Recently off the May 22-29 Breakaway Sailing ~ My thoughts and a few tips

[LisaLisa87]

Hello! We returned yesterday from the May 22-29 Breakaway sailing, and I thought I’d share my impressions while they’re fresh in my mind. This cruise was a long time coming. It started as an early April 2020 sailing on the Epic over DD’s spring break, when she was 16 and a junior in high school. Not that the past couple of years have gone quickly, but I still find it hard to believe she’ll turn 19 next week! We originally pushed the cruise out a full year, thinking that would be plenty of time. We all know how that turned out! Several more cancellations and reschedules later, we decided a few months ago that it was time. We were a little apprehensive about getting on a ship again, but we figured NCL had had our money for long enough!

 

I’ll provide a quick pre-cruise rundown here and then share my thoughts about the cruise itself in another post.

 

PRE-CRUISE & EMBARKATION DAY

• DH and I would be sailing with DD, as originally planned. If possible, I wanted the cost of this cruise to be right around what we paid for the original cruise, so I booked a balcony room and hoped to be upgraded during the bidding process.
• I bid on 5 categories: the regular (non-spa) club balcony suite and 4 Haven categories. I bid at the low end of Fair for all categories and did not get an upgrade. In retrospect, I wish that I had coughed up the extra $300 for a club balcony suite to begin with. I did try to upgrade when prices dropped, but sadly the cost of the club balcony was about $20 lower than we had paid for our balcony room. Denied!
• We used eMed for our Covid tests. I found the process a little confusing at first, but we got through it without too much difficulty and I added printouts of our negative results to the rest of our cruise documents.
• We live in St. Augustine, FL and drove down the morning of the cruise. I had selected 12:00-12:30pm as our boarding time, and we pulled into the parking garage at the terminal at about 12:10pm. We were onboard by 1:00pm. (More about the embarkation process later.)
• I had hoped to get Vibe passes for the three of us, but they were gone by the time we boarded. A note for upcoming Breakaway cruisers: The passes were at Headliners, but make sure you don’t get in the big line on the left. That is for dining reservations only. I found that out the hard way after waiting in line for about 25 minutes, after two different NCL employees told me that was the correct line. The line you want is to the right, next to the table for beverage packages.
• While we’re talking about Headliners… Don’t get in line there to make dinner reservations unless it’s really short. You can make reservations more quickly using the touch screens outside of the elevator lobbies on every deck, at the podium for any open restaurant, or by calling the number provided in the Freestyle Daily (x050). I called and was able to adjust the times of two of our specialty restaurant reservations after a few minutes on hold.
• You can make reservations for the shows using the touch screens. Once I figured out how the card scanner worked, I was able book both Burn the Floor and Six in just a few minutes.
• I had booked the dining package add-on for DH and me, which gave us two additional dinners for $70.80/person (including tax).
• We ate lunch at Garden Cafe and were pleasantly surprised with the lack of crowding. We were able to get our food easily and had no trouble finding a table. That would prove to be the case pretty much every time we went.
• During lunch, we heard the announcement that the rooms were ready, so we headed toward our room on deck 11. We had that moment when we walked in and looked around -- Where are we going to put all our stuff and how on Earth are we not going to get on each other's last nerve in this confined space?? It passed though, like it always does!

 

I’ll post again tomorrow with my thoughts about the cruise, including our activities in port. Rather than share a detailed recap of each day, I’ll probably focus on the aspects of the cruise we enjoyed the most and least. Until then...

Edited May 31, 2022 by LisaLisa87

[redwave]

If, when you have a minute, you can also post one or two examples of the dailies, if you have them, would be much appreciated. 

[LisaLisa87]

41 minutes ago, redwave said:

If, when you have a minute, you can also post one or two examples of the dailies, if you have them, would be much appreciated. 

 

Here's Day 1 (minus the inserts) to get you started. I'm knee deep trying to catch up at work, but I'll try to post the rest this evening!

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by LisaLisa87

[acct1975]

So happy to see that Splash Academy is open. We're cruising the Breakaway Jun 19th and was curious if it would be open for my son. If you used it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it is post COVID.

 

Thanks!

[LisaLisa87]

5 minutes ago, acct1975 said:

So happy to see that Splash Academy is open. We're cruising the Breakaway Jun 19th and was curious if it would be open for my son. If you used it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it is post COVID.

