Thomson Spirit Cruise - Fortunate Isles (Thomson Cruises in general)

Member Name: Cat2005

Product:	Thomson Cruises in general
Date:	04/05/05 (2671 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of places to see, Good food, Excellent Entertainment

Disadvantages: More expensive than a beach holiday, You will put on weight!

My first cruise was a very positive experience. I was worried that I would be trapped with hundreds of old people for a week, but in fact it was nothing like that. Myself and my boyfriend made a last minute booking to go on the Thomson Spirit Fortunate Isles cruise. We wanted to go on holiday in early April but when we went to the travel agents the only holiday they had on days we could travel was this cruise. We thought about it for a bit and decided to bite the bullet, so here is the story of my first cruise.


**The ship**

The Thomson Spirit is 214m long and 10 decks tall. It weighs about 35,000 tonnes. In other words, it is massive! It takes about 1200 passengers. Thomson have owned it since 2003; before that it belonged to a German company.

**Facilities**

On board the ship there are the following facilities:

· Cinema
· Gym
· 3 restaurants
· 5 bars
· Shops
· Casino
· 2 swimming pools
· Jacuzzi
· Beauty Salon
· Show lounge

We used most of these except for the gym. I took my gym kit with every intention of using it several times, but of course I never got round to it! The cinema was pretty good, they had a different film every day, showing about 6 times a day. There are plenty of bars, something to suit everyone from a quiet, peaceful bar to a more lively bar that turned into a disco after dark.

**Cabin**

We were lucky enough to get a double bed in our cabin, apparently these are quite rare! We had an inside cabin on deck 3, which is the 3rd deck up. It was a bit strange not having a window but we got used to it. The cabin was very spacious, it had 2 huge wardrobes, loads of drawers, bedside cabinets, a double bed and an en-suite bathroom with shower, sink and toilet. It was decorated in mainly green.

All towels and bedding were provided, and the maid came round about 3 times a day! You could have your towels changed as often as you liked, and the bedding was changed twice a week.


**Staff**

The staff were absolutely amazing, so friendly and chatty and always keen to help. The bar staff would take your drinks orders from your table and bring them straight to you, the waiters in the restaurant were lightening fast delivering the food and the cabin stewards I think are superhuman!


**Food**

The food as a whole was excellent. All food is included in the price and you can eat at whichever restaurant you want. The only time you have to pay extra is if you want to go to the small a la carte restaurant, where they serve about 15 course meals. For this there was a £18.95 charge per head. There is also a buffet restaurant and a waiter service restaurant. We tended to eat breakfast at the buffet restaurant (normally because we were up too late for the waiter service!), and had our evening meals in both the buffet and the waiter service.

The waiter service restaurant cannot be faulted. The only thing that annoyed us slightly was that they sat you on tables with people you don't know. We got around this after the first time by specifically asking for a table for just 2. There aren't many of these so we would make sure we were there for the opening time. The food was excellent, but the portions were a little small. However as there are 5 courses this is probably for the best! The courses did come out a bit quickly though, as soon as you had finished one course they whisked your plate away and out came the next course. I think the record was 4 courses in 50 minutes!

The buffet restaurant was also excellent. There was a huge range of food, including plenty of choice for me, being a (fussy) veggie. You could eat as much as you wanted. The good thing about this restaurant is that is was 24 hour opening. One night after a few drinks in the disco we decided to test this theory. My boyfriend ended up having a curry at 2.30am and I had a huge plate of chips! Fantastic!


**Entertainment**

The entertainment staff were fabulous. There was a show every night in the show lounge. Sometimes it was hard to get seats, but after we had seen one show we realised why. The shows are of professional quality and the singers and dancers deserve an award. There were also many other forms of entertainment, such as organised quizzes, walks round deck and a disco every night. This went on as late as you wanted, one night we were in there until 4.15am!


**Islands we visited**

We flew out to Gran Canaria which is where we joined the ship. We then sailed to La Palma, a small Canary island. Next stop was Madeira, then onto Morocco where we did our only official excursion (more on that later). The ship then sailed to Lanzarote, then to Tenerife, and then back to Gran Canaria.


**Excursions**

There were plenty of excursions on offer at each port. They ranged from simple trips into town to horse riding and camel trekking. We decided to go for camel trekking in Agadir, Morocco as we had been advised that this was the place to do an organised trip. We paid £35 each and it was worth every penny. We were picked up from the ship and taken to the stables. Each camel had a seat on it for 2 people. The fun part is getting on the camel! The tour guides were excellent; they helped us onto the camel and made sure everyone was OK. We were then lead on a 90 minute trek around the local area, through forests and sand dunes. It was really good fun, although we did ache a bit the next day.

On the way back to the ship we were taken to a souk, or market. This was definitely an experience. It was absolutely massive and so easy to get lost. I ended up buying a few china pots and things, but I had to haggle to get the price down. They sold everything you could imagine from spices to shoes.


**Price**

We paid £450 each for this holiday. This included £50 taken off for using some of our Nectar vouchers. Originally the cruise was supposed to cost £729 each so we got a good deal. We booked it on the Monday and left the following Saturday. All food is included, so you just need to buy drinks. We could have upgraded to all inclusive but this cost £130 each and we didn't think it would be worth it. It turned out that we only spent about £70 each on drinks as it was not that expensive. The only other expense was the official photos. These are a complete rip off. We paid £12 for a large photo. If you had bought all of the photos on offer it would have cost a fortune.


**Overall view**

I had never thought of doing a cruise before but this was definitely a positive experience. We were by no means the only young couple on the ship, although we were in the minority, but at no point did we feel out of place as everyone was so friendly. I would definitely do a cruise again, although maybe next time I would book further in advance as they do some quite good deals like free all inclusive upgrades.

A cruise is an excellent way to visit lots of places that maybe you wouldn't have gone to on holiday and I would thoroughly recommend Thomson as a cruise company to go with.


Thanks for reading :o)

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