Marella Spirit Review
Rating by category
Additional details
I chose this cruise because it fitted in with when my twin sister could take time off work and was a reasonable price (it was a birthday treat for her). I also liked the fact that tips and service charges are included in the price - I've been on other cruise lines where they haven't and it all adds up. I also liked the intinerary. Marella offer flights from a number of different UK airports but that wasn't a factor for me as I live in London.
I was a little worried about the cruise before I went having read some reviews that were pretty bad, especially as it was my sister's and my niece's first cruise experience and I didn't want it to be a bad one. However, I'm happy to say that the ship was pretty good. It's not the smartest one I've been on but everything was clean and well maintained as far as I saw. It's the smallest cruise ship I've been on and I agree that the sun loungers get occupied pretty quickly. The bars fill up pretty quickly at night too. In fact, we started going to dinner earlier so we could make sure we got a seat at the 8.30 performance. You need to be there at least twenty minutes before the show starts. The other one is at 10.30 p.m.
The ship's vibrations were pretty noticeable a lot of the time and that was the thing my sister and my niece disliked most about the ship.
Cabin Review
We were in an inside cabin, which was better than I expected. The top bunk bed is pretty close to the ceiling and the lights. And if you sit on the bottom bunk bed, your head will touch the bottom of the one above and we're about 5"5'. If I went again with 3 adults sharing, I'd want a better cabin. But there was a lot of storage space and the suitcases fit under the beds. The bathroom was very clean and adequate. In fact, the shower was bigger than the one I had on a P&O ship. There was a tiny crack in the basin but that was the only sign of wear and tear I spotted. We were on Deck 3. My real bugbear was the fact that there were only 2 sockets in the room, one 110 and one 220 volt but they were just above the dressing table so you could only put a standard size plug and adaptor in. I'd brought an adaptor that has 4 USB sockets so you can charge up more than one device at a time but I couldn't use it. I'd suggest anyone going gets an adaptor for both voltages as we only had an adaptor for one. Our stewards, Raquel and Edmund did a great job and learnt our names the first day.