bmaltais

I was on the Escape last week and actually found it to be the calmest cruise ever from a ship move point of view. My wife actually complained that the ship was not rocking enough at night because she like the movement when she sleep...

Agreed. I was nervous going into it because of prior posts. I think I'm pretty sensitive to smoke and can smell it from a mile away, but I didn't notice it that much on the Getaway. In the casino, obviously, but outside of that I thought it was fine.

I have not been on the Breakeway class ship... but I have been on the Epic (without kids) and never noticed the smoke from the casino invading other space as much. Perhaps it was my kids complaining so much about it that made me notice it more on the Escape.

It might have been a bad cruise with more smoking perhaps. I went at the casino with my wife and there were a couple of occasions (we enjoy some gambling ;-)) where casino attendant told people smoking beside us that the slot machines where in a no smoke zone... to no effect.

I can certainly handle smoke in the casino but it is deplorable that the rest of the non smoking area suffer from it so much ;-(

I am just back from a 7 day cruise on the Escape. Great ship with one MAJOR exception. This ship has a HUGE cigarette smoke problem on deck 6, 7 and 8. Wow, I had read about complain before going but I must say the problem is actually much worst than I had expected.

It was so bad that my 3 kids insisted that we actually cancelled our 2nd booking at "Le Bistro" because the smell was really bad even inside the restaurant. I can tolerate the smell of smoke but I must say it was like being sitting beside a table with people smoking... Enough to make the diner the worst of all cruise we ever took. We moved our reservation to the Moderno which is far enough on deck 8 to not smell like cigarette smoke.

The problem is that you actually can't avoid walking through the smoky locations given the layout of the ship and this make things worst. On other ship the casino is located at the back of a deck in a somewhat enclosed room and you can avoid it if you want... but on the Escape you can't.

We will not book another cruise on the Escape until this issue is address... it is that bad.

It is sad because the rest of the ship is superb and excellent. NCL, please find a solution to this smell problem... please.

Possibly, at some restaurants, but only temporarily. This is only if it is important to you to book ahead of time and if the system won't let you book for 1. In that case, you have to book (and possibly pay) for 2 people and ask them to fix it during your cruise. You will only pay for one person in the end, you just have to bring it to their attention on board.

I am used to pre-book everything based on past experience with Disney. I prefer not to leave it to possible availability. I guess NCL might be different if they only allow a small % of pre-reservation via the web site... but I am still uneasy with not booking upfront. What if we get late on the ship and there are no available time around 17h30 or 18h00... with young kids this would not go well. And I am reading that NCL has promoted UDP quite a bit for our Feb sailing on the Escape so there might not be much choice left if we don't get on the ship early enough to make early bookings.

I am just off a call with NCL and can’t believe what they told me. Perhaps some can shed lights on the situation.

We are a party of 5 with two younger kids (10 and 11). We are booked on a cruise on the Escape at the end of February.So I went online and tried to make reservations for 5 people in restaurants (Moderno, Bistro, etc). None of them had an option to book for 5 so I used the option to book for 6. I thought, well, restaurant tables are usually for 2, 4 and 6 so if we are 5 then we need to book for 6. Kind of make sense.

But while discussing OBC with the representative I asked about the restaurant’s booking situation. She told me I would have to pay for the empty seats if we are only five … but there are no options for 5 people … she still said we would need to pay for the 6th reservation. I can’t believe this is true. How would party of 3, 5 or 7 book reservations then?

Anyone ran into this situation? How was it handled by NCL?