Sisters Trip Report! Norwegian Escape April 29 - May 6 2017

[nutocruzing]

Hello Cruise Critic! I just got back this weekend from aweek long cruise on the Norwegian Escape with my sister as well as my mom andher sister (my aunt). Our "sisters" trip was fabulous! I wanted to take the timeto write out a report giving me the opportunity to relive my cruise as well asgiving back to this forum by providing the most updated information I possiblycould.

A bit about me. I love cruising. I love it! At this point, Ican’t imagine going the rest of my life without cruising a minimum of once ortwice a year. I went on my first cruise ever back in February of 2015. I nevergrew up cruising for a few reasons. My mother suffers from terrible seasickness on small boats and due to inexperience, we assumed cruising would bean awful scenario for her. My family also tends to avoid all-inclusive typesituations. I was so, so fortunate to grow up travelling with my parents, buttypically when we traveled, we would stay with local friends, whether it wasas far away as the South Pacific, or simply elsewhere within Canada. When wedid vacation, we were far more likely to stay at a cheap cabin and fend forourselves, than to pay for a luxury hotel experience. So, cruising had simply neveroccurred to me.

What do I love about cruising? The Caribbean for starters! Ilove the views; the colour of the water, the sea life, the sunsets, themountainous islands… it’s always breathtaking. I also love the idea of gettingto stop at multiple locations, with the convenience of only having to unpackonce! Your transportation is also infinitely more comfortable than other modes(no sitting still for hours on end!). I also, ironically, really enjoy the(almost) all-inclusive nature of cruising. I like having formal sit downdinners, live theatre and bands for entertainment. Point is, I love it. Sincethat first cruise just over two years ago, I have now been on 5 cruises! I evenmanaged to convince my entire family to go on a cruise for our family Christmasgathering this past December! Only my sister and I had ever cruised, the other11 members were newbies (side note: I know, my choice of username on here wasshort-sighted; when I first signed up, I had no idea I would end up obsessedwith cruising!). Turns out, my momdidn’t get sick at all (other than a little bit one morning, but even sheadmits that is more likely attributable to the margaritas she’d had theevening before, sorry mom! ;p)!!

Pre-Cruise Planning

As I was anticipating finding a summer job soon that wouldprevent me taking a vacation during the summer months, I approached my momabout going away together some-time in late spring. Obviously my first thoughtwas, CRUISE! After discussing it with my father, he suggested we invite alongboth of our sisters (that is to say, my sister (i.e. my mother’s daughter) andmy mom’s sister (i.e. my aunt). We jumped on the phone and of course they wereon board! (I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse the puns, I can’t help it there arejust too many good ones when it comes to cruising!).

I had already done some research and determined that in thetime frame we were considering, the Escape was among the cheapest options. Ihad also thoroughly enjoyed my time on the Getaway last summer. The cruise wetook as a family for Christmas was on the Carnival Imagination which is one ofthe oldest Carnival ships and I knew that the Escape would be an exciting newexperience for my family. After briefly describing the features on Escape mymom told me she was sold! Realizing that the week we were looking at includedthe 3rd and 4th guest sail free option, we knew that abalcony room would be more reasonably priced. When we sailed at Christmas wehad a Suite on the Imagination and I don’t think my family is interested incruising without a balcony anymore.

Note: having thesuite for our family vacation was amazing. All four adults in my immediatefamily shared it incredibly comfortably, and we often had the rest of ourentire family over as well. It was so much fun to be able to be on our balconywaving to our family members as they came up the gangway! My dad had next to nopart in planning the vacation and the look on his face when he got into theroom was priceless. He told me I’ve ruined him for cruising, and that he’llnever be able to sail sans-balcony. Oh darn! I guess he’ll have to bring mewith him to justify the expense ;)

And so, after just a few days of discussion, we’d booked theApril 29th sailing out of Miami on the Escape. We were all soooexcited! Other than our family Christmas cruise which was planned ten months inadvance, I’ve pretty much always signed up for cruises at the last minute. Idon’t know how people survive waiting so long for their vacation to come! Weselected the 3rd and 4th guest sail free and the UBPpackage. We knew that having four adults in one room might be a little tight,but being on a ship that is twice as busy as the last ship we had been on meantthat it would be important to have our own outdoor space.

