Norwegian Spirit Review
norwegian spirit- wonderful first cruise experience
Rating by category
Additional details
My husband and I were looking to experience our first cruise and researched each and every cruise line before we booked an Eastern Caribbean cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines on the Norwegian Spirit. Even though we read countless bad reviews about this cruise we booked anyways because we figured we would decide for ourselves. Let me tell you that it was worth every penny! Because we were celebrating five year our five year anniversary and had not vacationed since our honeymoon we decided to invest in an AD suite which included concierge and butler service. I'm not sure about the service provided to those who booked cabins which did not include this service however we took full advantage of having these wonderful people help make out cruise experience a wonderful experience.
Embarkation
We arrived pretty early at the terminal in NYC and were probably one of the first ten people there. We waited a very long time to board the ship because the cruise before us had some bad weather and we heard that they even had to bypass one of the ports. We were supposed to start boarding at 10 am however the ship did not arrive until about 11 am. when we started to line up to board it was a mad rush to get in line. My husband and I were upset because we were one of the first at the pier however were pushed aside by a mad rush of people and would've had to wait in the long line until one of the pier employees saw us and put us in a special line because she had seen we were there so early. After checking in we were brought to the VIP lounge where the people who had booked suites were able to wait with drinks and a snack while the other people had to wait in the long line to check in. We were greeted by our concierge, Humberto, in the lounge and he went over all of the services that was offered to the suites. My husband and I took advantage of this service already and had Humberto make a reservation for us at Le Bistro for 7 pm that night. Another perk of being in the suites was that we were the first ones to board which enabled us to be the first ones in Raffles, the buffet, to have lunch while we waited for our suite to be ready. It was not more than a half an hour until we heard the message that our suite was ready.