Marella Spirit Review
Rating by category
Additional details
After enjoying a great cruise on Thomson Spirit last year on the North Cape Explorer, my wife and I were attracted to this cruise to Norway and Spitzbergen primarily because this cruise was not only going up into the Arctic, but also up into the high Arctic and the island of Spitzbergen in the Svalbard group. This is the furthest north that any Thomson ship has ever been.
The other advantage with this cruise was that it sailed from Newcastle so there would be no flying.
We arrived in Newcastle by car and headed to the International terminal there we found everything signposted for Thomson Cruise and we were shown where to drop off our luggage. This year there was quite a long delay dropping off our luggage but as soon as this was completed we went straight to the car park. There was a shuttle bus from the car park to the terminal and the check in desks.
Cabin Review
We were shown to our cabin (which we had last year) which was on deck 4 and was an outside cabin. The cabin had two single beds arranged in an "L" formation and a large porthole/window. The room was quite spacious,surprisingly bigger than our previous cruise ships. The wardrobe space was very good, two quite large wardrobes with plenty of coat hangers. Shelves above for small luggage and room for some luggage in the bottom. There is also a safe which has to be rented if required. There is also lots of room under the beds for suitcases etc. There is a dressing table with three drawers each side and in one of the drawers there is a hair dryer. There is a 220V and a 110V socket above the dressing table. Remember to take your two pin adaptor. I forgot mine this year and had to pay a high price for one onboard. Remembering last year, we took one of those square adaptors that takes a couple of appliances, to plug into your two pin adaptor, as some phone chargers will not fit due to the shape of the charger plug. On the other side of the cabin were three large drawers and a container for wine or other bottles. Suprise, suprise, this year there was a kettle with tea and coffee and milk. I heard that Thomson are fitting all cabins with a kettle? The cabin had a TV with Sky News, BBC World News, Sky Sports News, two movie channels, ship channels and some other channels. The bathroom was clean with plenty of room and an easy to operate shower. The cabin was very clean overall.