I was thrilled with my selection for our balcony stateroom,9th deck, nearly mid-ship, staterooms above and below. Only one deckup from the waterfront and all the entertainment venues seemed a convenientplace to be. I knew that being more forward and slightly higher up on theGetaway the year before I had never felt any movement on the ship and washoping that experience would be repeated for my family.

Note: For thoseof you out there considering booking on the Escape or the other Breakaway classships, look up angled balconies on these forums for some more information abouthow to save money and get a larger balcony at the same time!

I don’t want to spend very much time talking about the dayleading up to the cruise. I’ll be honest in saying that it bores the heck outof me to read that section on other reviews. For your information I’ll let youknow that we booked at the Clarion Inn and Suites at the Miami Airport. Theprice was right and there was complimentary transportation and breakfast.That’s all I care about! To me, the only point of the hotel the night beforethe cruise is to have a place to sleep when you responsibly fly in the nightbefore the cruise rather than day of. If it was some sort of freak disaster,I’d let you know, otherwise rest assured that it was… a cheap but satisfactoryhotel. In terms of flights, we were coming from all across Canada, and most ofus had connecting flights to get down there. I have flown in day of for my owncruises, but prefer not to risk it when going with a group (who wants to leavebehind your friends!).

Note: If youreally want to avoid paying for a hotel the night before your cruise, Irecommend considering a red-eye flight arriving first thing in the morning, aswell as considering a cruise that departs closer to 7 at night rather than 4 togive you lots of wiggle time.

 

And another word… packing. Ugh. I have to say this is onelevel on which I just don’t get cruisers. What is with all of the gigantic 30”plus bags outside of people’s rooms? What are you bringing? I actually have noidea. We always cruise with carry-on sized bags. Firstly, I know too many whohave lost their luggage before a cruise and had to mad shop last minute forclothes for the cruise. Frankly, beyond the expense and inconvenience that isjust generally a bummer. I don’t know about you, but I carefully plan myoutfits and it would suck not to get to wear something I was really excitedabout. I also realize that a) no one cares what you’re wearing and they areneither going to notice nor care if you repeat an outfit and b) you’re going tobe spending so much time in a bathing suit, you won’t even wear most outfitsfor more than a few hours a day. I made a video summarizing some tips for packing light but it won't cooperate with me right now so I'll try to upload it later.

 

Up next: Day 1

[James_Elmore]

Following

 

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[Two Wheels Only]

Following...(I took my mom and sister on their first cruise last year)

 

Also, please include stateroom number and bed location.

[Kathie13]

Following!

 

 

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[nutocruzing]

April 29, 2017 – Day 1

Our alarms went off shortly after 7 am in our hotel roomnear the Miami airport. We were all pretty groggy as we hadn’t settled down tosleep until after 1 am and Mom and I were still on Mountain Time, and it wasonly 5 am our time. To make matters worse, my sister’s flights fromNewfoundland had taken almost 24 hours (the downside to last minute cheapflight booking) and my mother had worked a volunteer night shift the nightbefore our flight so neither of them had much sleep the night before. Neverthelesswe managed to crawl out of bed, re-pack and get ready for the day ahead.

Here’s something I’m super proud of: my homemade baggagetags!

You can find self-adhesive luggage tags online if you havethe foresight to order them, or even more expensive custom cruise baggage tags,but I made these using strong string and packing tape. They were durable andweather-proof and they looked pretty legit! I had brought our colour coded tagswith me and I passed them out. We had decided that as we wanted to try for Vibepasses we would have to be at port early and we knew we wouldn’t want to dragour luggage around all day, so we would be checking our carry on at the port.

We had a quick continental breakfast (with quite a selectionof foods available) at the hotel. We then grabbed some sunscreen from a nearbystore before grabbing a cab to port. The hotel may or may not have hadcomplimentary transportation to port, but we knew we wanted to get there asearly as possible so taxi it was.

Note: yes, I knowof Uber, no it isn’t worth paying international data fees to use it whileacross the border.

