Breakaway-3 points of view in one review

[kernie968]

We cruised on the Breakaway on December 7th. I has spent weeks searching all of the cruises out of the New York City area and after many discussions we decided on the Breakaway. I then spent every free minute reading everything I could on Cruise Critic. We decided to book two aft balconies as we had two people over six feet tall traveling in our group of four and the reviews all said the balconies are small. Just by chance I checked the price of a Haven Aft Penthouse Suite with the kids sail free sale and it was less than two hundred dollars a person more to upgrade to the suite, so we booked a Haven Suite!

 

For this review I will tell my view, then I will tell two of the other peoples views who traveled with me. I am a very optimistic person who laughs and smiles easily. I always see the glass as half full. I never hold on to my anger I always just let it go!(I've done this my whole life, not just after the Disney song) It would take a lot of bad stuff to wreck my vacation.

 

The next person is my husband. He see the glass as half empty and filled with the wrong stuff and dirty! (opposites do attract) He rarely smiles or laughs. His review will be under the label of Grumpy.

 

The other two people on this cruise was my son and his friend. Both are 19 and this was their second cruise with us. Since my son usually talks in one word or grunts the other part of this review will be his friends perspective, so his part of the review will be under the label of Teen.

 

Embark

We arrived in Penn Station around 11AM. Our biggest fear was that we would need to take two taxis to the pier because of all of our luggage, but we did not need to worry. When you walk out to the taxi area and tell the man running the area that you have four people and luggage, he gets you a small taxi van that has lots of room for luggage and 4 people. I was so happy that I tipped the taxi driver more than the ride cost!

 

We had the taxi drop us off at 49th and 12th and we walked back to 48th street to cross. We waited in line 10 minutes to drop off our luggage. The wind blowing through this area was very cold, so dress warm.

 

We took the elevator we were directed to and when the doors opened we could not believe how many people were in the terminal. From all the reviews I read I knew what we needed to do I told the first person I saw that we were Haven. He called a man over with a clipboard who asked our room number and we were off to the security check in with no line. We were directed to a lady with a Haven sign who again needed our room number and then sent past lines of people to another lady who needed our room number then finally sent to the Haven Lounge to check in. It is a long walk to the back of the terminal past many people waiting in long lines.

 

Once in the Haven lounge we were told to get a snack and wait until they called our names to check in.It was pretty empty as they had already started boarding. We waited around 5 minutes. The snacks were OK,nothing special so I started to get a little nervous that maybe the Haven was not going to be a special as we thought.

 

Now it was around 11:30 and they had already started to board everyone so we would not be one of the first people onto the ship. They took a group of 10 of us to board and I wondered how this was going to work as there was long lines of people already on the gangplank. Not a problem the lady starts to yell for everyone to move to the right so the Haven guests could board. People start to give you nasty looks and make comments as you pass by. One little boy wanted to know why we were allowed to butt the line and his dad said because they paid more. My favorite comment that made me laugh out loud was a lady who yelled," When the ship sinks they'll die like the rest of us!" I love that lady.

 

Grumpy-Embarking was perfect.We passed by masses of people all sitting and looking bored. We had no lines, no waiting. The snacks in the lounge were not too good.

 

Teen-The Haven was worth the money just to zoom through the whole process with no waiting around. The snacks in the lounge were gross. It was hilarious passing everyone in line to get on the ship and hear their comments.

 

Once on board we met Anoop our concierge in the Haven Lounge.He explained a few things to us about the Haven and then we were handed plates of sliders We took seats and bit into the sliders that I had only dreamed about. Yes the Haven was going to be special. They were great! We walked around the Haven Courtyard and went back to the lounge so I could order my first drink. While we waited the waitress came out with more sliders,but their were no new people coming in so she begged us to eat one more each. After 15 minutes the waitress came out with more sliders and begged us to eat those also. Both teens ate them quickly, then ran out of the Haven before being asked to eat more!

 

Grumpy-The first sliders were cold,so I did not like it, but the second sliders were hot so they were good. They did not have any napkins and the sliders were greasy. They should have given us napkins.

 

Teen-the sliders were great,but three is plenty.

[ncklhaus]

Loving this review already! Keep it coming.

Subscribed. :D

[CasinoCruzGirl]

Ready for more

[bragstarr]

I'm already cracking up from your three points of view, especially that of your son who is not reviewing because all that he does is grunt one word answers. Classic!

[2bthere]

I'll be following this one! Please continue when you have moment.

