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Thanks for your comments! St Augustine's was well worth the drive. We'll be going back there sometime!

Day 10- Head Home

Our last stop before heading home was St Augustine Beach. Since we were so close to the ocean, we wanted to let the kids have one more romp in the sand before we left Florida. We woke up early and started out to the beach around 6am so we had time to get back and take showers before we had to check out. It took maybe 20-25 minutes to get to the beach.

After our beach fun, we took showers, checked out and started the 5 hour drive home.

As the fish at the end of Finding Nemo say, what’s next?

I’d love to say that we have another cruise booked, but the next travel goal in our sights is an adults trip to Europe so that’ll take a little more saving up. Not sure if we’ll do a cruise or a land tour but I’d love to see Spain and Italy. Who knows, maybe we can get an extra good deal on a winter cruise and do both, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Would I sail NCL again? Yes, definitely. The Escape was a great ship with an amazing, talented crew and I can’t wait to see what other ships have to offer.

Thanks so much for keeping with me to the end of this giant review and I appreciate all the kind comments that let me know I wasn’t just talking to myself, although that wouldn’t be completely out of character either. :) I hope that this review might help some of you who are considering the Escape or just keep the excitement going if your Escape cruise is booked and coming up! Let me know if there’s any questions I didn’t answer and Happy Sailing!

No more evening buffet runs, but I wanted to get some fudge and I remembered seeing the Whetstone Chocolate shop. The one of the A1A was closed but we saw the one on St George Street was open. We drove around and amazingly found a spot to park, fed the pay meter and then realized you don’t have to pay for parking on Sundays! St George Street was a great nightlife spot. There were people walking around and touring everywhere.

The area next to Whetstones. The fudge was amazing by the way!

Such a pretty area of town.

Please be aware of your surroundings because this crowded walkway with lots of distracts was a pickpocket's dream. After a great day in St Augustine's, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our departure home tomorrow.

It was a pretty beach with some facilities that you could change clothes in, but the bathroom floors were pretty wet and sandy.

On yet another whim, we stopped at La Strada, an Italian Restaurant on A1A. At first I thought it might be a little fancy for our family, but we were very pleased that we stayed. It’s a small restaurant and everything that they brought out was homemade including the bread, bruschetta spread, calamari and my seafood canoli.

DH got the sea bass and loved it.

The kids got chicken nuggets so they do have those regular kid options even though they’re not printed on the menu.

We rode the trolley through the rest of the tour. The winery and brewery would have been fun stops but it was nearing 4pm and I think they trolleys only run through 4:30 or 5:30 so we didn’t want to push our luck. Next time we tour, we may also stop at the Fort but having been to the Fort in San Juan and forked out a lot of cash so far for tours, and it was just getting hotter outside, we decided we could wait on that attraction.

Here’s the temperature when we got back to the car.

It wasn’t too late for one more on our own adventure though. I wandered down the A1A highway and came across Frank Butler County Park East. We let the kids splash in the waves for a while.

Our next destination was the Spanish Military Hospital around stop 16. This was my must see for the tour. I love history and I find imagining how it was to live in colonial times to be fascinating- so a tour that talks about colonial age medical procedures and apothecary was right up my alley! In fact, it was literally on an alley. Here’s a photo of the Spanish Hospital building which really was on the site of the old Spanish hospital!

The admission to this tour was $10 for adults and $5 for kids and we had another coupon from the travel book. The lady let us know that the tour started in about 20 minutes so we walked around for a bit and checked out the antique shop next door.

The tour lasted about 45 minutes and discussed what Spanish procedures military doctors might have used and what plants/animals were available as medicines.

I found the tour really interesting. DH was turned off a little bit because he felt like the apothecary part of the tour was an herb remedies sales pitch, but I thought it was just fun information about what resources colonial doctors had on hand, and I think it was all a little over the kid’s heads. I’m still glad we stopped by. The gift shop sold items by local artists and we decided to make some of our “frivolous vacation purchases” there. I got a necklace, DD picked out some “monkey fart” banana scented soap, and DS picked out a hard candy.

