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Sailing NCL Escape 9/16/2017 - Western Review


Taxgal87
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Hey everyone! I'm Stephanie and welcome to my review. I have enjoyed reading so many and it helped me plan and kept me excited (as if I needed any help staying excited) for our cruise. I have been struggling to get back to a normal routine after vacay so why not start a review to help relive the fun!

 

I will preface by saying, I don't take as many picture as I wish. Those of you who take thousands of pictures and take multiple cameras with you on each trip, I envy you. I have a basic camera and our phones. :p I always wish I had more pictures but when I'm on vacation, I'm always living in the moment and forget to snap a picture. So while this review will contain pictures, it will not be as picture intense as some others.

 

ETA: There MIGHT be pictures if I can figure out how to post. They are all in Google Photo and I had hoped that I wouldn't have to use another third party sight. More research for me...and any tips are appreciated.

 

A little about us:

I'm Stephanie and I'm 29, my husband Aaron is 35 and we have 2 boys, Ben and Alex who are 6 and 4. Also traveling with us were my parents, mid 50s, my brother Chris (28), his wife Letitia (27), and my sister Danielle (26).

 

My husband and I have been on 2 previous cruises: The Norwegian Sky in January 2010 and Carnival Imagination in May 2010 and then life happened and cruising stopped. So I was way to excited to go on another cruise.

 

How we chose the Escape:

Back in April of 2016, my parents and sister went on the Getaway and loved it. They bought the CruiseNext certificates and gave that to us as a deposit for a family vacation. In May we all got together and booked the Escape - Western Itinerary (mainly because of Harvest Caye).

 

Norwegian was running a great sale at the time and we were able to get a decent amount of perks. At the time of booking, we received $100 in arcade credit, 50 photo package, and the shore excursion credit. A few weeks later, NCL was running the kids sail free promotion. I called back to see if I could switch one of my perks for that and our cruise consultant was able to just add the kids sail free to our already existing reservation! Sweet! I was very happy with our reservation and now the planning was set to begin. To be continued...

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We planned this cruise over a year out so in the beginning my husband really got annoyed with me constantly saying, " Only 423 days left...only 309 days left...only 221 days left..." I tried to contain my excitement but it was very difficult. About the 180 mark, he started joining me in the countdown.

 

I had already made an awesome spreadsheet with all the excursions with NCL (since we had the shore excursion credit). I also had a spreadsheet with excursions not hosted by NCL to compare it to. I had a vacation budget spreadsheet. I work as a accountant for a living so my nerdiness was really showing.

 

We opted to let our boys travel with their birth certificates. I know it can be risky, but we we missed the appointment with the post office to have them done so we opted for birth certificates.

 

We have a good family friend who is a airline stewardess and offered to get us tickets to fly to Miami along with hotel near the airport.

 

Everything seemed to be falling right into place, including getting approval for my son's absence from school for 6 days.

 

Then this mean storm named IRMA arrived and was causing my stress levels to rise.

 

Because we were flying standby, our flights were cancelled. The hotel that we had was full of misplaced guests so we had no where to stay. The cruise right before ours was cancelled. The port or Miami was closed. Florida was running out of gas. I was unsure if this vacation was going to happen.

 

We watched the TV and FB pages like a hawk and were making last minute changes.

 

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Looked scary but by Wednesday, September 13 NCL Escape was on her way back to Miami and the port had reopened.

 

We ended up driving 14 LONG hours from North Carolina with kids (movies eased the pain a little bit). We even took our own gas because AAA had informed us that it would be best to fill up before we got to Florida so we just had extra security with our gas cans. We finally arrived at Homewood Suites - Airport West where we got the park and go package. There parking lot was gated and they had 24 hour security so I felt at ease about leaving my car there for the week.

 

 

We ate at Bubba Gump's in downtown and it was delicious. We also were able to see the ship in port at night. It was beautiful!

 

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Back to the hotel for some sleep, after making 5 wrong turns. Never again will I drive in Miami at night. I would rather eat junky vending machine food for dinner than do that again.

 

Woke up and ate breakfast at hotel and Uber was contacted by 9 AM! We were ready to get this party started!

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I forgot to go into a lot of detail about the pre-cruise hotel, but honestly I was trying to hurry to get to the important stuff! So if you have any questions about our park and go stay at Homewood Suites - Airport West, just ask.

 

Now to the good stuff, EMBARKATION DAY!

 

Our Uber driver arrived quickly after we put in the request on the app. He was at our hotel by 9:05 and we were at Port by 9:30. Traffic was minimal and I was just glad I wasn't driving anymore! Our first view of the ship during the day:

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Not a very good picture I know but this is when the excitement started with all of us.