We were already running late. I had wanted to be at the portbefore 9 am and it was already after 9:30 when our cab pulled up. And it waschaos by the taxi drop off. Retrospectively, many of the people out there weredisembarking from the previous cruise. We grabbed our things, threw a quick tipto a porter and ran to get in line at Terminal B. To our surprise, the linewasn’t moving. They weren’t doing security yet. I anxiously surveyed the crowdand assessed that we were probably among the first 100 in line at this terminalbut who knew what Terminal C looked like! There was nothing to be done at thispoint so we waited.

Embarkation was ultimately painless. Security was swift, aswas check-in. We had an official check-in time of 10:30 and by the time we gotthere is was more or less the scheduled time. We grabbed our cards and rushedup the escalator where we were greeted with … Boarding Group Number 2! Would itbe good enough?? The gentleman handing out boarding cards informed us boardingwould likely start around 12:30. That sounded late to me, but we grabbed a seatand waited, as the terminal began to fill up around us. I began to worry thatwe might miss any announcement about boarding, but it was unnecessary. Shortlybefore noon they announced boarding for priority over the loudspeaker. Severalminutes later they announced boarding group number 1. To my surprise, no oneseemed to be running, pushing or shoving as I had read in some reviews. Maybethere was a chance for Vibe after all?

When Boarding Group 2 was called we moved quickly withoutrunning or shoving anyone. We made our way down to deck 6 and over toHeadliners where the restaurant reservations, beverage packages, beveragewaivers and the sacrosanct Vibe passes were held. As we came down the stairsunder the stunning chandelier, my face dropped as I saw a substantial line butwe got into the line nevertheless.

There was a staff member dressed in a suitstanding at the end of the line. He asked if he could help us. I wouldn’t havesaid anything, but my sister asked if this was where we were to line up forVibe. He quickly handed us 4 white laminated cards with number 55 through 58 onthem. We made it! Barely, but we made it!

This line took forever! Please, I beg of you futurecruisers, don’t go to make dinner reservations without knowing where you wantto eat and when. It was honestly ridiculously unfair for those who were waitingin line, wasting their vacation because some people wanted to peruse every menuand ask a million questions about each venue before booking. Something seemedto be taking an unreasonable amount of time at the Vibe check-in too. All inall, the Vibe check-in and sorting out my sister’s dietary restrictions withthe restaurant manager (same location) took over an hour.

Around 1 we headed to O’Sheehan’s for lunch. My sister hadread that they had decent gluten free options available there and wanted to tryit. As we stood in line, an Officer approached us and tried to discourage usfrom waiting there for a free table. After we explained my sister’s GF status,he recommended the MDRs rather than O’Sheehan’s, but we insisted we wanted totry it as I had read that the staff can be a bit pushy about lunch afterembarkation. The officer (who turned out to be Assistant Maitre D’) quicklychanged his tone and confirmed with my sister which items on the menu weregluten free. We ordered lunch (wings and salads for my mom and aunt, a burgerfor my sister (watch out – apparently the fries are not gluten free!) andfajitas for me) and our order arrived quickly. We all agreed that the food wasquite satisfactory.

After lunch we were feeling a little wiped so we decided tohead to our room to see if it was ready yet. It was, although my key carddidn’t work and I would ultimately have to get it replaced. Another smallproblem we quickly noticed was that the barrier between our balcony and 9162had been left open and it was flapping around quite violently in the strongwinds. I called our steward, Paul, and he came promptly to lock it back inplace. Problem solved!

Note: Apparentlythe housekeeping number goes direct to your steward!

Here are some pictures of our room.

A quick room review. We were in room 9160. As you can see from the photos, this room, and from what Ican tell, all others sleeping four guests, have the configuration with the bedby the balcony. The beds, including the sofa bed, were all quite comfortable.There was plenty of storage space even with all four of us in there, thoughthey could use more drawers. The bathroom was very well designed with plenty ofstorage space and a nice sized shower. The balcony was more than satisfactoryand all four of us fit out there quite comfortably.

