Bermuda NCL Spirit Notes
Friday, May 15th
I normally try to get to the docks about an hour before official boarding begins. For today's noon boarding start, it means we were aiming for 11am. We got off to a slow start and by the time we were pulling into the Black Falcon Pier area it was closer to 11:30. During embarkation period, they have the Black Falcon area turn into a one way circle. When you first approach the area the public parking garage is to the left. Then there is an unrelated building to the right, and on the other side of that building (say a half block to the right) is the street that goes in front of the dock building itself.
You can't take that right to go to the dock building. Instead you drive straight, passing the garage, until you reach the end of the dock. Then you can take a right and then another right, coming back in the opposite way on the street that passes before the dock building. You can now pull up to it to drop off luggage and passengers, before finishing the loop to get to the parking garage again.
As of 2009 the rates to park were $15/day. Numerous people were doing the system of dropping off one person with all the luggage and having the other person go park the car and return. It is only about a two block walk from the garage to the dock, and these are short blocks.
Once Bob and I were back together we brought the bags over into the luggage line which is outside on the sidewalk. Your bags had to be tagged with official NCL tags at this point. You slowly moved along in line - we were still in line when noon came - and eventually got to a porter who put our bags onto a luggage rack. Then we went with our carry-on luggage into the building itself.
The next line was for security. Every person had to go through an airline-like metal detector and send any carry-ons and keys through an xray machine. This went fairly quickly. Then we were each given a health form - one per family - to fill out. Really this form just asked if you had gone to Mexico recently or had flu-like symptoms. I guess swine flu really does have everyone nervous!
With that piece of paper in hand we moved into the "giant lines". These were broken out into two main snakes - one for Latitudes members and one for non-Latitudes members. Each we at least 5 rows deep (zigging one way, then zagging the other way) and moved quite slowly. We inched along through these in a fairly hot room. We were lucky to run into another pair of CruiseCritics members while in line!
Make sure you do have the health form BEFORE getting into this line though. One family was halfway through the line before they realized they were supposed to have the health form. They asked a nearby NCL employee if they could please have a health form and were told no, that she had to remain in her position. That seemed a less than helpful answer :) Luckily, someone else discovered that there were extra health forms up at the counters for people who needed them.
Finally we worked our way up to the main desk. We handed in our passports, our cruise documentation and a credit card for incidental costs. She took each of our photos with a PC camera unit. We could leave on our glasses for that, but Bob had to take off his baseball cap. This is for identification at all security stations - when you give them your card, your photo pops up so they can tell who should be using the card.
Now we got our keys and were on the ship! There are hand sanitizers EVERYWHERE and they definitely encourage you to use them. When we stepped onto the ship we each handed our key card over to a security person who ran them through his computer, to "log us on" to the ship and to verify our photo with our card. Free Champagne was waiting in the main lobby, and we went right up to the buffet area to get some food.
The buffet area had a TON of food items. Regular salad. Caesar salad. Hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza. Indian items. Vegetarian items. Multiple pastas, Multiple cheeses. Fruit selections. Carved prime rib. Various dessert options. We both had salads. Bob thought the bread pudding was "eh" - very mild, no hint of nutmeg or other spices. The pizza was doughy and lukewarm.
Then we roamed the ship to take a ton of photos of the various locations. Finally at 2 we went down to our room which had just become available. Our luggage wasn't there yet, but at least we could put down our carry-on luggage. We roamed around some more. At 3 they started announcing the mandatory life jacket drill, and said everyone should be at their muster station at 3:30. They repeated this announcement several times and they shut down all other activities (food, drink etc) to encourage people to get to their cabins. We got our life jackets - which they tell you not to put on until you get to the actual station - and headed to our spot. We got there just before 3:30 and were only the second people there! Everyone else started straggling in slowly while the PA system kept prodding people to please go to the station. Finally about 3:45 they started playing the automated message about "We are NCL, we care about your safety." Then about a third of the way through the PA announcement, it just stopped! We all laughed, then waited. And waited. It was only maybe 5 minutes but it felt odd just standing there, waiting for something to happen. Finally they started the loop up again, we listened to their warnings not to slide on the bannisters, and then they let us go.
We were worried at this point because, by the time we dropped our life jackets off in our room, it was about 4pm and we hadn't seen the couple we were taking the cruise with. They should have been here by now! We went down to the gangplank and they were letting a bunch of people onto the boat - including my nephew and his wife and son! Apparently just around 2pm their entire computer system went down and they'd spent the past 2 hours just sitting in the terminal while the entries were all processed by HAND. We thought our hour in line was tedious, but they had gotten it even worse. They were starving. The one year old, Liam, was being a very good doobie about it all but I imagine he was hungry too!
