Caribbean Cruise Part 5 - What do we think about cruising and Great Stirrup Cay?

We're on the last day of our nine day cruise, and this is a beach day. While we have already visited five islands, this one is different. It's a private island. Most of the big cruise lines own an island in the Caribbean where they dock for their passengers to enjoy an island day. Holland America has Half Moon Cay, Disney Cruises have Castaway Cay, Royal Caribbean has Coco Cay. But Norwegian Cruise Lines actually invented this option when they started docking at their private island--the Great Stirrup Cay--in 1977. This island made for one of our favorite photo-ops of the trip with its swing set on the beach.

Without a dock, our ship anchored in the bay, and we tendered on smaller boats to the island. They advertise that everything on the island is free EXCEPT for kayak rentals, umbrella rentals, swimming with the pigs, the zipline, snorkel gear, etc. Passengers can also pay hundreds of dollars to rent a cabana for a little privacy, or a thousand dollars for an air-conditioned villa. Really, the only thing to do for free is to walk the beach and snorkel (if you brought your own equipment). So being the frugal travelers, we walked the beach and used our own gear to snorkel.

Only a few employees live on the island, and their job is to get ready for the arrival of that day's ship. While more than one NCL ship could be anchored here, we were lucky to share the island with only the 3,000+ passengers on our ship. So it really was easy to find areas without crowds this day. In the center of the island is an ornamental light house. So of course, Denisa had to stand at the base for a lighthouse picture.

Normally we pack snacks and eat a picnic while we are exploring each port. But a day at the NCL island means that the ship still provides food. We went to the all-day buffet for lunch after we walked the beach. Then we found some pretty good fish around the man-made snorkeling trail near the rocky side of the beach. On our last day on the cruise, we finally weren't worried about getting a sunburn that could ruin the rest of our trip.

After a day of beach time where we explored every part of the island, it was time to tender back to the Gem. We realized that this was the only opportunity to take a picture of our ship when it wasn't on a dock.

As we wrap up this nine-day cruise, what do we think of this ship? It's not the newest or the biggest, but it was recently refurbished and is very nice. Denisa likes to dance, so she likes a ship that has dance lessons and good dance floors. Mark is a good sport, and takes her dancing most evenings.

Denisa also goes to most of the educational programs, like napkin folding, and how-to-make towel animals. That brings up another change in cruising in recent years. Having a towel swan waiting on your bed, or getting a towel monkey swinging off your towel bar is a thing of the past--at least at NCL. They claim they stopped because of the extra laundry it takes to wash those extra towels. But we missed that little quirk of cruising. 

The fabulous midnight buffet with ice carvings and fancy fruit carvings, is also a thing of the past. But in one of the educational classes we learned how to carve a duck out of an orange . . . 

a bear out of a watermelon . . .

and flowers out of purple onions, radishes, and carrots. There is no way that Denisa could do any of this herself, but she did witness this food transformation.

Another educational class was designed for families with children. But people that are kids at heart were welcome, and we learned how to make balloon swords and poodles. Out of 3,000 passengers, we only saw a few families with children. A nine-day cruise during the spring means that it will not fit into most school calendars.

Now most cruise lines offer a drink package, where passengers can pay an all-you-can-drink price. In order to get their money's worth, many passengers think they have to stay drunk during the entire cruise. Back before drink packages, we would laugh at drunk passengers thinking that their check-out bill would certainly be painful. Now we are pained by all the inebriated passengers.

While cruise lines still offer complimentary dining rooms with full course menus, they have found another source of income. They now have specialty restaurants scattered over the ship, where they try to convince passengers the food will be better than in the dining room. The specialty restaurants all have special prices. NCL was offering a promotion where we could dine in one of the specialty restaurants for free--all we we had to pay was the tip. So we chose to eat at Cagney's Steak House, where a meal for two would cost around $200. It only cost us the $40 tip to eat there for "free." While the steaks were quite good, it was the slowest service of the cruise. Waiting for food for two hours made it less "special" at this specialty restaurant.

We enjoyed the food in the dining room. Our plan is for the two of us to order two different appetizers, two different salads, two different entrees, and two different desserts. When the food arrives at the table, we immediately split them so we get to taste both choices for each course. Even if we found something we didn't like, we still had plenty of food to get full--actually over-full. With all the ice cream and food available for free on a cruise ship, it's easy to gain weight. But we have figured out that walking at many of the ports can help use up some of those calories. We also never use the elevators on the ship. That includes going up to the 15th floor to the buffet or down to the 7th floor to the theater or up to the 10th floor . . . We walked lots of stairs in the course of nine days, and we weighed the same when we left the boat as when we got on.

The days of handing your dining room server and room steward a generous tip on the last day of the cruise are over. Now the cruise line will charge your credit card $20 per day per person for tips. That is distributed to the workers throughout the ship--most of which you will never come in contact with. It is less personal and removes some of the incentive for employees. So when factoring in the price of a nine day cruise for two, you must add $360 just for the mandatory tips.

We've always enjoyed the games that the cruise staff hosts on the ship. We hate to brag, but we won the riddle contest and have the prize--an NCL external battery charger--to prove it. We came in second on the escape contest, and we got almost nothing right on the pop culture trivia contest. But the cruise lines have put gaming on steroids, by buying rights to games like television's "Deal or No Deal." To participate, passengers have to buy game cards for $25. Most of the "winners" we saw won less than $25. The losers won nothing. That convinced us not to play. Passengers also spend big money to participate in the bingo games on the ship. We don't play the games that require a payment.

We're wrapping up this nine-day cruise, where we had to educate ourselves on the changes in the cruise industry. We've been cruising around North America in a motor home for the last nine years, but we have to say that we really enjoyed this cruise around the Caribbean--even with all the changes!