Four adult women in oneroom was a lot to ask, but it really did work. More than anything it requiresorganization to make sure everyone has the time and space to get ready everymorning or before dinner. We generally dealt with this by staggering showers,and also by my sister and I getting up earlier every morning than my mom andaunt. I wouldn’t hesitate to put four people in the same room again. And in ourcase, because of the 3rd and 4th sail free, it was actuallycheaper with the balcony than having two inside rooms (I do think you’d becrazy to try four adult women in an inside room!). Oh, and one other thing incase it matters to you, our room overlooked deck 7’s shuffleboard area ratherthan having a direct downward ocean view. It didn’t bother us at all, but it issomething to note about the surroundings of the room.

Note: We broughtfolding storage boxes which nicely replaced the missing drawers in terms oforganizing our storage. We will definitely be bringing them with us on our nextcruise as well!

[nutocruzing]

After dropping off our purses/ backpacks, we decided to headup to Vibe to explore. The views of Miami were nice, though not as nice as theview from our port side balcony, and mom and my aunt were very excited to havesnagged a pass. We also checked out deck 20 and the waterfront on our way toour muster drill station at the Escape Theatre. Muster Drill was… well, musterdrill. Mom fell asleep during the presentation and she was not alone, I sawnumerous people dozing. I’m going to give them all the benefit of the doubt andassume they were tired from travelling!

Jess and I booked Escape the Big Top at the Box Office. Inthe end there was plenty of room for standbys on the day of (it was offered onthe first sea day at noon and at 10:15 and 7:00 pm on the Nassau day), but ifit’s something you really want to do, you definitely shouldn’t risk that.

Note: I sawdifferent dailies prior to our departure and was confused about supper clubofferings before getting on the ship. Our week was Company Men for thecomplimentary dinner supper club option. A few weeks before had been Oh What aNight. The shows did not take place at the same times and this caused enoughconfusion with our pre-scheduled itinerary that I wasn’t able to book thesupper club show right away (I had left our itinerary in the room) and when Itried to book the next day it was sold out. Furthermore, there were no reservationspermitted for the MDRs once on board! More on this later.

We went back to our room and we were already sailing away!Miami is a beautiful port but man it goes by quickly! After getting changed, mysister and I decided to try the ropes course while it was open. It was alreadyquite windy so the planks and the upper floor were closed but we had a goodtime anyways. We planned to try going back later in the week. We then checkedout Spice H2O before hitting Vibe. It was blustery up there as well, and I wasfeeling a little short on patience after a long day of executing my carefullycrafted plans. I was not responding well to my hair getting stuck in my lipgloss and my drink coming precariously close to getting knocked over, so Idecided to go back to the room to get ready for dinner and unpack.

We headed to the Manhattan Room around 7:30 and got walkedright in, no wait at all. This was our overwhelming experience despite the lackof ability to make reservations. I don’t know if this is a new thing, but I wasvery much under the impression that you were encouraged to make reservations,even for the MDRs. However this was simply not an option for us. It worked outfine so I can’t really complain.

That night I ended up having a delicious clam chowder andpappardelle with duck for dinner and the lava cake for dessert (sorry NCL, Ilove you but that cake has nothing on Carnival’s!). We happened to run into thesame officer from O’Sheehan’s and he was very attentive to my sister’s diningneeds ensuring that the meal she pre-ordered that afternoon met herexpectations.

 

 

 

After dinner, we wanted to check out Howl at the Moon but itwas absolutely packed and as it had been a long day, we opted to grab somenightcap drinks and head back to the room to finish unpacking. I believe I gotan Eastern Legacy from Tobacco Road that night (and more than a couple timeslater as well). As a gin lover, I really enjoyed that drink! Off our balcony wespotted a number of cruise ships in the distance, including the Vista (webelieve)!

 

 

Coming up: Day 2

[nutocruzing]

Just a quick apology: I pre-wrote some of this out in word and for some reason it seems to be merging words when it posts despite the fact that they don't appear merged in the original post draft! So sorry, I hope it isn't too hard to read. I'll try to start writing from scratch in here from now on.

[grandmarnnurse]

Your luggage tags look like the ones I always made with clear packing tape, and shoe laces for the strings! This past cruise, I did buy the tag holders sold online, and they worked very well.

 

 

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[LSKC]

following

[Sand and Seas]

Really great start to your review! We are about to go on the Escape for the 4th time and you have already made me aware of something we had missed about Tobacco Road:confused: Great pictures too!