 

Thanks!

 

We did not use Splash Academy, so unfortunately I don't have any info to share. I will say that there were very, very few young kids on our sailing. Lots of college age kids, though!

[LisaLisa87]

As is so often the case after a vacation, re-entry to real life has been rough. I’m going to be swamped with work today, but I’ll plan to share some details about the cruise this evening. In the meantime, here’s a summary:

 

This was an Eastern Caribbean sailing with stops in the Dominican Republic, St. Thomas, Tortola, and Great Stirrup Cay. These were all new ports for us, with the exception of St. Thomas which we have visited multiple times (including two land vacations). We had great weather, and the seas were calm almost the whole time. We were very happy to make it to GSC – especially since we had booked a villa at Silver Cove (more on that later).

 

I’m not sure what the ship’s capacity was on our sailing, but I overheard a woman telling someone next to me that she had spoken with an officer who said it was 70%. I don't know how reliable that information is, but that number felt intuitively right to me. We did encounter crowding here and there, but for the most part it was manageable. I think the crowd level and availability of seating at the Garden Café was a good indicator. Service was generally pretty good, although getting a drink at some of the bars was challenging at times. It looked to us like most of the bars could have used at least one extra bartender.

 

We chose not to eat dinner in the MDRs this sailing. Instead, we ate at 4 of the specialty restaurants (La Cucina, Cagney’s, Teppanyaki, and Ocean Blue), Garden Café, and O’Sheehan’s. We thought the food was good to very good overall, with a few disappointing items and lots of surprisingly good ones! We were happy about our decision to skip the MDRs every time we passed by Taste & Savor or the Manhattan Room as there were always long lines to get in at prime dinner time.

 

I’ll go ahead and list some of the high and low points of the cruise here, and I’ll elaborate on some of these later. Keep in mind that these are my opinions based on what my family experienced during our sailing. Your mileage may vary!

 

Highlights
- Quick, easy embarkation
- Six and Burn the Floor
- The specialty restaurants
- Garden Café (both the lack of crowds and the quality of the food)
- The Rebel Yell excursion to Jost Van Dyke/White Bay
- Our independent excursion with Country World in the Dominican Republic
- Our day at GSC (once we finally got there) and our villa at Silver Cove

 

Challenges
- The lack of communication about what was going on, especially getting off the ship
- The small, crowded pool deck
- Unfortunate port times in St. Thomas and Tortola
- Disembarkation at St. Thomas (a total cluster)
- The long wait to tender to GSC
- Slow, inconsistent (non-Premium) WiFi
- Lack of entertainment

 

 

 

[argyll1881]

The pools on the Breakaway and Getaway are very small.  I couldn't imagine the ship in a hot climate at 100% capacity.  You'd never get in !

[LisaLisa87]

37 minutes ago, argyll1881 said:

The pools on the Breakaway and Getaway are very small.  I couldn't imagine the ship in a hot climate at 100% capacity.  You'd never get in !

 

Agreed - I would not want to be on either of those ships at 100% capacity! Even at somewhat reduced capacity, we were only able to get in the pool after returning to the ship while docked in the DR.

[LisaLisa87]

It's too late to edit my summary post, but I have one more item to add to my list of negatives:

 

-No Bailey's on the ship, so no BBCs! 😭

[redwave]

No rush, When you get settled back in and have a minute...

 

Regarding

 

Challenges
- Lack of entertainment

 

When you say lack of entertainment, we were on escape pre covid and the entertainment options were huge, different bars with live music, the atrium and theater shows, the piano bar taking requests every night etc...

 

Are some of these things still missing due to covid?

 

Ty so much.

[PATRLR]

2 hours ago, LisaLisa87 said:

-No Bailey's on the ship, so no BBCs! 😭

How to say "We're a low budget cruise line" without actually saying "We're a low budget cruise line".  

I'm sorry, but not having something like Bailey's is just wrong.  Rumour is they don't have Captain Morgan either.  Sheesh.

 

[LisaLisa87]

1 hour ago, redwave said:

No rush, When you get settled back in and have a minute...

 

Regarding

 

Challenges
- Lack of entertainment

 

When you say lack of entertainment, we were on escape pre covid and the entertainment options were huge, different bars with live music, the atrium and theater shows, the piano bar taking requests every night etc...

