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A first timer's account - NCL Breakaway - May 18-25

Winston Wolf

By Winston Wolf,
in Norwegian Cruise Line

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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I had been reading that NCL has rearranged some show times (mainly ROA) recently. It appears you may have been the first Bermuda sailing that had the re-arranged schedules. Would you mind terribly posting the dailies? I noticed you had offered to a few weeks back, but someone else had done it the week before, so you probably thought it would be redundant and re-thought the idea... but with new show schedule changes, I'm REALLY interested to see what else (if anything) has moved around for the evenings. If you still have them and wouldn't mind, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see them :):):)

 

Indeed I did volunteer, but it looked like those on the 6/11 sailing had covered it. Good point on the show restructuring though. I'll see what I can do tonight. I still have them all.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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Do you know if this applies to both Sunday night shows? There is a 5:45 and a 9pm.

 

Would love to pre-book and then get the discount!

 

Yes. Just first night. It wasn't even close to sold out for the 9pm show (or preference so we wouldn't have to rush to get ready after the Sailaway), so even if you waited until you boarded I don't think it would be a problem.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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Any chance you can share that document? I'm heading out on the Breakaway on Sunday and would love to have it!!

 

I'm probably making it sound more elaborate than it is, but yes, I can post anything that I had cut and pasted that I thought would be worth remembering.

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Kenlorz

Kenlorz

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Indeed I did volunteer, but it looked like those on the 6/11 sailing had covered it. Good point on the show restructuring though. I'll see what I can do tonight. I still have them all.

 

You ROCK! Thank you so much!

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All-ready2cruise Holiday Sharing Rare

All-ready2cruise

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I didn't realize you had to pay for the Cirque show. In 2011 on Jewel there was a Cirque style show in the main theater with the ropes hanging from the ceiling above row 4 0r 5.

 

Is Cirque Dream on Breakaway more elaborate and in a different theater?

 

I believe it's 2 different types. This new show, the Cirque Dreams and such are dinner shows unlike the earlier ones which were only in the theatres. those shows are still free.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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...Continued....

 

Bermuda:

We arrived in Bermuda and docked Starboard side which was what I had hoped for to have a shot at using the Dockyard wifi from our balcony. Side note – I spent most of last season jotting down which way Breakaway docked and could not discern any sort of pattern. Roughly 2/3 of the time BA docked Port side and 1/3 to Starboard. The first two sailings this year docked Port, so I felt pretty good about docking Starboard and turned out that we did. Anyway, we docked and had plans that morning to do the Hartley’s Undersea Walk (Helmet Dive). A fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone unless you’re claustrophobic. It’s a pretty odd sensation being underwater with your head dry like that. Very cool though. Greg Hartley is a 3rd generation owner of the family business and tells some pretty good stories during the trip out to the dive site. It’s pricey at $95 per person, but a really cool and unique experience.

 

Wifi and bus passes -

After we got back we grabbed lunch on the ship then went out to the dockyard to get our bus/ferry passes and wifi. The wifi place wouldn’t sell to us because the local hotspot wasn’t working so they couldn’t set it up for us and turned out the bus passes are cash only so we had to go back to the ship (hadn’t counted on that). After retrieving the cash, we noticed that the sales desk for the bus ferry passes in the Heritage Wharf building had no line so we bought them there. Easy peasy. Then went back to get our wifi codes. So here’s the deal with the wifi. It stinks. You’ll talk yourself into buying it saying…”oh, it can’t be that bad…” but it is, at least around the ship. Frustratingly, your device will pick up the wifi, and you’ll get all excited, but like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, your device will never connect. The only place we ever got it to work was in the Clocktower Mall. So just be prepared for that. It was probably the worst money we spent on the trip, and it wasn’t even that much ($15 for 3 days).

 

Dinner on the island

So since it was a special occasion, I had this bright idea for us to have a nice dinner off the ship. Per the recommendation of someone who has been to Bermuda a dozen or more times, I booked the Fourways Inn for dinner. So here’s the difficulty. We bought the bus/ferry passes but the busses don’t run that way during meal times. The only option is a taxi, which may or may not be around the dockyard at 7pm and they’re expensive (and rates just went up 25% on May 1st). So my best guess was (with tip), about $60 each way. This just seemed silly. Thankfully, I’m not married to a pretentious woman and she had no issues taking the bus in our fancy attire to Fourways. We managed to get an earlier reservation and could take the bus there (didn’t run back to the ship later on though) which dropped us off about 50 yards from the entrance to Fourways. Not bad. Fourways is a really cool place. I won’t regurgitate the history on here, but feel free to look it up. The food was phenominal. Easily worth the price tag. That said, the atmosphere was a little stuffy for our tastes. So while it was great, we probably wouldn’t go back. Sorry Fourways, it’s not you…it’s me. In hindsight, I wish we had just eaten dinner at Ocean Blue or Cagney’s and called it good, or at the very least booked a nice place in Hamilton which would have been easier to reach from the Dockyard. Anyway, learn from my mistake.

