Dave85

Was an awesome cruise had a great time despite not getting to the private island (weather to bad to get tenders in) spent extra time in Nausea though which was nice. Enjoy your trip everyone. I hope you get to the Island. it looked like it would have been a lot of fun.

One of my favorite CC typos ever -- the thought of calling Nassau does induce nausea for many experienced cruisers, including yours truly. :p

Jk. Glad to hear you had an awesome cruise! :D

Pricing is ridiculously aggressive. Would probably try if it was a little expensive.

Dave, glad to see you made it. Besides a being a great writer, Yorkvillian is also a card holding member of the Peter Luger fan club. A cruiser geek and a carnivore. Could it get better?

Definitely demonstrates good judgment.

What an epic review. I was planning on reading a few pages, going to bed, and picking up tomorrow... NOPE, just read all 20 pages :D

Keep up the good work, sir!

So excited to see that Les Getrex will be back on board for our May cruise! We really enjoyed them the last time we were on the Breakaway.

Interesting info, thanks. It looks like Breakaway has a lot of elevators, enough to not have an issue. I have seen pictures of the elevator banks and there to be a ton of them.

Unfortunately (coming off Oasis and Anthem this past year) the elevators on Breakaway are also oddly shaped in addition to being rather dark. I've never seen elevators that are quite the same shape... they're oddly thin but deep. Kind of strange. One of the great things about the Quantum and Oasis class ships, in addition to having glass elevators, is that they're all huge.

Best thing I can suggest is looking at as many pictures or videos as you can find beforehand so you know exactly what to expect, and then you can hopefully have a couple of good experiences right away and increase your comfort level. Good luck -- hope it turns out OK for you!

I totally missed that it was 2015. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

I will ask the NCL folks here, is Del Rio that "bad"? What type of things has he done to devalue the NCL cruise experience? Has he done anything positive?

Andrew, I'll let you know what we think after our upcoming Breakaway cruise in May. As you know, we really liked the first one in November 2014, but that was before the multitude of changes discussed in the previous posts. I will say one positive thing: our November 2014 Breakaway cruise was just before NCL started handing out perks to everyone. Our May cruise to Bermuda in an extra large balcony room (Cat B6) is roughly the cost of a week in a balcony cabin on Oasis/Allure, and also includes the Ultimate Beverage Package and 4 specialty dinners.

If the cruise is anywhere near as much fun as our first time on BA then that's a pretty darn good deal. Time will tell...

Royal and Celebrity ships have always had trouble calling on Coco Cay, particularly in the winter, due to sea conditions. For that matter, NCL has the same exact problems at its nearby island called Great Stirrup Cay. No conspiracies here.

Kind of an odd move, especially considering how much work it is to move shows around. They must have really wanted to get rid of Legally Blonde...

Interesting article, thanks for posting. Intuitively, as a non-expert, at some point the results speak for themselves... nobody was seriously hurt and the ship sustained only minor damage. It is reassuring to read it coming from someone with the appropriate technical background.

It looks as if the Breakaway is in port.

 

http://www.kroooz-cams.com/ncl_breakaway/breakaway1.php

I had to laugh this morning when I was walking my dog in zero degree temperatures that folks were returning today on the Breakaway from a 14-night Southern Caribbean cruise... What a day to return!

Thanks for your review! Enjoyed reading it.

Yes!

 

The resulting attitude of the ship is the same no matter which way you come at it.

 

It's easy to see how a list to this angle, or even 15 degrees, would be absolutely terrifying in person and would feel like the ship was going to tip over. It's also easy to see how people on board would greatly exaggerate the actual degree of list, even if they weren't actually in much danger.

I expected better from the guy who founded the upscale lines Regent and Oceania.

What, exactly, did FDR do wrong here? To the extent he was even personally involved in selecting Pitbull, how is selecting one of the most popular Miami-based performers to sell a mass market cruise ship sailing out of Miami a mistake?