 

Are some of these things still missing due to covid?

 

Ty so much.

 

I knew I would need to explain this one! I should have been more specific. There was lots of entertainment all over the ship: live music by the pool, dueling pianos and comedy at Headliners, a pianist/singer at Shaker's martini bar, game shows in the atrium, etc. I'm talking specifically about evening shows in the Breakaway Theater. We loved Burn the Floor and Six (especially the latter), but the only other main theater show during our sailing was a magician/comedian named Jean Pierre who was there on two nights. We went to his second show and didn't care for him (his magic was decent, but I found his humor lame and mildly offensive -- and I'm not easily offended). We've cruised with our daughter since she was 7, and we have always enjoyed going to a show after dinner, even if that "show" is a movie. (Bonus if the ship has a dedicated movie theater.) There were movies most nights, but not until 11pm. Sadly we were always in bed by then!

 

So this one is probably pretty specific to us. I would imagine that many passengers were perfectly happy with the slate of entertainment that was offered.

Edited May 31, 2022 by LisaLisa87

[Montanagirlalways]

it is interesting that they sell Baileys and Capt Morgan in their store but don't offer it in their bars. We were disappointed with that also. Hope they get the message and change that  

[LisaLisa87]

11 minutes ago, Montanagirlalways said:

it is interesting that they sell Baileys and Capt Morgan in their store but don't offer it in their bars. We were disappointed with that also. Hope they get the message and change that  

 

Interestingly enough, I was able to get a BBC on GSC...

[HuggyBee]

Hi everyone! My husband and I were on this sailing as well. Honestly left with the feeling we probably won’t be sailing with NCL again for a while.

 
Our observations:

The ship is seriously understaffed. The bartenders looked especially frazzled. 
 

The ship felt overcrowded- can’t imagine what it would be like at 100% capacity. If pool time is a priority for you, good luck. The chair hogs were out in full force! We opted for spa passes instead, which gave us a little but of peace.

 

We had great dinners at Cagney’s and Ocean Blue.
 

Six and Burn the Floor are terrific. 

 

Tendering back from GSC was a complete nightmare that took well over an hour and almost caused us to miss out on our Ocean Blue reservation. 

 

The smoke smell on decks 6, 7 and 8 is the worst we have ever experienced. I read this was an issue before we went on this cruise, but nothing had me prepared for what it was really like. Poor ship design. 
 

The internet was overpriced and absolutely terrible.

 

All in all, we had a good, not great, cruise. I really think NCL needs to staff the ships they have before they add more to the fleet. 

[Oxo]

7 minutes ago, HuggyBee said:

Hi everyone! My husband and I were on this sailing as well. Honestly left with the feeling we probably won’t be sailing with NCL again for a while.

 
Our observations:

The ship is seriously understaffed. The bartenders looked especially frazzled. 
 

The ship felt overcrowded- can’t imagine what it would be like at 100% capacity. If pool time is a priority for you, good luck. The chair hogs were out in full force! We opted for spa passes instead, which gave us a little but of peace.

 

We had great dinners at Cagney’s and Ocean Blue.
 

Six and Burn the Floor are terrific. 

 

Tendering back from GSC was a complete nightmare that took well over an hour and almost caused us to miss out on our Ocean Blue reservation. 

 

The smoke smell on decks 6, 7 and 8 is the worst we have ever experienced. I read this was an issue before we went on this cruise, but nothing had me prepared for what it was really like. Poor ship design. 
 

The internet was overpriced and absolutely terrible.

 

All in all, we had a good, not great, cruise. I really think NCL needs to staff the ships they have before they add more to the fleet. 

Fully understand your comments. 

All Cruise lines are understaffed. We just got off of Oasis OTS. Same comments by many passengers. Ship ran out of some wines,  bourbon, etc. 

Two of the major shows were not presented over 2 weeks. Aqua and Cats.

People complained so was to crowded with 3,000 passengers yet so hold 6,500.

Read the CC forums for MSC. RCI, etc. 

Basically the same complaints.

The world is changing and we must adjust.

[LisaLisa87]

16 minutes ago, HuggyBee said:

Hi everyone! My husband and I were on this sailing as well. Honestly left with the feeling we probably won’t be sailing with NCL again for a while.