 

So after that we caught a taxi to Hamilton and checked out Harbor Nights. It’s …OK. I don’t see the big fuss, but we were able to hit a bunch of touristy places for souveniers for our kids. Then we grabbed a couple 22 ouncers of Bud Light and drank them with paper bags on the ferry back to Hamilton. That’s right. We took the bus to one of the fanciest restaurants on Bermuda, walked around Harbor Nights in dress clothes, bought a bunch of tee shirts and knickknacks, then topped the evening off slugging down Bud Lights in paper bags. I love my marriage!

 

Thursday we hit St. Georges in the morning, but caught a mid-day ferry back to the ship to hang out at Vibe. Friday we spent around the dockyard. Originally we had planned to go to check out Gibbs Lighthouse, but didn’t feel like it and opted for more Vibe time.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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So here’s the “Catch All” and final section.

Ship Size-

Over the last year I’d read varying accounts on how big the ship is. I’ll be honest…it didn’t strike me as that big. Our cabin was nearly all the way Forward and could be at Spice H20 in under a 5 minute walk. When we boarded and were on our mission for Vibe passes, I hadn’t realized exactly how close everything was. You get through the door, the stairs you need are immediately on your right (if you board on the Starboard side) down one flight, go through the elevator lobby, then boom…you’re there. I had it built up that this would be a few minutes…but it took maybe 30 seconds to get there. Again, I have zero context how Breakaway compares to a smaller ship, but I thought it was really manageable and makes me wonder whether I’d like a smaller ship. If this “behemoth” didn’t feel that big to me….what would a smaller ship feel like?

Moving on, as I said I got the Deluxe Anniversary Package for my wife since this was an Anniversary trip. When we arrived in our room there were already a dozen really nice roses in the room, chocolate covered strawberries, and a bottle of sparkling wine. The package also came with a 25 minute couples massage, a complimentary photo, canapés delivered to the room, and breakfast in bed one morning. I’m not really a massage guy, but did this for my wife. The package is really only a good value when you factor it in, and I knew she’d enjoy it so I got it. The Spa is really nice and pretty serene. The massage in and of itself was fine, but the hard sell on additional products like what I called “magic oil drops” for my back, or to get my footprints examined (for custom orthotics I assume), was a huge turn off. I didn’t come to the Spa for a sales pitch. Maybe this is why I avoid Spas…

iConcierge was a really neat tool for checking balances, but that’s about all I found it useful for. We both bought the $7.95 messenger and phone connection but found it pretty useless. Both times I tried to message my wife in the rare occasion we weren’t together, it didn’t work. Kept saying that she wasn’t connected…but she was. Anyway…I wouldn’t pay the extra money for that part in the future.

I had read a lot about how problematic the elevator situation was on the ship. There have been lots of comments on how long it takes to get an elevator. We never had a problem with this. Elevators came in my opinion a pretty timely manner. What was however really annoying was how long it took to get anywhere on them. With 11 decks being used for guests there are lots of people trying to get lots of places. If you couple that with doors that close REALLY slowly….your elevator rides take what feels like forever.

Unless you’re an avid fan of Black Friday midnight sales or the running of the brides for discounted designer wedding dresses, avoid the Tradewinds/Photo area like the plague on the last day of the trip. What a complete circus. People huddled around the kiosks, crew members shouting over them to be heard, it was nuts. It was stressful to even be in the area.

I’ve seen more than a few reviews recently mentioning rough seas on the way back from Bermuda. This was the case with us as well. It actually led to a missed opportunity for us. I now recall a suggestion from someone last year not to put off doing the ropes course for the Sea Day on the way back from Bermuda because if it’s closed for high winds, you’re out of luck. This happened to us. I was really looking forward to trying it out, but with our rough seas and high winds they didn’t have it open on that last day of the cruise. I won’t make that mistake again if/when we sail another Breakaway Class ship.

Cruise Critic-

It was really nice connecting with a few of the people we met at the Meet and Greet/Cabin Crawl/Slot Pull throughout the trip. With Norwegian’s Freestyle cruising, and not sitting with the same people at dinner each night, etc. meeting people can be a challenge. The M&G connected us almost immediately with people we’d hang out with several times during our cruise. I’d highly encourage people sign up on your Cruise Roll Call and attend the CC activities.

Disembarkation-

We picked one of the later disembarkation times since we had a 3pm flight out of LGA. The only issue was although our tag color wasn’t slated to be off this ship until 10:15 am, we needed to be out of our cabins by 8:30am. We left our bags in our room and grabbed breakfast in the buffet, then just found a spot to sit and wait out on the Waterfront. Better than waiting at the airport anyway…

Exiting the ship is really easy and NCL groups your bags by color in the lower level of the pier. You pick them up them proceed through customs. Pretty easy I thought.