It was getting close to lunch time, so we checked out some of the menu posted along the pedestrian walkway on St George St, but they were all more than we wanted to spend ($12 for a cheeseburger). So we took a side street to get back to the bus stop and ran across the White Lion restaurant. Their prices looked pretty good so we gave them a try. Low and behold there was a Sunday special for 1/2 off wings and appetizers. I felt like this was our lucky day!

Here’s a photo of our garlic parmesan wings and nachos.

The food was delicious! Their ranch dressing is so yummy. And the bill didn’t even break the bank. I highly recommend this restaurant as a quick, affordable and delicious lunch stop.

After lunch, we headed back to stop 6 which turned out to be right in front of the restaurant and caught a new trolley. I’ll post some photos of the pretty sights along this part of the tour.

Great detail! Following!

From research before the trip, I knew that we wanted to take the trolley tour that allowed you to jump on and off so we google mapped the Old Town Trolley headquarter and headed to buy tickets. The trolley tour itself (including hop on or off) was $24.99 for adults and $10 for kids. The cool features of this tour is that they narrate a historical tour as they drive you around so you get some background on the city along the way, buses stop at each stop every 15 minutes so you shouldn’t have to wait long to get a ride, and the tickets are good for 3 consecutive days.

Here’s the stops they made and she even highlighted some of the things that are free to do.

They had different package options that included certain museums, etc. but I wasn’t sure how long the kids would last in museums so we decided to handle that part on our own. I also felt a little pressured to decide of all of that while standing in line with people behind us. Plus, we had coupons from the hotel travel books for $1-2 off the museum prices anyways. I’m sure tour prices are subject to change but I thought this would be helpful if you wanted to see if it was a good value for your needs before you were standing in line.

The first trolley that came to pick us up around 11am was pretty full but there was enough bench room for everyone waiting to get on and there was another trolley pulling in right behind us with even more seats.

We rode from stop 1 (Old Jail) to stop 6 where the Pirate Museum was. Yesterday, looking through the hotel brochures, we had marked a few favorites and both the kids chose the pirate museum. Here’s the front of the museum. You walk around the side to the gift shop to purchase your tickets.

Adult tickets were $13.99 and kids were $6.99 and our coupon took a dollar or two off that price. There’s a little treasure hunt map that the kids enjoyed and they get a prize at the end if they find all the treasure. Nathan and I found the exhibits themselves to be entertaining and interactive in places. There was some slightly scary imagery but it is a Pirate’s museum, so we expected that. Here’s DS firing off the pirate cannon.

We toured the museum for about an hour and the kids collected their prize in the gift shop on their way out.

A view of the lighthouse from the museum

Some cool looking model ships in the museum

The playground

After our explorations on our own were complete, we decided to head to downtown St Augustine’s to start our tour there.

I love how this technique makes everything look tiny.

The Museum

Day 9- St Augustine (Post cruise fun)

The first place we headed this morning was to the lighthouse because we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to climb it if more storms came along. Plus, it seemed like a good idea to start the physically demanding part of our day (climbing all those stairs) before the afternoon summer heat kicked in.

You do have to buy tickets to get on the lighthouse grounds ($12.95 for adults, $10.95 for kids) but that included being able to climb to the top, the outdoor playground area, any daytime tours, nature trails and the Museum. I wish I had looked into the Lighthouse ghost tour earlier because that would have been fun but they were all booked for the 8:30pm slot. Maybe next time.

We read some of the information about carrying heavy buckets of lamp oil up the 219 stairs to the top of the lighthouse and then we started the trek up, up and up!

A view from the bottom

Looking through the window on the way up

The view from the top though was totally worth the sweaty walk up.

Here’s the storm from earlier that seemed to be dropping some rain on some very unlucky Floridians.

The kids took a dip in the hotel pool which was warm like bathwater and then it was off to bed!.

Tomorrow, a full day of exploring St Augustine's!

Between the live music (there was a reggae band playing on the pier, the fun cabana table, the marina view, the funny carvings, and the tiki torches, this restaurant gets an A+ for atmosphere but what about the food? Let me present the shrimp and grits. MMMmmmmm.