So we brought them down to their room so they could get their luggage in, and then went right up to the buffet. It was closed!! They were shutting down the lunch buffet to make room for dinner. That's a real shame for anyone getting on the boat at that time! We had to go to the poolside bar where they just had burgers, sausages, corn and a few other things. Then, because they were preparing for dinner, they had shut down half of the buffet dining area to turn it into an Italian restaurant, so there was nowhere to sit. Finally we worked our way down far enough that we found some seating at the aft end of the ship, where a guitarist was playing songs. It was peaceful and nice.
We were supposed to have a CruiseCritics meeting here but I only saw one other couple! My beads and leis were in my luggage which we didn't have yet. The boat began to move! We stood up to wave to the dock workers and other people on shore. Bill and Sarah still had to go to registration with their passports, so they went off to do that, and Bob and I stayed to watch the planes coming in. We were right in the landing pattern of Logan and it was REALLY impressive watching the planes come down literally on our heads. The roar of their engines was quite spectacular.
Finally we were heading out into the water so we decided to go down to our room and check on our luggage. We swung by the lobby first, hooked up with Bill & family and then went to the rooms. The luggage was all there! I put the manatee and beach magnets on Bill's door and my handmade fish magnets on my door and on the room. We'll see how long they all last before some vanish into the night :)
We got all of our things hung up and put away. There is a lot of closet room (for a cruise ship) and the bathrooms are also quite impressive, there's an actual shower stall door instead of just having it open to the rest of the bathroom. We found places for everything. Bill and Sarah had two twin beds in their room, but it was easy enough to ask and have that fixed. Soon it was time to find some dinner.
We went back up to the buffer area which was now set up for dinner - but only half of the area was open as the other half had been segmented off with curtains to become the Italian restaurant. There were still a multitude of stations in the buffet area though. The hand carved meat was veal. They had the fruits, the cheese, the pasta, the ready-made stir fry and so on. We brought over a baby seat for Liam and he loved all sorts of things, avocado, mashed potato with leeks, anything squishy.
We then wandered up on deck to take some photos of a passing tanker, but it was getting chill and windy up there! So we went forward and down a level to the dance club. A pair of female singers were singing dance tunes from the 80s and Liam danced along to them, while not counting the stars in the carpet. We went down the tight spriral staircase to the bridge watch area, where you could see the actual bridge crew members handling the instruments. Then, as it was about 8pm, we headed back to the rooms.
By 9 it became apparent Liam wasn't sleepy yet, so I went over with my iPod full of Disney music, and a set of small speakers. I set them up and sent Bill and Sarah off to relax. Bob was off exploring as well. I started with the dance songs, then worked down to Beauty and the Beast. After a few loops of that Liam was sound asleep, and I could play on my laptop!
Note that unlike any ship I've said on before (and I must have just been very lucky) but there is NO wireless reception in the cabin. This is trauma for me!! I am going to have to go up to an actual peopled deck to do my send-receives. I wonder how much this will cut down on my normally astronomical usage!
Speaking of which, one of our first stops after eating was to swing by the Internet cafe to sign up for the 250 minute plan because you got 30 extra minutes free for signing up on the first day. When we asked the guy at the desk there how to get the 30 extra minutes, he said "oh it's only 20". We showed him the sign that said 30 and he said "Oh, that's only if you show me a Latitude's card." So it was sort of like pulling teeth, but we did get that all worked out.
A funny note - while I stayed in Sarah's room and watched Liam, they had a Motorola radio on them and I had one. I think someone else was on our channel because I would get messages of "I am in the casino, where are you?" - which would be an odd question for Sarah to be asking me :)
Summary of Thoughts
Getting on a boat with thousands of passengers is always going to be a pain. I wish they had fans or AC in the termina, but that's not really NCL's fault. I also feel badly for Bill and Sarah and anyone else who showed up after 2pm and had to wait for hours while the computer systems were broken. They should have gotten free bubbly with a coupon, but by the time they got on, they couldn't redeem it. It was also a pain that they shut down all food right after the life boat drill began sounding and then didn't have any food available except one tiny spot until 5pm. That's rough on latecomers (especially when the latecomers are due to NCL's computer issues). Some of the staff has been a little less than eager to offer information or help.
But even with those caveats, the ship is *gorgeous*. We adore the decor, the cleanliness of everything. The cabins are very nicely sized for a cruise ship. The ride so far has been very smooth. We've run into some very helpful staff members. While some of the food is bland, a large portion of the cruise population here is elderly (some *very* elderly) so I understand completely that bland is probably perfect for many people. They do have chili powder and such out so you can spice things up if you wish.
NCL Spirit Photos from Friday - 122 in total
NCL Spirit Photos - no captions, all on one page
Bermuda NCL Spirit Travelogue