[L-in-CLT]

Love it! And sailing in 9 days in an aft H5 so definitely interested!

[PathfinderEss]

Enjoying your review.

[monkeybone]

I'm already cracking up from your three points of view, especially that of your son who is not reviewing because all that he does is grunt one word answers. Classic!

 

I have to agree with you.....Thats my son for sure! Love it:)

[elruth]

a Haven Aft Penthouse Suite with the kids sail free sale and it was less than two hundred dollars a person more to upgrade to the suite, so we booked a Haven Suite!

 

The "kids" were 19 yrs. old. Didn't you have to pay adult fares for them?

[kernie968]

I thought that too, but kids sail free just meant that the 3rd and 4th person in the room are free. I had put my husband as the 4th person when we booked and his fare was still free.

[CasinoCruzGirl]

a Haven Aft Penthouse Suite with the kids sail free sale and it was less than two hundred dollars a person more to upgrade to the suite, so we booked a Haven Suite!

 

The "kids" were 19 yrs. old. Didn't you have to pay adult fares for them?

 

It's not really just for "kids". It's for passengers after the first 2

[kernie968]

We went to find our room. Walking from the front of the ship to the back with our carry on's was not as difficult as I thought it would be. We took Deck 8 from elevator to elevator with no problems. I was so excited I could not wait to see the room in person. The boys were already there. My first thought as I saw suite 11908, I thought it would be bigger! All the pictures I had seen gave me the wrong idea of the width of the room, but then again there was three huge guys in the room. I will do more on the room later in the review.

 

We could not wait to see the sail away from our balcony, which was huge,but we had to go to the muster drill. The year before we had cruised on a Carnival ship where the muster drill was standing in a marked off area while they crowded us in like sardines and told us stuff we could not hear or see. NCL does the muster drill right. We had to sit in chairs in the Manhattan dining room where we could see and hear everything.

 

We headed back to our room for sail away. We were on the port side of the ship so we would have all of Manhattan to watch. We watched as the water started to swirl and knew we did not have long to wait. Other reviews had said in the back of the ship when it was leaving or coming in to ports that the noise and shaking in the room would be very noticeable, but it did not seem that bad to us.

 

We waited until we had just passed lower Manhattan when we headed up to the Haven Sail away party on the Haven sundeck. I did not realize how fast the ship was moving because by the time we got up there we had already passed the Statue of Liberty. Grumpy had never seen it before so he did not get a great view, but they were handing out champagne so we were good. It was not crowded maybe 20 people tops and all the champagne you could drink. I was starting to really love the Haven.

 

If I manage to get my non-communicating teen to show me how to add pictures to this review I will. I already uploaded them to Photobucket, but cannot figure out how to attach them to the review. Hopefully by the end of the weekend someone can find time to teach an old dog new tricks.

[destaw7182]

Can't wait to read more!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[jfkny]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. We are leaving next Sunday for a 12 day on the Breakaway and your review is really helpful.

 

 

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[luvtheships]

a Haven Aft Penthouse Suite with the kids sail free sale and it was less than two hundred dollars a person more to upgrade to the suite, so we booked a Haven Suite!

 

The "kids" were 19 yrs. old. Didn't you have to pay adult fares for them?

 

Ncl really needs to change the name of the kids sail free promo..... Reality is you pay for the first 2 in your cabin and anyone one else you choose to fit in there is free...your best friend your grandmother your sister.... Anyone.

 

 

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[kernie968]

OK lets see if this works so I can add photos.If it works it will show how few people were at the Haven Sail Away Party.

Edited December 27, 2014 by kernie968

[kernie968]

Trying to figure out how to make the photos bigger.

 

[kernie968]

We will have to keep trying to figure out to do the photos, but back to the review for now.

 

In all the reviews I read I never saw anything about the video arcade probably because grownups lose their money at the casino and teens lose it at the arcade. I did spend a little time at the arcade with the boys and enjoyed a few of the games. Every time I went to the arcade there was only 4 or 5 other people in it. Like all arcades you win tickets that you can trade for really cheap toys. The games I saw were $1.00 to $1.50 each. The boys would come back from the arcade with hundred of tickets each time. They started keeping a count and were quickly up to three thousands tickets!

 

So I went up to check what kinds of prizes they could get and there is nothing that a teenage boy would want! Most of the toys look like the kind of thing that breaks the first time you use it, so the boys started handing out tickets to kids and their parents every time they went to the arcade. It made for a lot of smile for a lot of kids.