 

The check-in process was uneventful and quick. We were on the ship by 10:45 and probably would have been sooner but we were waiting on my parents so we could get a boarding picture (minus my brother and his wife because they were in Terminal B)

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We quickly were onboard and vacation had begun! Because Hurricane Irma had cancelled the prior cruise, our rooms were ready right away, so we headed there to put our carry on luggage down and enjoy the balcony a bit before lunch. We had a mid ship balcony. This was our first cruise with a balcony and if you are traveling with children I would highly recommend it. We actually spent more time in the room than I anticipated because our boys tired out and required naps during the day. It also helps to keep from going stir crazy in a tiny room.

 

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The first day on a cruise ship is always spent exploring and this was no different. So after relaxing in our room a few minutes we went to Splash Academy to sign the boys up. I really wanted my boys to enjoy it and utilize Splash Academy. My oldest had it in his mind that this was like school and he was not going to school. Of course the younger child followed his brothers footsteps and no longer wanted to go. We registered them anyway and told them they had to at least try it one time.

 

Next was lunch at Taste.

Service here was slow on this day. My boys were getting crabby from not eating and I was almost ready to walk out and hit the buffet. This is where I wish I would have taken more pictures. I was too busy enjoying my food (finally) that I didn't even take pictures of ANYTHING. I did have the Grouper Sandwich and it was delicious.

 

A tip for dining with children in the MDR...order an appetizer for them or have the staff bring their food first. Our boys were not happy watching us eat appetizers while they were waiting. So half of my salad went to the boys.

 

After lunch we explored the humongous ship a little more before heading back to our room. Once we arrived at the room, it was about 2:30. This gave us 1 hour to unpack and get ready for muster drill.

 

This is my take on muster drill, If you are going to require us to be there, then monitor the talking and make sure people who want to pay attention can actually hear. Our muster was in the atrium so it was very crowded, very hot, and altogether unpleasant. It just made it worse that the people around us were talking loudly to where there was no point in us being there. My husband even said they had already scanned our cards so we could leave and probably get away with it. But we stayed and suffered through it.

 

After muster drill, we went up to the pool for swimming and sail away. I had previously read about the depth of the kids swimming pool so I was prepared with armies (or water wings as most people call them) for the boys. I also seen NCL staff handing out children's life jackets. I was very pleased to see that option. I still think the pool shouldn't be so deep that even I can't touch the bottom but we still had a blast. The kids aquapark really made up for the 5 ft deep pool. My boys loved it and probably went down the red waterslide 100 times. I really like the splash park option on this ship and probably will look for something like this when booking other cruises.

 

Our parents had one request for the week and that was that we all eat dinner together as a family nightly. So we went to Manhatten Room for dinner. I was actually disappointed in the live music there. It was great when they played it but a few times we were in there they were just setting up or doing mic checks. I felt they should have been ready to start and perform as soon as dinner hours started.

 

The food was delicious though and we had a wonderful dinner.

 

To be continued...

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I tried to 'paste' a photo on my very first post recently. It didn't work for me and may be related to trying to do this via myphone. Doing the posting of photos on a pc or laptop might work. Your photos show up just as mine, an empty box. Maybe someone has a helpful suggestion for posting photos. My next photo post will be not be done on the phone.

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Still on Day 1...

 

After dinner in the Manhatten Room, we took the kids to Splash Academy so hubby and I could go to the variety show and maybe explore the ship a little more.

 

The variety show was great and a good way to get a taste of the different shows so you know exactly what you don't want to miss. Right as we were leaving the show, around 8:30, we get a call on our pager from Splash Academy. The boys were ready to leave and very tired. When we arrived at Splash Academy to pick them up, my youngest was laying on the bench about to fall asleep. Now their normal bedtime at home is 8 to 8:30 so I knew the late night splash was a long shot. We knew we would have to try again tomorrow.

 

Tip: If you go to bed early or have kids that go to bed early and will literally put themselves to bed if you are keeping them up to late like mine, let your room attendant know. Our first night, she had just finished getting the room made up as we were walking in. We let her know they would likely be early nighters all week so she made sure our room was ready by 7 every night for the rest of the week.

So that was Day 1. We didn't get to do Howl at the Moon, or Karaoke but we still had a great day and I was looking forward to the rest of the week.

 

Here is the schedule for Splash Academy Turtles Ages 3-5

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Here is the Turtles Ages 6-9

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On to Day 2: Fun Day at Sea!

Freestyle Daily.pdf

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Forgot to tell you our balcony was on port side which honestly didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to have a balcony. We were midship on the 12th floor.

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My only issue with being mid ship was it was so easy to getturned around. We would walk to the front elevators, go to whatever floor weneeded, and realize our destination was in the back.

The fish on the carpet do let you know which way is front but this ship is SOOO BIG it is easy to get turned around..

We were up early on Day 2.

I woke up at 6:00 and tried to catch the sunrise. I don’tknow why it is that when I’m at home I struggle to wake up for work everydaybut when on vacation I have no problem waking up early and getting the day started.