Do you prefer the ridiculous new Princess Cruises commercials with a disembodied voice reciting a lame out of office greeting?

I'm getting the sense that you chose the wrong cruise line... hopefully you still have time to cancel and rebook elsewhere.

 

He seems to have left out all of the old folks in walkers and scooters and chain smokers in the casino.

LOL, I actually had the same thought when I first saw the NCL TV commercial featuring this song... :p The video paints a somewhat unrealistic video of your typical cruise ship clientele.

Also not pictured: chair hogs, the buffet, lines, etc. ;)

Sorry to hear that -- we would have been disappointed as well. What I find so odd is that some of these things would have been relatively quick fixes in the dry dock. I get it, they had a lot of things they wanted to get done, but things like... changing the curtains, swapping out a few pieces of furniture... that's something I believe they could have done in the suites without taking too much time.

Short answer: it's impossible to say. Anytime you sail from NY you should be prepared for potentially experiencing rough seas.

I'm sure the anecdotal experiences will run the gamut. To add mine, I sailed this past November on Anthem and the previous November on Breakaway. On both cruises we had some cold weather and slightly choppy (~10-15 foot) seas at times on the way back to NY/NJ, but nothing extreme. If you can handle some choppy seas without feeling miserable, go for it!

I'm not sure which BA itinerary you're doing, but if you're doing the Southern Caribbean route you'll have some better weather and smoother seas once you get down there. If you're doing the Bahamas run the weather is basically a coin flip, as is whether you'll be able to make GSC.

Enjoy your trip!

What do YOU think refunding 4200 passengers in full, giving 50% off the next cruise and now offering flight change financial help will do to the "bottom line $"

 

The accusations that Royal did this all on purpose is the most absurd thing I've read all day.

Agreed -- pure idiocy, and belied by basic math, let alone common sense. :rolleyes:

Intentionally sailing a very expensive new ship into a massive storm + putting thousands of lives in danger = Profit!

Good grief.

Karen, it was posted that Captain Claus began his rotation on February 6th.

Claus is definitely on Anthem. It was reported in the NY Times this morning ;)

Everyone makes mistakes but I would think that most captains would not worry too much about bottom lines when it comes to safety of the passengers and crew.

Right. We were on Anthem with this very same Captain back in November when he made the decision (undoubtedly with the concurrence of the home office) to speed back to Bayonne at full tilt at great expense to the cruise line to get shore side medical care for four passengers with life threatening conditions. We were on our way back up from the Southern Caribbean and arrived about 12 hours early after burning a lot of extra fuel and the cruise line losing a full night of casino and retail shopping revenue.

I have a very, very hard time believing that same captain would have driven that ship into the heart of such a massive storm just to save a few bucks and stay on schedule, and he certainly gets my benefit of the doubt. Not to mention the cosmetic damage done to the ship that the cruise line will now have to pay to repair. Just wouldn't make sense.

I have to also agree that I was surprised at how much movement I felt on Anthem in seas that were not particularly rough. I happen to enjoy a little movement so it wasn't an issue for me, but it does seem to be an issue.

What that said, the most stable ship on the world would have been tossed around by that storm Anthem went through... so at some point it really doesn't matter.

Fascinating to hear Captain Claus' perspective in comparison to what has been printed elsewhere (like the Washington Post article earlier today). Thanks for posting!

Get home safe! Hope the port staff help people with their cars... That's a lot of snow for some guests to shovel.

Really depends what you're looking for. If you're willing to spend the time having a sit down meal then the MDR is a great option on embarkation day to avoid some of the chaos at the other venues. If you're looking for something quicker then the buffet is probably the way to go.

There's no dedicated nightclub like on previous classes of ship, but both Two70 and Music Hall serve as a nightclub depending on the night. While I was initially unhappy that there was no dedicated nightclub, IMHO, both venues filled in admirably. Two70 is just incredible, and Music Hall felt like a larger version of the two-story nightclubs on the Voyager and Freedom Classes that RCI is currently removing from those ships.