 
Our observations:

The ship is seriously understaffed. The bartenders looked especially frazzled. 
 

The ship felt overcrowded- can’t imagine what it would be like at 100% capacity. If pool time is a priority for you, good luck. The chair hogs were out in full force! We opted for spa passes instead, which gave us a little but of peace.

 

We had great dinners at Cagney’s and Ocean Blue.
 

Six and Burn the Floor are terrific. 

 

Tendering back from GSC was a complete nightmare that took well over an hour and almost caused us to miss out on our Ocean Blue reservation. 

 

The smoke smell on decks 6, 7 and 8 is the worst we have ever experienced. I read this was an issue before we went on this cruise, but nothing had me prepared for what it was really like. Poor ship design. 
 

The internet was overpriced and absolutely terrible.

 

All in all, we had a good, not great, cruise. I really think NCL needs to staff the ships they have before they add more to the fleet. 

 

There is a lot of overlap in our observations! I would categorize our overall cruise experience as "very good," but that's primarily because we were in port for 4 days and had planned some really cool activities. If we had booked this one intending to spend more of our time on the ship, we would have been disappointed.

 

It took a long time for us to tender over to GSC, but tendering back was a piece of cake. Without really intending to, we ended up on the last tender. We boarded, sat for about 5 minutes, and headed for the ship. I would have been upset if we'd had a bad experience getting back as well.

[LisaLisa87]

I've decided that I will provide a summary of each day after all. I'll cover embarkation day and the first sea day in this post and save our first port day for the next one.

 

Embarkation Day in a nutshell:

• As previously mentioned, embarkation was unexpectedly quick and easy. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the process.
• We had a short list of boarding day items to take care of, and we knocked most of them out before going to lunch at Garden Cafe.
• No muster drill! Instead you go to a designated location and have your room key scanned. Now I understand why I was asked three separate times before the cruise to watch the safety video!
• We went to Garden Cafe for lunch expecting big crowds and a lack of seating, but again we were pleasantly surprised. Maybe the key is to go in with low expectations??
• Look for the "Compound Salad" station, which has a different made-and-mixed to order salad each day (e.g., steak and blue cheese, Greek, Cobb, etc.).
• We had an early reservation at La Cucina for dinner, which we enjoyed very much.
• There are lots of bars and lounges on the ship and we tried most of them at least once, but Shaker's Martini Bar was our go-to for most of the cruise.

 

 

Sea Day #1:

• We slept in on our first sea day and then ate breakfast at Garden Cafe.
• By the time we got out to the pool deck, it was a madhouse. People soup in the pool and pretty much all deck chairs occupied.
• We tried deck 16 and did two full laps before we got lucky and came upon two people who were packing up to leave. Then we had to do that awkward hovering thing where you don't want to be too close, but you also want to make sure anyone coming from the other direction knows those chairs are OURS.
• Interestingly, there were very few chairs being saved with towels/flip flops/etc. -- most were occupied! The public sundeck on 17 was closed because it was really windy, and that contributed to the lack of available lounge chairs.

• We had a reservation at Cagney's for dinner, and once again we had a positive experience. Both the service and the food were great.
• We went to the 7:30 showing of Burn the Floor, which was surprisingly entertaining. We didn't really know what to expect, and even DH enjoyed it!

 

That's a wrap for now. I'll post about our experience in the Dominican Republic (with lots of pics) tomorrow.

 

 

[mking8288]

Thanks for sharing the thoughts, always learn something new & different each time on CC, where I'm hanging out these days.  Small pool area on a crowded ship - BA, GA & Escape's adult pool(s) are big compared to the the Joy, now - hush and don't tell the herd about Spice H2O (only on some) in the back of the ship. 

 

NCL's infamous & pricey satellite WiFi, foolish to get tricked into streaming unlimited WiFi - IMHO. 

 

Tendering, especially from/returning to a mega ship, regardless of what cruiselines, is always going to be a pain, no "ifs" and "buts" - gangway passage is "one at a time, often holding on to the rails" for safety reasons, even if sea state is calm and not windy - worst when it's near/at (sooner or later, back to above capacity ... holidays & school breaks ??) 

 

Crew/employee staffing and retention isn't just a problem for maritime and aviation, also true for good told office and frontline service personnel - expect the unexpected.  

