommend this cruise to friends.  I was, also, upset that Customer Service offered no assistance for my receiving an important package being mailed from the USA to me in Barcelona.

My husband and I just returned from our cruise.  We loved the stops that were made.  Rooms were clean, staff was friendly and helpful.  The shows were good.  My only reason for not giving 5 stars is that there isn't a lot to do on this ship other than play in the casinos and Bingo.  That was tolerable, because we were only at sea for 2 days - so we just curled up with good books.   Some reviews mentioned the ship being small - yes it is - but that also allows you to port in some places that the larger ships can't get in to.  This was a little older crowd than we were used to - not sure why.  We are 49/55 - everyone seemed to be 60-70. The ship is a little outdated - but honestly I am not on a cruise ship for that purpose.  It was clean.  We cruise to visit locations. Getting off and on the ship for ports was very simple.  The only other complaint was there was some inconsistencies with the dress code.  One night my husband was asked to put on long pants (he was wearing nice dress shorts and collared shirt).  Every night we were at Windows or Garden Room- there were many men in shorts and old t shirts.  My husband looked overdressed compared to them.  I like the dress code - just make it consistent.    Great vacation over all.  

Great ship and extremely friendly crew. We like going on smaller ships as the staff can be more attentive. The food in the buffet was good and there was a wide variety to choose from. The shows were entertaining and the drinks were strong and reasonably priced. The ports were good but their island left a lot to be desired when compared to Disney and RCL. They only offered hot dogs and hamburgers where Disney and RCL have a full buffet. I would recommend this ship and NCL to anyone. I like the free style dining, eating when and where I want.

Booked because only NCL out of Canaveral.  Thought it to be a bit overpriced for and older ship, not recently updated.  Found it in relatively good shape with excellent crew & service although cruise director and schedueled daily events left something to be desired.    Had been to all ports except KEY  west  before , liked the town and would go back.  Took 3 ship tours due to credits, could have done them all on our own for same or less $.  Conch train tour Key West good, Sting ray city Cayman fun, Bamboo Beach food & drink ok...beach sucked for wading or swimming.  GSC island beach rocky.