[NayRN]

Following! We sail on our Sisters cruise (although we call it our JUGs cruise....Just Us Girls) in September on the Escape!!

[Dart17]

What a great start to your review!!

[Howson88]

Following

[LeesaB]

Following

 

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[Yorkvillain]

Great start. Looking forward to the rest.

[QueenOfZoom]

I was on the same cruise, following :)

[MacCruising2018]

Love your review so far! Looking forward to reading more.

 

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[You_only_live_once]

Following.. going to be on the Escape 8/12/17

[nutocruzing]

April 30 - Day 2

Today was Meet and Greet day, and as I had takenresponsibility for attempting to plan my first ever pub crawl as part of thefestivities, I had my afternoon already planned out for me. Despite the twohour time change, my sister and I were up and out of the room well before 9.Because of my sister’s gluten free diet, we tried our best to always havebreakfast in the MDRs. This morning we both had omelets as my sister had notpre-ordered and her options were somewhat limited.

After breakfast we headed to the room to find my mom andaunt were still not out of the room! My sister and I changed into bathing suitsand made our way up to the Vibe to catch some sun before the meet and greet. As you can see from the picture below, it was still quite windy up there today, and I was feeling a little bit of buyers remorse, wondering how much usable, relaxation time we were really going to have up there.

 

Shortly before noon we all made our way to the District BrewHouse for the meet and greet. We met Barrie who had organized the whole thing(thanks again Barrie!). The pub crawl planned for immediately after the meetand greet gave me a great excuse to start conversations with so many people. Itwas a huge turn out – probably around 70-100 people? I’m sure Barrie couldconfirm! There were lots of Canadians and Newfoundlanders there.

Shortly before 1 I gathered up the group who were interested in the pub crawl and explained to them the schedule and what activities I had planned for our pub crawl. I had wanted to do something to ensure that people would continue following along from bar to bar. I planned out a number of Minute to Win It style elimination games for those who wanted to play. My goal was to get people to interact, have something to start conversations and encourage people to come along to the next bar for the next game. Some of the games we played included a game where you blew plastic cups off a table using a blown up balloon, using a straw to suck skittles up and move them from one cup to another, and the most entertaining game was probably the one where we had a pair of pantyhose with coins in the feet and you had to retrieve the coins without using the other hand to help pull your arm down the leg of the pantyhose. It's hard to explain, but trust that it was very entertaining to watch.

As I expected, we did lose a few people at each bar. I naively hadn't checked the daily schedules of all bars and we ran into a brief problem at the 5 O'Clock somewhere bar which was actually closed in the afternoon (though the outside bar was still serving). We managed to rejig things and it worked out in the end but it did throw me for a bit of a loop. The good news was that this enabled us to meet the Chocolate Cowboy who proved as entertaining as promised.

By the last bar there was a group of about 8 of us left, and I was very happy to make everyone's acquaintance (I won't share names in case anyone would prefer I not, but I do remember most of them!). We ended up in the Skyline Bar where we had a small problem. We had been handing over all of our cards at every bar and my sister's account did not have UBP. Somehow, at this bar, everyone's drinks were charged to my sister's account. We didn't discover this until later in the afternoon. My sister and I went to guest services and it was quickly dealt with. Phew!

My sister and I grabbed a quick snack at O'Sheehan's with one of our fellow pub crawlers. She had to leave pretty quickly as she had early dinner reservations and needed to pick up her daughter from Splash. As it was only late afternoon at this point, my sister and I got changed and decided to try the water slides. We started with the aqua racer to build up courage for the loop slides.

My sister, who is much less afraid of heights than me, opted to try out of the Aqua Loop. There were never any really substantial lines when we went to the water slides so no real waits... ever, even on the really nice sea days. We went straight up, and since I had my ipod with me I decided to take a video of her and wait for her assessment before trying myself. It's a really fast slide, so as soon as she was done she came running back up the stairs (figuratively of course, no running on the pool deck!) and encouraged me to try it saying it wasn't even as bad as she expected it to be.