We quickly got up and got ready and headed to O’Sheehans forbreakfast. My husband loves corned beef hash and I knew that was on the menu soI was really excited for him to get a breakfast food he loves and hardly evergets (he’s the only one in our family who will touch the stuff). When wearrived at O’Sheehans the staff tried to divert us to the garden café sayingthey don’t serve waffles and cereal. Ok…well we can find something on this menuthey will eat. My kids are not that picky, they have to eat whatever I put infront of them at home and this is no different. It was really aggravating butthey sat us after we told them twice that were were ok with what they had on the menu.

Again, no pictures of food, but the corned beef hash wasjust ok according to my husband. He said he can make it better. I got thecountry breakfast platter and it was delicious. It was served with baked beanswhich was weird to me. My boys both got a big bowl of oatmeal with fresh fruitand their bowls were empty at the end so I’d say they loved it.

Next we dropped off the boys at Splash Academy and explored theship. We made it back to the Atrium for some trivia and then we were planningon staying for the Food Republic Cooking Demonstration when we received thedreaded page from Splash Academy. Our youngest would not participate and theyasked if we could just come talk to him. We went down there and tried toconvince him to stay. While we were there, we saw other parents trying to dothe same and we all gave that look to each other. We ended up taking ouryoungest out with us and then headed up to play mini golf.

Our oldest, Ben was in sports court with his Splash group sowe did get to see him and he was having a blast. Mini golf was fun and we knew we would have to do this againwith our oldest son.

After picking up our oldest from Splash we headed to lunch in the garden café before going to the meet and greet. Our view while eating lunch:

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The meet and greet was good but we didn’t stay long. Ourkids were getting bored and tired of standing. The only available chairs werein a back corner and once we sat there, we were ignored. (I’m not complaining,we knew it would be harder to participate in the meet and greet because of ourkids – Splash was closed during the timeframe and our parents had their ownplans)

When it was time for Splash to open again, my oldest wasready to go back, and of course he was able to convince my youngest to go too! YAY!So hubby and I went up to pool deck where we could enjoy thewaterslides since our boys were too small or too scared to try the biggerwaterslides. They were awesome. No pictures since I don’t have waterproofcamera. You really should try them. The only one we didn’t try was the dropslide, and I kind of regret it now.

Hubby and my dad are both HUGE Dallas Cowboys fans so theyheaded up to O’Sheehans to watch the game while me and my mom enjoyed the pool,did some more shopping, and just explored a little more before getting readyfor dinner. I kept waiting for the dreaded page from Splash Academy butit never happened! Could this be a success?

When we picked up the kids from Splash, they had so much totell me about how they made new friends, and they were so excited to go back! SUCCESS!

More to come!

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Both look fantastic from my iphone. Looks like great time was had by all.

 

Hmmm, the google photo on your prior post now has the empty box on my iphone. Shutterfly still looks great. Latest photos looking really good. Great review.

Edited by Redriver2
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Night 2:

 

We had dinner reservations at the Supper Club with "The Mersey Boys: Mersey Boys Meets Motown" The show was very good but the food was less than desirable. My husband loved the food. Just be informed if you go to the supper club, the menu is chosen for you, there are no options so hopefully it will be something you like. I myself hit the buffet later on in the evening! Photographers are gladly walking around taking your picture, and since we had the photo package as a promo we gladly accepted.

 

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Not sure what my crazy boys were doing here but this pic definitely shows their personality!

 

My oldest son, Ben, loved the show. When I asked him why he said it was because one of the band member's names was also Ben! Good enough reason for me. The whole time both my boys were dancing along so I'd say it was a hit. My husband was singing along and everyone was having a great time. It was a great show and especially if you enjoy Motown.

 

Next we simply went around the ship to the many photographers. And took a few pictures ourselves.

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How can you walk by that beautiful chandelier and not get a picture.

 

I know you didn't come to this review to see a family photo album but I had to share my favorite picture of my boys!

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After taking lots of pictures, my boys were wearing down again and were trying to make beds out of anything so we knew we should get them in the bed before we were caught breaking our backs trying to carry those chunks.

 

We headed to the room and my husband said he would have the night in while I went back out with my family. I headed to the atrium to watch the Not So Newlywed Show. It was so hilarious but NCL really needs to find a bigger venue for these game shows. Spice H2O may be a good alternative. Maybe the atrium is the best alternative because its open and more people can watch even from O'Sheehans. I don't know, but if you want to be able to see the action or participate, you need to be there early.

 

When that was over I just explored the ship a little more before heading back to the room. Is 1 week enough time to learn that huge ship. I think there are still places I didn't visit.

 

I told my husband about the game show and told him he has to watch it on the cabin TV sometime.

 

End of Day 2...Next up, A day with some monkeys and sloths in Roatan.

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