Carnival Spirit Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,075 reviews

1st time family cruise - Definitely do it again

Review for Australia & New Zealand Cruise on Carnival Spirit
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cazzenk
2-5 Cruises • Age 40s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Aug 2013
Cabin: Interior Quad
Traveled with children

This was our first cruise as a family of 4. We have a 2.5 year old girl and a boy that's nearly 6. I was a little unsure how this would work with their age groups, but thought I'd still go ahead with booking the cruise. I did my research and it did seem that Carnival Spirit was more suited for children - and I was right it seems. I'll do my review in sections as below:

Embarkment - was very quick and really well run and organised and your on the ship in no time. Our check in was 1pm, but they start letting people on from 12pm and the ship stays docked till 6pm when it leaves, but everything on the ship is happening. My son and husband played mini golf straight away, we settled in our room, had lunch at the buffet, had ice cream, took photo's with Sydney as the backdrop and of course you can drink straight away! ***there is the offer to book the carnival transfer bus from airport to the boat, but it's normally $20pp so with a family of 4 that would have been $80. I never booked but whilst waiting at the airport we approached one of the girls holding the carnival cruise sign and she said we could do family rate of $50. We caught taxi back from the boat to the airport though and being a quieter sunday morning it was only $45 so that may be the way to do****

Kids Club - was fantastic. All the workers are American girls and they really are fantastic - so good with the kids. They are open from 9am-11:45 every morning and then they shut for lunch. They reopen from 2pm till 4pm and sometimes 5pm on port days and then shut again until dinner. They offer a service where you can drop your kids off at 5:30 in the buffet dinning room which is cornered off just for the kids and all the kids club kids eat together and then the workers walk them back to the kids club. The kids club is all free up until 10pm and then after that they charge $8 per child per hour and you can leave them in there until 3am. We picked our 2 children up at 10pm, 11pm, 12pm and 1am on separate nights - it depending on what late shows were on. They get the kids to make things, they do face painting, they can play computer games, play with toys and they watch movies. At nite when it's getting a little later they put pillows our and blankets and the kids fall asleep.

Cabin Review

Interior Quad

Cabin 44

Was in cabin 6321 so had an inside one. Can't complain was perfect for what we paid pretty much. Had the queen bed for the adults and the two bunk beds pulled down for our children with ladders which was fine. Only problem is when the bunks are down then the two people sleeping in the double bed can't see the tv at all!!Bathroom was fine - big enough I thought. Good to have two bench spaces plus extra side tables and a little table to put things on.Plenty of mirror space. Wardrobes and cupboards were fine - plenty of hanging space and shelf space.Hairdrier was very weak in power and then overheated very quickly and stopped working altogether.

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