It was delicious and a really neat recipe. The corn added a nice flavor. My husband, who helped me finish off this giant bowl after eating his steak, thought it was the best shrimp and grits he’s ever had. The food was a little on the pricey side but I kind of expected that from such a fun vacation spot. And after all, everyone left full and happy.

Before we headed back to the hotel, we decided to walk down the marina pier. So many pretty boats.

Looking back at the tables.

Sunset over the water

We’re still on cruise time where you eat every 2-3 hours, so by now we were all really ready for some dinner. I saw a small sign for the Conch House off of A1A heading back to downtown St Augustine and I remembered it being recommended on the travel sites, so we took a few backstreets and ended up at one of the neatest restaurants!

The entrance

They had these fun tables that jutted over the water or raised up like little treehouses.

We didn’t get a fancy stilted table but we were seated right away at a picnic-like table by the water. The kids loved the carvings.

Our view

St Augustine

It took us 4 hours of driving (not including the stop for lunch at Steak and Shake) to get from Miami to our hotel in St Augustine, the La Quinta on Outlet Mall Blvd. This was a much better hotel choice than our stop in Jacksonville. The hotel facilities were well kept up, the room was lovely, the hotel was right off of i-95 and was only a 10 minute drive to downtown St Augustine. And it’s a dog friendly hotel. In fact, St Augustine’s is one of the most dog friendly places that I’ve been to. Here’s a photo of our room.

Once we arrived in St. Augustine's we didn’t have any plans so we went exploring. On the way, the kids started pointing and laughing at this car. Who ya gonna call?

We ended up on the A1A going towards a lighthouse that I head heard about. The Lighthouse was gorgeous but as we were getting to the visitor center, the thunder started from an evening storm that had just popped up which means no more climbing the staircase to the top. Here’s a few photos walking up to the lighthouse grounds.

Totally awesome review!

 

You have a beautiful family!

 

Thanks so much for posting!

 

Looking forward to Escape this September!

Thank you for reading! I hope you have an amazing time! September is so close!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! This was an incredible review that truly helped me with my planning. Really appreciate the time and level of detail you put into this!

Awesome! I'm so glad it was useful for your planning!

The Room

We had a standard balcony on deck 9.

• I felt like our room was an average size and I was happy with the size of the balcony.
  
• Average amount of storage. You had under desk/tv, closet, under bed.
  
• Good exhaust in bathroom (it felt less stuffy than our RC bathrooms). Good shower with pressure and it was easy to set the temperature.
  
• Our room had no trouble keeping a consistent temperature in room and cooled down quickly at night when we adjusted the thermostat.
  
• NCL NEWBIE TIP- The key card had to be in the slot by the door for items that are plugged in to charge and the attendant was instructed to take card out if you left it in while you were gone. This makes sense to me from an energy conservation and safety perspective, but it did make charging phones/camera batteries a little trickier. I did like that it was easy for our room attendant to tell when we were in the room or gone by the lights on the door.
  

Room attendant

• Our room attendant was helpful and friendly, but he didn’t have the visibility of our RC attendants. On RC we’d always see our attendant in the hallways, coming in and out of neighboring rooms so that’s what we were used to, but our NCL attendant was on occasion difficult to find. We could always call guest services and have something taken care of in a timely manner, but the difference in availability makes me wonder if the room attendants on NCL may be a little understaffed or working a bigger area than the RC ones. Or maybe it wasn't his personality to hang out in the hallways. On a personal level, he did a great job at keeping everything in the room looking great and the times we chatted with him, he really seemed to care about our well being. I know he works long hours and does an excellent job, so we named him as our service hero for the cruise.
  

Food and Drink

I put this in a few different categories since there was so many food options but overall we were thrilled with the food on the Escape. The overall presentation may not have been as fancy as RC in some instances but the flavors were overall excellent. We experienced well seasoned, well cooked, even more adventurous food, especially in specialty restaurants.