 

Going to bookmark & read this, thanks again. 

Edited June 1, 2022 by mking8288

[classy_cruiser]

Is Howl at the moon (dueling pianos) only on some nights? I saw it on the ship overview for breakaway but it wasn’t listed in the Freestyle  you posted 

[LisaLisa87]

14 minutes ago, classy_cruiser said:

Is Howl at the moon (dueling pianos) only on some nights? I saw it on the ship overview for breakaway but it wasn’t listed in the Freestyle  you posted 

I just looked at all the Dailies, and I see it offered in the evening on days 2, 3, 5, and 7. I’m going to post the Daily for day 2 in a moment and will post the others as I cover subsequent days.

[LisaLisa87]

Day 2:

 

Edited June 1, 2022 by LisaLisa87

[HxFx]

Hello, I was on this cruise as well. It was my first NCL cruise. I thought the specialty restaurants were great; I ate at Ocean Blue, Le Bistro, and Cagney’s. The talent in the shows was excellent; I really enjoyed Burn the Floor and Six but have to admit the Fleetwood Mac tribute show was my favorite. I also really appreciated that you didn’t have to constantly sign receipts if you had the drink (plus) package. The slides were a lot of fun too (still enjoy those in my 50s!).

 

Now the negative; I agree the Garden Café was easy for finding seating but I did not enjoy the food there. Maybe it’s similar to other buffets but I don’t normally eat at them. I felt we had no choice for many lunchtime meals. Carnival definitely has the lunch thing right (I could eat Guy’s Burgers or Blue Cantina for every lunch meal). I could get over that though. My real complaint was the embarkation/debarkation at ports. OP was right about getting on the ship initially; it was quick and efficient. Of course it set me up for false hope! DR was not too bad but as OP mentioned, St. Thomas and GSC were disasters. I’m hoping this is because they were trying out their new facial recognition technology that usually took about 5 tries (for me) to register and not the norm for NCL.

 

For the first hour in St. Thomas there was only one gangway open and the line wrapped up and down the length of the ship (it seems the other gangway opened for a little while in the middle of the day – when there is little traffic). The tendering at GSC was awful getting back. They left us in the sweltering heat waiting to get off the tender and back onto the ship. They would only let 10 people at a time get onto the ship to do the facial recognition. Is there a reason they can’t park the ship in the opposite direction so if there is a wait on the tender you aren’t directly in the afternoon sun?

 

I will say there were others who had it worse as when we got to our room, from our balcony we could see tender boats waiting off the side of the ship for about half an hour before they could even start getting back onto the ship. I’m curious about one thing. When we were waiting for our tender to fill up at GSC, about 5 folks got onto an empty tender and headed back to the boat right away. This had to be some medical issue or not routine right? They went through the Haven entrance but I find it hard to believe they would waste the gas/large boat just to get a few Haven folks back.

 

Getting off the ship when we returned to home port as also took a very, very long time. We waited until we were called (self assist) and there were two lines, also going along the length of the ship. We did realize at one point one line was much faster than the other (the one getting off aft) and one of the crew members let us change to that line. Can’t imagine how long it would have taken if we stay in the line going forward. They should have had a way to opt out of the facial recognition when things got as backed up as they did.

 

I also agree with OP about the chair availability. We are not picky about where we sit and it took us quite a while to find an empty chair anywhere. I’ve only experienced chogging in preferred locations on other ships. Overall we had a good time but if the port embarkation/debarkation was NCL normal, I think I will not sail with them again.

[pfanny37]

Thanks for all of the info!  We are sailing the Breakaway for our second time in a week and a half.  I thought I read somewhere that the rock climbing wall and mini golf was removed.  I have two boys who will be unhappy if that is the case, but I just wanted to confirm.  Thanks.

[LisaLisa87]

33 minutes ago, pfanny37 said:

Thanks for all of the info!  We are sailing the Breakaway for our second time in a week and a half.  I thought I read somewhere that the rock climbing wall and mini golf was removed.  I have two boys who will be unhappy if that is the case, but I just wanted to confirm.  Thanks.

 

I didn't see either mini golf or a rock climbing wall. On a positive note, there is a decent ropes course (with a plank that extends over the edge of the ship!) and there are water slides. There is also an arcade as well as some games in O'Sheehan's.