Taxis –

Taxis to get to your trains/airports are located across the street from the pier. We had a guy approach us asking us for a Taxi and we followed him to his…..car. Now, technically this guy was a licensed “NYC Taxi and Limousine” driver…but he misrepresented himself as a Taxi. You’re car service, guy. He indicated that they were a flat fee to the airport vs. metered on the Yellow Taxis. After it was all said and done, it probably cost me an extra $20. Not the end of the world, but pissed me off a bit and felt like I got hustled a bit. Anyway, beware as you exit the pier.

Overall –

We really enjoyed this trip and it won’t be the last time we cruise. I’m already looking at a Disney World/Disney Cruise trip for next Fall and would like to try one of the Oasis Class ships on RCCL. I’m much more drawn to the big ships than the small ones because of the sheer amount of choices of things to do on board. I recognize that this comes with a loss perhaps of personal attention or perhaps pampering, but mostly on vacation I just want to be left alone anyway! The ship has so many things to do and there were still things to try that we didn’t. Never did the ropes course, barely did the slides, never made it to Fat Cats, didn’t do the Ice Bar, etc. Even in Bermuda there were a lot of places we had talked about visiting, but didn’t have time for. I can see how people could do multiple trips to Bermuda on Breakaway and still hardly feel like they repeated the same vacation. Ultimately it came down to choices for us, and I guess that’s the heart of Freestyle cruising. When we felt like going out, we did. When we wanted to chill out in Vibe, we did. It was such a relaxing week, and felt really long, but in a good way. By the time we got to Tuesday it felt like we had been gone forever and still had 2/3 of the trip to go!

Anyway, kudos to NCL on Breakaway, she’s fantastic. This has turned our family on to a whole new set of options and ideas for family vacations in the coming years. It certainly won’t be the last time we sail NCL and look forward to trying Getaway, Escape, and Bliss in the future! Thanks for reading!

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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Any chance you can share that document? I'm heading out on the Breakaway on Sunday and would love to have it!!

 

Most of my sheet was just our daily schedule along with excursion costs, etc. But here are the notes I had below for myself. I hope this formats OK...

 

What you should do is book the Cirque style show for late in your cruise. Then, when you get on the ship, see if they are offering the $29 first night special. If so, buy that and cancel your original reservation (which you can do without penalty up to 24 hours in advance of the show you reserved). If the $29 special is not offered you still have your original reservations so you will not get shut out.Be sure to go straight to Vibe line when you board which is left of guest services same counter area. I saw many people get in the guest services line in error and miss out.NORWEGIANS GET PAIRED UP.15% off a bottle of wine with the purchase of two (2) specialty restaurant cover chargesmanaged Vibe passes (although in the wrong line at first; only the most to the left line at GS is the one;; there is a staffer with a wad of blue Vibe passes with #'s on them handed out for you to then get in line),Take Quart & Gallon ziploc bags (pizza, gear)Take Lysol wipesBus/Ferry passes available at Visitors center @ dockyard - $35 each for 3 days Print bus/ferry route map#7 Bus to Gibbs Hill LH / Elbow Beach & HamiltonSt. Georges - St. Catherine FortRe-read Gambee's reviewDockyward wifi - Get "wifi zone by TBI". Purchase from gift card shop right before the Froyo place. $15 for 3 days.

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Kenlorz

Kenlorz

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Loved the Review. I thought it was very balanced (you noted the good and bad). I love reading these reviews while we wait for ours, so thanks for sharing yours! Will you be posting the dailies?...Would love to see the entertainment scheduling changes and what is affected/re-arranged to accommodate them.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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Loved the Review. I thought it was very balanced (you noted the good and bad). I love reading these reviews while we wait for ours, so thanks for sharing yours! Will you be posting the dailies?...Would love to see the entertainment scheduling changes and what is affected/re-arranged to accommodate them.

 

I will post the dailies. I'll create a separate thread for that though and post the link here.

 

I'm just slammed at work right now and have been working in the evenings at home, so I haven't had time yet.

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Winston Wolf

Winston Wolf

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Loved the Review. I thought it was very balanced (you noted the good and bad). I love reading these reviews while we wait for ours, so thanks for sharing yours! Will you be posting the dailies?...Would love to see the entertainment scheduling changes and what is affected/re-arranged to accommodate them.

 

 

 

Dailies are scanned as pdfs...but apparently too large for CC's liking. I'm not sure it's going to work out.

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cv322

cv322

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Thanks for your review, I loved it! I was on the 1st Bermuda cruise this season on the Breakaway & fell in love with this ship ;)...and enjoyed very much seeing her again through a newbie cruiser's eyes! Well done!

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