• Specialty Dining- The food in these restaurants were outstanding, not just for cruise food but for any high end restaurant that you could visit on land. Teppanyaki was an experience in itself (plus a delicious meal)! The servings were generous and the three free dining package was an amazing good value, even if you had to pay for it. RC specialty was great too but I think NCL comes out on top for the consistency of their specialty dining restaurants and the variety of options.
  
• Main Dining Room- I think the MDR food quality was comparable between both lines. Sometimes it’s the little things I think about, for example I like that RC lets you pick your own bread instead of bringing a variety basket (because we would all want the french bread) but NCL wins for desserts because that hot lava cake is the best! I ate it pretty much every night. I do miss having the option for traditional dining but even on RCL that’s changing and they sometimes seat you without “table buddies” anyways. My family always liked getting to know new people through traditional dining and having our servers get to know us. The service at RC Main dining seemed better than NCL and I think part of their advantage is the dining teams. There was a lead waiter and they had a helper to go around and refill water, check to make sure everything came out ok, etc. NCL didn’t seem to have those teams and we even notice some conflict and tension between staff in several restaurants as they were supposed to be working together.
  
• Buffet- I felt that RC had a little more variety throughout the week on their buffet, but everything we had at the Garden Cafe was decent and fast. I wasn’t a fan of the buffet layout with the long line, I’d prefer the food islands on Oasis/Jewel, but the buffet seemed to have a good enough flow to never feel too crowded. Buffet favorites were those delicious little hash browns disks, eggs benedict, and chocolate crescent. Nothing really wowed me at lunch. The hand scooped ice cream is a big plus for NCL to use as we love some dessert and although I didn’t get to try them, the crepes was a fun buffet option too!
  
• Room Service- Oh, I did miss RC’s free room service. Having cookies and milk brought to the room on demand was one of our evening highlights, but there’s always the buffet. NCL if you’re listening, you need to have chocolate chip cookies on hand at all times. Oatmeal raisin just is not the same. :)
  
• Drink package- This felt like a better value on RC because DH prefers Coke over Pepsi, getting sodas was a chore because (in his opinion) the bars were slow and there were no self serve drink machines. Personal choice, but we would not purchase this again.
  
• A small detail but I miss being able to bring on our own bottle of wine and drink it in our room without the corking fee. Maybe I misread the rules, but I don’t think NCL allows that.
  

Activities

• This is where NCL really shines. There were a variety of activities throughout the day where felt like RC put some of the highlights like newlywed game very late at night so we’d never even consider going. We didn’t come in contact with the cruise director himself but his team was doing a great job of keeping people having a good time throughout the cruise! Line dancing class in the Atrium was a lot of fun.
  
• Even though we don’t stay up late much because our body clocks wake us up around 6am, you could tell that the Escape had an active party nightlife (where on the RC ships, we joked that they rolled up their sidewalks at 10pm). They offered lots of party options and having a glow party for the family was a big highlight.
  

Family Friendliness

• Lots of family friendly activity options like escape room, karaoke, t-shirt making, glow party, farewell party, and so much more. Kids seem welcome at all events, except at the broadway-style shows. I was disappointed that Brat Pack not appropriate for kids because DD is the only one who cares to see shows with me and those things are more fun as a family, but there were plenty of other things to do.
  
• The features of the ship itself really appealed to our family with the ropes course, slides, arcade, splash pad, etc. I think kids of all ages would enjoy what the Escape had to offer.
  
• The Kids club is awesome on both RC and NCL. The employees seem happy and they keep the kids engaged. I don’t know how they get them to want to keep coming back day after day, but they’re definitely doing something right. And the late night club fee seemed very reasonable (cheaper than our sitters at home).
  

Excursions

• Here’s where NCL struggles in my opinion- I felt like the majority of excursions were overpriced compared to RC. When I compared RC to independent, most of them seemed fairly comparable and you may pay a little extra for the convenience of having a ship excursion. With NCL some of the options seemed priced higher than they should have been and lacking in variety.
  
