We just got back from an NCL cruise on the Spirit. Over all we had a great cruise. I should start off by saying that I have never had anything less on any line.

The staff gave their all and were one of the friendliest staffs I have ever seen. They seemed to really enjoy their work. We almost never passed a team member that did not speak to us and it seemed very real that they wanted to do this. Even those panting the ship and such would speak most times. Our Cabin steward was great but at the same time seemed to have more cabins to take care of then I have seen. We left the room in the am before 7:30 every day but normally he was not able to get to our room until after 2:30 most days. Evenings we went to dinner at 5 or 5:30 each day and often times we were returning to our cabin after 9:30 at night, to find that he had not been able to get to our room before we returned. I have never seen that before. Once again he was great and spoke to us each time we saw him by name. He just seemed to have more to do than I have seen before. Really it was no problem with us but just something to note.

While the food was very good, at the same time it was the cruise that I feel had the lowest grade food of all we have been on. They are set up very much to have you do specialty restaurants and I think outside of those they do not give you the best selection or menus. I missed the cold fruit soups that cruise ships normally serve. I did tell one of the people in the Windows dining room about this and she told me that they would love to produce one for me the next night for dinner. I did not have the soup produced as I would not want that treatment but at the same time it is so nice that they would! I thought that was really over and above and very nice. Our food was almost always hot as it should be and prepared rather well. Just not as special as I find on Celebrity or even Royal Caribbean. I think that NCL should offer a choice of having a set time and set servers as I know many do enjoy that. They state that they want to give you a choice and that is the choice I would make if I had the option. While the servers do all they can to provide you the best service, they cannot get to really know you. I did ask and was told that this would not be possible since they rotate the servers around. We ate at the steak house one night and it was very good. I think if you went to the specialty restaurants, that you would have very high end quality meals. NCL I think can be lower cost and maybe you just need to take that into account when you are looking at the meals they serve. On a positive note, the main dining room was open every day for lunch and I know most lines have made it that they only open on sea days. We had most of our lunches in the dining room and did enjoy it. On the negative side, the menu did not change in this room for lunch. Still we enjoyed it. Read more