Carnival Spirit Review
Rating by category
Additional details
My husband and I travelled on the Carnival Spirit during a 10 day south pacific cruise departing Sydney from 20 - 30 April 2014. We booked an Ocean View Balcony Suite and requested room 6176 due to the great reviews we read about the location of this suite. The Suite is located in the middle of the ship which meant that minimal up and down movement would be experienced. If you are going on this cruise, be sure to pack a first aid kit as the medical centre and medical staff are so useless you’ll be kicking yourself for asking for help in the first place.
We used the online checkin option and could pre-select a check in time. On arrival at the terminal, we dropped our bags off and went to stand in the checkin line. As we had booked an ocean view suite, we could stand in the VIP checkin line (which had no people queuing at the time), however, we had no idea that we could use this line until my husband asked one of the staff members. Once in the VIP queue, we skipped a huge line of people in the normal queue and we were on board the ship within 5 -10 minutes (only because the customs line had no VIP line). We skipped a 45minute to 1 hour queue, which was great.
When checking in we got issued with an ID card which you had to keep on you at all times, on and off the ship. As the ship is ‘cashless’ - all charges are charged via your ID card (that is then linked back to a credit or debit card of your choice). The only way to really keep yourself from losing this card was to buy a lanyard for $6.95 onboard. Had I known that I was going to need this, I would have packed one of the 20 useless lanyards lying in my drawer at home. If you are doing this cruise, bring a lanyard.
Cabin Review
We booked an Ocean View Balcony Suite and requested room 6176 due to the great reviews we read about the location of this suite. The Suite is located in the middle of the ship which meant that minimal up and down movement would be experienced. The room was smaller than I expected however, I’ve never been on a ship before. The beds were curved on the left and right side (I’m guessing so that you don’t fall off) and were extremely comfortable. The room was quiet (except for the occasional kid running up and down the passage). We could not hear our neighbours on either side. The room was very clean and having a balcony with an ocean view was absolutely fantastic. We could feel the ship moving from side to side while at sea but the moving motion was nothing compared to the feeling in the front and back of the ship (side to side and up and down).The room was strangely decorated, just like the rest of the ship but it grows on you after a while. There were 2 plug points in the room and the room had a hair dryer. The balcony gave us some privacy to enjoy the ocean view. We had three chairs on the balcony but no fully reclinable sun deck chairs, which we were expecting after reading one of the reviews on ocean view suites before booking. Our room steward was Agustina who made our trip unforgettable with his infections smile. Not only did he service our room twice a day, he also told us on day one what times he would be coming by at night, in order not to disturb us. So we knew what to expect. We could not have asked for a better room steward.