• I also prefer RC’s pre-cruise excursion booking process, because they let you download a guide so you can save it and compare options beforehand. I found NCL’s online system a little cumbersome.
  
• Where NCL is way better than RC is the experience coming back to port. NCL really rolls out the welcome mat when you come back from a port day. They have wet hand towels for your face, you can do a towel exchange to get rid of wet beach towels before you even get on the boat, they have water cups and shady places to sit. We even had music, dancing and jello shots when we returned from Cozumel. The other cruise lines could learn a lot from NCL here.
  

Misc

• This doesn’t really fit in a category, but I realized about Thursday that I had seen no mention of laundry service. I must have just spaced out on that because I could have sworn on the forums they offered some laundry service but we survived by washing some items in the sink with a sample laundry detergent that I brought and hanging them on the balcony. Not a big thing, but I wasn’t sure how I missed out on that.
  
• I forget which ship, but RC had these placards in the elevator that showed what day of the week it was, and I was kind of glad to be rid of them on the Escape because I lived an existence of blissful ignorance of the fact that days of the week even existed until that last sea day. Oh if only I could live in vacation land a little longer, I might even forget what month it is!
  

Here’s every family member’s favorite things about our Escape vacation-

• DS (7 years old)- Kids club and water slides
  
• Myself- Water slides and the sloths
  
• DD (10 years old)- Sloths and ropes course
  
• DH- Ropes course, inflatables on Playa Mia and food
  

So, there you have it! That’s my item by item summary of the Escape and our experiences of NCL versus RC. Overall, I give my experience on the Escape a 9 out of 10. Yes, it had it’s pros and cons in comparison but we had an amazing vacation on an amazing boat and I would recommend it to anyone!

Well, if I haven’t put you to sleep yet, stay tuned for our post-cruise day and a half of fun in St. Augustine!

Day 8- Disembarkation

We’ve always carried our own luggage off the ship on disembarkation day and the Escape’s easy walk off was the most efficient we’ve ever experienced! We work up at 6:30am and grabbed a quick buffet breakfast. The sunrise over Miami was stunning!

The Port of Miami all-clear was called at 8:00am and we immediately took the aft elevators down to deck 7 (no elevator congestion), scanned our cards, and walked right off the boat! Easy as that! There was no wait in customs and no declaration of purchases was needed unless you spent more than a certain amount so he just checked our passports and we were on our way. We walked right across the street to the garage and using the ticket that DH had gotten when parking last week and a credit card, we paid the parking fee at the kiosk on the first level. The total for the week was $140. We were on the road in about 15 minutes!

We headed from there to St Augustine’s Florida, which is a great post-cruise tourist stop (and about halfway between Miami and our house in SC), but before I get into some of the cool things to see in St Augustine, I wanted to finish the review about the Escape and our overall impressions. Since all our other cruises have been on RC, most of my comparisons come from there. And feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt. Everyone on a cruise has a different experience and viewpoints. These are just ours and I hope some of it helps you have the best experience possible on the Escape!

Overall Impressions

The Ship Itself

• Ambiance- In my opinion, the public spaces on the Escape don’t have as much “wow” as some of the large RC ships (i.e. the Oasis’ Garden area or Boardwalk), but you can tell they paid attention to the utilitarian aspects of the space because in general the flow of traffic throughout the ship works, the spaces are pretty but not over the top and you never feel like you’re stuck in a crowd. The waterfront was one of my favorite public spaces and it was simple but functional. The negative part of the ambiance is that many of the places we went was loud. Other people may have a different experience but to me, the restaurants seemed noisy, the music on the pool decks during parties was almost unbearably loud and the Atrium activities would boom around the room. The positive of that is that this ship did seem to have a more vibrant party atmosphere. There was always people around at night having a great time and coming back from port days to the music and dancing on the dock was a fun experience too. For looks, I think RC wins, but for fun, I think NCL has an advantage.
  
• Stability- The Escape was a pretty smooth ride. DH and I noticed that it had a little shimmy at slow speeds on all floors, but otherwise smoother sailing than our experience on the Freedom. There was only one day where we were doing the zig zag walk down the hallway because we were swaying, but we also had great weather.
  
