Breakaway Review, 2/23-3/2

[RikkuCat]

Hey there,

Great review!!!!..it was DH and I that you met on the way to Blue Lagoon..it was so nice chatting to you both:)..we really enjoyed our cruise as well and reading your fantastic review helped me relive it..already starting to plan the next one..Thank you for your fantastic review :)

 

Hey! We enjoyed meeting you both - couldn't remember your CC name or I would have given you a shout-out! Glad you guys had a great cruise!

[gelo7]

Excellent review.

[opalinem]

I agree completely - we loved it! So funny that you thought the spa was hot and the salt room comfortable - I thought the spa room was the perfect temperature and the salt room too cool. DH would probably agree with you, since he gets hot much easier than I do - he couldn't spend more than 20 minutes on the tile lounger without getting uncomfortably hot!

Yep, I'm just like your DH :) I thought the place was gorgeous but I couldn't have stayed too long either... Another thing I wanted to add is: I liked the buffet as much or better than the free dining rooms on the Breakaway (so , no need to stress about lines) and for the specialty restaurants I was blown away by le Bistro. Better than a lot of French restaurants in NYC . That's the one I would recommend to people if they were to try only one of the extra charge dining options. The window take away from Ocean Blue was worth it too. Once again, I love your review! (and I loved the Breakaway as much as you did!)

[tiggerfan616]

Great review thanks so much this is just what I was looking for. Was really nervous about sailing a big ship but my DS and DH really wanted to try so we are booked Feb 1st 2015 for the 12 day. Your review has me looking forward to it now.

 

Thanks for clearing up about pre-booking dining. We are the same as you and prefer to eat later so for 3 of us think I will wait until we board

[kismet618]

Layout, continued:

We really liked the location of our cabin. If you plan to get a spa pass, I highly recommend getting a spa cabin over a regular cabin - if not for the savings, then for the location. Our cabin was on deck 14 port side (try to get a port side cabin, as the starboard side ones are below the fitness center) and it was just a short walk down the hall and a flight up the stairs to get to the spa and fitness center. I made that journey quite often! You're also only one deck down from the pool deck and buffet, if you enjoy the buffet more than I do. It was also a pretty short walk to the sun deck overlooking the pool, jogging track, Uptown Grill, and the sports complex on deck 16.

 

We did not spend a lot of time on the pool deck this cruise - probably because we spent the time in the spa instead. There are some lounge chairs on the pool deck, but not a large seating area right on top of the pool, so I *sort of* understand the complaints about seating on the pool deck. That said, there are plenty of loungers on deck 16 overlooking the pool area. I would consider this area to be part of the pool deck itself, even though it's up a flight of stairs.

 

Spice H2O was sort of awkward to access - at least if you're coming from the forward on deck 16 (if you are aft on a lower deck, you can take the aft elevators and end up just outside the entrace). Since our cabin was deck 14 forward, however, we were usually coming from that direction. To get to Spice H2O, you'd need to walk through the sun deck overlooking the pool deck, walk through the jogging track, walk through part of Uptown Grill, open a door that looks like it would take you into the video arcade, walk a short ways past the elevators and out the doors to Spice H2O. Approaching it from that direction was a little odd and may be the reason why we forgot about Spice H2O for almost the entire cruise, after discovering it on the first day while exploring. I went into the cruise thinking that we'd sit there a fair amount, but we never ended up using it except for a brief walkthrough on the last two sea days because we learned that the hot dog cart was there. :D

 

More to come later this afternoon or evening!

 

Great review...thank you. We are going to cruising on the sister ship, Getaway in 2 weeks. We also have a mini-suite on Deck 14, but not a Spa one...I've read some reviews that said you can hear some chair scraping from Deck 15, and also feel some vibrations...did you experience any of this? Thanks again for the great details of your review.