 

Teen-The arcade was crowded at times, but mostly it was empty.It had some great games to pass the time. If you really enjoy playing games give yourself a daily limit or all of your money will be gone in a day.There is enough variety of games to keep you going back.

[kernie968]

Trying to do photos again

8.photobucket.com/user/kernie123/media/IMG_3116_zps75e12b19.jpg.html][/url]

[kernie968]

Success! Now if I can remember what I did I can post more photos.Sorry for the trail and error, but I love reviews with photos.

 

The Room

When we first entered I had expected it to be bigger, but after we checked out all of the rooms and looked around for a few minutes we started discussing how to make the room manageable for us for the week. In the photo posted before you can see how they have a huge leg rest in the middle of the room. Why?It just takes up a lot of space. We rearranged the living room so we could all move around easily.

 

 

The couch was made into a bed the first night and that is how it stayed. We could have asked for the steward to make it back into a couch, but Grumpy likes his naps so it was easier to leave it as a bed. Grumpy had the living room bed to himself as he snores very loudly. We moved all the chairs from the table against the wall and now we had room to move.

 

 

Grumpy -The couch made into a bed was fine for me. It was hard, but that is how I like my mattresses. The bathroom off of the living room is made for little kids, not adults.

 

 

The room steward did put a egg crate topper on the mattress when he made the couch into the bed, but when I tried laying felt it was too hard. There is no way I could have slept on that. I had brought a blow up mat for me to sleep on in the bedroom and that was a lot more comfortable that the couch.

 

The small bathroom is very small. You can use it,but you do not have much room to move around.

 

One of the best parts of the living room is the big light that hangs down over the table. Because of the way we rearranged the room my son banged his head at least twice a day and sometime more on that light. Sorry to all the people that have the room after us if the light is still crooked. We wondered if he would ever learn to be careful standing up, but we would have needed more than 7 days to see.

 

We had fresh flowers in our room that lived the entire voyage. We had a bowl of fruit,but it disappeared after two days when we did not eat any of it.

After the initial shock of the size of the living room it was fine. We never felt crowded and had room for everything.

 

There is plenty of storage room for everything. Grumpy and I used the closet in the living room.

 

 

It was tight,but everything fit.

 

There is storage above and below the TV and two empty drawers by the fridge. One of the drawers has extra silverware and plates.

 

 

There are hooks just as you walking the door for hanging coats.

Edited December 27, 2014 by kernie968
I did the same photo over and over

[MandyMommyof2]

I can't wait to read more! Love how you are reviewing from 3 different perscpetives. :)

[marazad16]

Awesome review! Can't wait to read more, really enjoying it. Thanks.

[kernie968]

The bedroom

We chose this room because the bedroom was by the balcony. I cannot understand why NCL would put the bathroom by the balcony. We could lay on the bed and see the ocean. We could leave the door open and hear the wake. The bedroom was the best. We had plenty of room even with my blowup mat on the floor for the night.

 

 

 

 

There are two huge closets.

 

 

The closets in the boys bedroom were pretty much empty and this is why.

 

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We had plenty of room under the bed for 4 suitcases. I loved the lighting in the bedroom. We could adjust it so we had the blue lights lit up behind the mirror. There was also blue lights beneath the night stands on either side of the bed that we could leave on all night. This made it easy for the boys to come back late and night and still be able to see to get in bed without waking me.

[dogbert's mom]

This sounds like our family. My husbands first words are always about some thing being wrong. My oldest son never spoke even to his extended family until he started working in customer service for an insurance company at 25 yo. You still have hope that he will learn to converse.

[bjinouno]

The bedroom

We chose this room because the bedroom was by the balcony. I cannot understand why NCL would put the bathroom by the balcony. We could lay on the bed and see the ocean. We could leave the door open and hear the wake. The bedroom was the best. We had plenty of room even with my blowup mat on the floor for the night.

 

 

 

 

There are two huge closets.

 

 

The closets in the boys bedroom were pretty much empty and this is why.

 

[/url]

 

We had plenty of room under the bed for 4 suitcases. I loved the lighting in the bedroom. We could adjust it so we had the blue lights lit up behind the mirror. There was also blue lights beneath the night stands on either side of the bed that we could leave on all night. This made it easy for the boys to come back late and night and still be able to see to get in bed without waking me.

Loving your style of writing.. can't wait to read and see more! Boys will be boys!