Having been on the Spirit last January 2018 and having had a great time we decided to cruise on the NCL Spirit once again. However our spirits sank as we waited in the very long queue at the Barcelona port, as we were informed the previous cruise had cases of novo virus and so we had to wait much longer to board her due to it being sanitised. Once on board we were not allowed to help ourselves to the buffet food in the raffles restaurant and for the first 5 days of the cruise this caused no end of issues e.g. Waiting in long queues to be served by staff, fellow passengers being told off by staff who were seen reaching out for knives and forks ect, because they were fed up ( if you'll pardon the pun ) of waiting to be handed their utensils We all knew it was for all our benefit, but it was frustrating having to wait continually to be served by the crew. Thankfully the ship was given the all clear and normal self service resumed on the 6 th day of the 11 night cruise. Felt sorry for the staff they worked really hard and it wasn't their fault that they were having to serve passengers,but it was an inconvienience to most passengers, who expected to serve themselves in the raffles restaurant. Having said all that the food on offer was in our opinion excellent lots of choices for everyone and an excellent Indian Fayre , each night for vegetarians like myself. The restaurant itself does needs updating. As for the rest of the ship it looked pretty much the same as it did previously. Another major dissapointment for us on this cruise was the fact that someone decided that it would be a good idea to take off the mosaic tiles around the outdoor jacuzzis 4 in all and retile them. Well we didn't think this was appropriate as passengers could not sit around the main pool area while they did the work......well you could if you could put up with the drilling hammering and dust and muck that it made. It was at times like being in the middle of a building site. There was no mention of an apology as the work continued during port days,when many of the passengers went off ship but many remained,and those that did had to find another area to relax away from the noise. I am writing to NCL to make a formal complaint and to ask if they thought it was acceptable to do this type of work while paying passengers had to endure the inconvienience of the noise and the lack of use of some facilities during this work. I have videoed this as evidence so will wait and see what response I get. Fortunately we managed to find a quite spot. Overall we enjoyed the cruise the shows were fantastic some great guest artists,the ships dancers were the best we've seen and worked really hard. Wasn't too keen on the main singers,they all seem to want to out sing each other thus most of the time sang out of tune. The spirit live band was excellent and the production shows were good however we saw the Elements show last year. They also had Ian West resident piano/ singer who kept passengers entertained in the Champagne lounge,as he did on the last cruise. Didn't use any of the speciality restaurants spa services tours and photographic services in our opinion all were far too expensive. Talking of expense, we found that on this cruise as we did not have the drinks package the prices of the beverages were too expensive even sodas were 3.45$ plus 20% service charge as are all drinks you have an additional 20% added. Even if you do sign up for the drinks package it's not that cheap, you would have to be constantly ordering drinks that you don't want just to justify what you've paid. The drinks packages start at $99 a day that's over a $1000 dollars on an average 10/11 night cruise. To round up overall we enjoyed the cruise we do like the smaller ships and the spirit does have a nice friendly feel to it and the itinerary in Jan/ Feb is good and suits ourselves as we don't want a long hall flight. This particular cruise stared and finished in Barcelona,and the weather this year was very hot and sunny the whole cruise apart from Malaga,which was disappointingly cool and overcast.Would we go on the Spirit again ?perhaps not ,but we would look at another NCL freestyle cruise.