I wasn't very happy getting into that container. You can hear me tell my sister I hate her in the video haha. But it was also not as bad as I expected, despite the fact that I definitely screamed. The stomach drop feeling isn't as bad as you would think as your back just kind of goes against the slide right away. However, at the part where the slide goes back up again, water rushes into your face and I couldn't escape the feeling that I was drowning. Thankfully it's a short slide. I made myself do it again to prove I could (one of those get back on the horse kind of things). I didn't get on again, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could if I wanted to. My sister and I went to Vibe after for a while, before heading back to the room.

Tonight we had reservations for After Midnight. We decided to go to the show first and eat after, as the run time was under an hour. I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent here. I have read such varying reports on this show. I am so tired of reading "it was good" or "it was bad". It's obvious that this is a somewhat subjective thing. So instead of saying it was a fabulous show with an exceedingly talented cast and anyone who thinks it was a bad show completely lacks any sense of taste, I'll say that WE loved the show. And in my OPINION, the cast were incredibly talented. I conceive that it is possible that one might not enjoy the show, but our group consists of a number of former semi-professional dancers, singers and musicians and we felt that any dislike of the show must be due to personal taste and not the actual performances of the cast. The tap dancing was amazing, the singing was great, the acting was enthralling. I will say that it's more of a show of vignettes than an overarching story line, so do keep that in mind and I think you'll enjoy the show. Many people definitely did as there was an immediate standing ovation at the end of the show.

Another short tangent, people actually get up and leave in the middle of these shows. Listen, I get it; it's your vacation and you want to actually enjoy it. But, really, it's a 50 minute show... unless you've (as an absurd number of people did) brought your 3 year old to For the Record and realized how incredibly inappropriate a call that was, there is, in my opinion, no good excuse for walking out in the middle of the show. Worse yet, many people got up and left while the orchestra was having their moment at the end. This is soooo disrespectful, and Andre, the Cruise Director, specifically asked people to stay seated until the very end! Ok, end rant.

After the show we headed to the Manhattan Room where we once again were ushered to ... the same table! Seriously, what are the chances of that! This night I had the pot roast which I found to be very tasty. The Manhattan Quartet were also incredibly talented (in my opinion). The guitarist had a solo bit in Hotel California that resulted in a near standing ovation. They played many if not most nights and played a wide variety of music further showcasing their talent. The music was part of the reason we tried to eat in Manhattan Room most nights, and we did not find it to be overly loud as some people did. We also noticed quite a few people dancing, including small children having the time of their lives up there. The ambiance of this MDR definitely outranks the others hands down.

 

Tonight was another early night as we were completely worn out from such a long day and it was after 10 by the time we were done with dinner. I do think I grabbed another Eastern Legacy from Tobacco Road; seriously, you need to try this drink it's so refreshing!

Note: I think it was this night that I noticed that they were playing NHL playoff games at some of the bars (skyline, 5 O'Clock somewhere, Tobacco Road) as well as on the TVs in the staterooms. I was so happy to see this as I had just the week before read a thread specifically saying that there would be NO playoff games shown, so if you're a hockey or basketball fan, rest assured you will catch your playoff games if you want! Good luck fitting that in though...

Edited May 9, 2017 by nutocruzing

[nutocruzing]

Your luggage tags look like the ones I always made with clear packing tape, and shoe laces for the strings! This past cruise, I did buy the tag holders sold online, and they worked very well.

That's great to know! If I had the foresight, I may well have done the same thing but by the time I knew I needed the tags as we wouldn't be carrying the bags on, it was the day before we left and there was no time for shipping. Where did you order yours from?

[nutocruzing]

Following! We sail on our Sisters cruise (although we call it our JUGs cruise....Just Us Girls) in September on the Escape!!

 

I love this! I told my mom and I think we'll be using that term in the future!

[easyboy]

Following.

 

 

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[nutocruzing]

For some reason my youtube links aren't working. Anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong? I'll try again as well.

 

Thanks for all the positive feedback so far!

[nutocruzing]

Really great start to your review! We are about to go on the Escape for the 4th time and you have already made me aware of something we had missed about Tobacco Road:confused: Great pictures too!

 

Thanks! What did you miss about Tobacco Road? Was it the drink? You MUST try it next time if so!

[nutocruzing]

Here are the links to the water slide videos for now: