We were on the NCL Spirit's 6/28/08 cruise going to Puerto Rico, Tortola, and Samana. We are a family of four from Long Island, sailing on the Spirit for the second time; the first time was two years ago, which went to St. Thomas, Tortola, and Bermuda. We were disappointed that the Spirit had changed the itinerary from St. Thomas to San Juan, due to some mechanical problems. We wanted to take an excursion to St. Johns, since the last time the excursions going there were all booked. Puerto Rico turned out to be very interesting, but more about that later.

Embarkation: The embarkation was from Pier 88. The fee for parking at the pier was $240, paid upfront. It was chaotic in the beginning because we never received the cruise tickets from NCL! We had to get on line where ONE PERSON checked our names from a printed list. We were not alone. There were a lot of people on this line. (I don't know why NCL didn't include the tickets in the packet they sent out. It would've been so much easier!) Afterwards, we got on yet another line to be photographed and issued the keycards. Being a Latitude member, we got a shorter line. After waiting for a while, we boarded the ship, which was around noon. (NCL had fixed the dent on the front of the ship from the accident that happened on the Memorial Day Weekend. The ship looked as good as new.) We were greeted with drinks in champagne glasses. It was a nice welcome. We had a wonderful lunch at the Windows restaurant and were ready for our cruise!

Room: Our room was bigger than the other inside staterooms. There was actually legroom on the floor in the evening when the beds were set up for sleeping. The closet had plenty of hangers but not enough shelves. Luckily I bought along a collapsible closet organizer. It came in handy for putting away t-shirts, swimsuits and other necessities. You need an alarm clock. There were none in the room. (Of course, you can always arrange for a wakeup call.) The safe in the closet worked and came in handy. After we emptied out our luggage, we put them under one of the beds. Our room stewards were Nemencio and Tito. They always kept our room clean and bucket full of ice. NCL will charge you for opening any water bottles in the room. We brought our own. The nightly towel animals on the bed were cute, but we lost the novelty from seeing them before. The bathroom was a nice size. There were three little knobs on top of the outer shower door for hanging clothing, but they weren't very easy to use. I brought along my own suction cup hooks, which were easier to use. (Yes, I remembered to remove them on my last day!) Read more