• Booking Promotions- This is where NCL was way better than anything we’ve gotten with RC. The dining package itself was a great value and if we had been drinkers, so would the UBP. The excursion credit saved us $100 and the tickets were already cheaper than a comparable RC cruise. I’m pretty happy with the overall value of this cruise.
  
• Demographic- It could be that it’s mid-summer, but the demographic on the ship seems over all younger compared to our other cruises. I feel like there were more retirees on our RC ships. This cruise seemed very young (working age families and singles). Was it younger partially because of the UBP and party atmosphere? Maybe so!
  

• Pools- I’ve never been on a cruise ship with enough pools, but I think they could have put an adult's pool in spice H20 and that would have spread out the crowds a little. The kids pool too deep in my option. I really, really loved the water slides. I guess the equivalent to the slides on our RC ships would be the Flowrider but the wait on the flowrider gets so long and so many more people can enjoy the waterslides. The ropes course was a highlight of this ship too!
  

Hi, just read through your review thus far and I am absolutely loving it. I am a total type A personality and packing list crazy as you. We are just under 60 days away from our first cruise with our toddler (not our first cruise as a couple). I have had my packing list started since we booked over a year ago. I would love to compare packing lists? Would you mind sharing? You can email it to me privately if you would like.

A packing list a year out! I'm so impressed. I'd be happy to share my lists- could you send me your email address? Thanks!

After the show, we hit the slides one last time. Here’s the Aqua Loop.

Here’s a video of the Aqua Racer. It was really hot in the tubes so the camera fogged up partway through.

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This slide is sooooo much fun!

Here’s a little timelapse from our balcony.

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One thing we miss about Freestyle Dining is the opportunity to sit with other guests to meet new people throughout your cruise. To get that same opportunity, we invited Kasiah’s new Australian friend Kayla and her family to join us for dinner at Manhattan. We had a great time sharing cruise experiences and just making new friends! Here’s a photo of the girls-

The Caribbean graced us with one more gorgeous sunset before the trip was over.

The kids wanted to go to the pajama party in Splash Academy that night to say goodbye to their friends so DH and I finally got our chance to check out Dueling Pianos. These musicians are so talented and quick witted. Some of the music wasn’t really our style, but we had a great time sipping drinks and enjoying the fun anyways. I imagine the show gets a little roudier as the night goes on because the musician’s mentioned a few times that they were keeping it clean for the families in the room.

After one more late night buffet run, we headed to be for our last night on the lovely Es-cap-ay.

Kasiah wanted one last run at the ropes course and this time the line was very busy! I had read that the last sea day was the worst time to try the ropes course and they were right! There were lots of first timers in line and quite a few return adventurers. Even with the long line, Kasiah and DH made it to the front in about 30 minutes. The zip line was closed for a little while- I’m guessing they may have been short staffed while people went to lunch, but the zip lines reopened before they got started (about 1:30pm). I grabbed a few more photos of DD on the course.

Before dropping the kids off for the big show, we stopped by the Waterfront to try the gelato! I picked tiramisu flavored and it was sweet and fluffy!

The kid’s show was a riot and each child got to pick a “circus trick” to do and come out with their group to perform it. DS wasn’t really interested in the whole show idea this morning, but he did great on stage and was so proud of himself afterwards. He did the handkerchief juggling.

DD did the devil sticks.

The kids had a great time in the show!

The kids pool sure gets busy on sea days!

Adults pool and stage- also very busy.

Golf course

Spice H2O during the day

The Grotto

This is one of the coolest ideas! It was a neat hangout for small groups or couples and if you’re sunbathing, you have a place to cool off.

We hit the buffet for lunch today. Nathan was really impressed with some of the healthy options that were offered on the buffet. Being on the Atkins diet, they have a few items that seemed tailormade to fit his low carb eating habits.

The beautiful chandelier

Lighted staircase

Manhattan Dining Room entrance

Arcade

Another view of the kid’s splash area. My kids spent a lot of time playing here.