Carnival Spirit Cruise Review by Glassartist

I enjoy reading the Cruise Critic reviews before I travel - I find them helpful to a certain degree, especially with tips about ports. Too often, however, I've noticed that many of the reviews linger on the negatives, so I wanted to post one which was complimentary to the hardworking people who work on the ships. During this cruise, just about everyone on the service side of the ship met us with a smile and a hello - often by name (which always blows me away). All the common areas were clean and a pleasure to be in.

I did have a pre-cruise concern about our cabin, which was on Deck 1 (Riviera) and showed that it was very near a wall of the disco (when I looked at the map of the ship pre-cruise). My concern about potential noise in the cabin was completely unfounded. It was a great cabin in what turned out to be a great location. The window was a real treat and our cabin steward, Sudhendri (Henry), took good care of us. We were only one floor from the dining room and very near an elevator bank that took us anywhere we wanted to go!

The ship was clean and the food plentiful (a little bland - but who cares? someone else was cooking!). We had beautiful weather and the seas very calm (the Captain said we should all buy a lottery ticket when we got home, we were so lucky). We had a little rain going into Acapulco, but it stopped when we disembarked and was sort of overcast the rest of the day, but it didn't interfere with the cliff divers! Every other day was sunny and warm with mirror-like seas. On the last day around noon a large pod of whales passed close-by on their way to Mexico - what a treat! Then in the afternoon, they had to do a medical evacuation of a crew member by Coast Guard helicopter - the kind where they don't land, but lower baskets for the people. I felt a little badly about watching (kind of like using someone else's misfortune for entertainment), but how often are you going to get to see something like that in real life? The ship's crew handled it professionally and safely.

The port of Ixtapa/Zihuantanejo was very appealing and I would go back there to spend a relaxing, low key vacation (if I weren't so anxious to see other places!). I would recommend that port to anyone. Picturesque and much smaller than many of the places we've been. Manzanillo is really a container port city and not much to see there (which I had been alerted to by reading the Cruise Critic website). So we booked an all day bus excursion inland to Colima and Colama which we really enjoyed. It is about a 90 minute ride inland to a beautiful agricultural valley (which has 2 volcanoes - one dormant and one active - but, except for a brief moment, they were covered by clouds that day) where they raise limes and coconuts. We visited their historic square, cathedral, archeological museum, then went to see an archeological excavation of a shaft tomb and a village, including pyramids, then on to Colama for lunch in an outdoor restaurant on their lovely town square. It was October 31st, so they were getting ready for celebrations for November 1st (Day of the Dead). Great experience!

We did go to the 2 musical reviews and and really enjoyed them. There was a very enjoyable Country singer most evenings in the Atrium bar. As far as other entertainment went, we really didn't seek it out - my friend and I (we've been friends for over 40 years, but live in different parts of the country now) basically spent 8 days talking! Halloween evening was fun - many people (including us) dressed up for pre and post-dinner activities.

In a nutshell: Embarkation was pretty easy - we were there at the peak time and it only took us about 30 minutes. Disembarkation was a breeze - we were off the ship and in our car by 8:45 a.m. with no lines in sight. We left and returned to the port of San Diego and were able to park directly across the street from the cruise terminal.

The dining room service was very good (thank you Cesar and John) - hot food, served without waiting, good bar service to the table. The buffet hardly ever had a line and always had lots of choices.

I would recommend this cruise and its destinations - for one thing, no one else is doing the 8-days to these cities, so (except for Acapulco, which is a regular cruise ship destination), we were the only ship in the other ports.