Usually a ship of this size has multiple lounges that are active at night and used for games, bingo and demonstrations during the day. The specialty restaurants occupied what would have been allocated to these lounges. The only areas available for the daytime activities were the Centrum reception area and the Galaxy lounge. This left practically no area for peace & quiet, which is one reason some people take a cruise.

Throughout the ship, there was a noticeable lack of trash containers. As a result, people left papers, empty glasses, etc anywhere, including in the elevators. This trash remained quite a while before it was collected.

The published ratio of passengers to crew on the Spirit is about 2:1. This is the same as most Celebrity ships. However, the Celebrity crew seems to be more visible and available than that of the Spirit. There was a lot of work that could have been done but was not done. For example, the PA System was not working during the lifeboat drill, many light bulbs in the public areas were out for the duration of the cruise and no additional staff was available to assist people to carry food trays in rough seas. Read more