My family of four just returned from our week on the Spirit. We had inside cabin 5035, one of the extra big cabins featured on the Spirit. We booked this cruise more than a year before the sail date because of the great rate at the time. This is cruise 20+ for my wife and me, the kids have slightly fewer cruises under their belts. We have previously sailed with NCL on the Jewel.

While the Spirit is a smaller ship without the bells and whistles of NCL's newer ships, we really liked her. There is a charm about a smaller ship that is refreshing. The ship handled the crowds very well most of the time. Occasionally Raffles buffet would get a little crowded. Mostly the problems with crowds there were from those who we call "wanderers" - people who don't know where they want to go and stop and spin around and then wander slowly toward something that catches his or her eye.

Service was generally good. We ate in the main dining rooms on most nights (4 of the 7). The first night's dinner was not good, but the service was fine. The rest of the meals in the main dining rooms were generally pretty good. The service was only bad one night, the last night, when dinner took nearly twice as long as normal (we spent more time sitting waiting for the next course than we did eating the course when it finally arrived). On two nights we went to Shogun. We enjoyed the menu there very much. One night we "ate" at Raffles. We returned around 5:30ish from our St. Thomas excursion, got cleaned up, and decided to go to Raffles to eat rather than try anywhere else. That night every dish, it seemed, was a seafood dish. Most of the family are not seafood eaters, so that night's dinner was a bust. Read more