7/5 Getaway Review w/ Pictures

This is a fairly extensive/detailed review of our cruise on the Getaway to the Eastern Caribbean on July 5th-12th. We will try to share our experiences, suggestions, things to do again, things we would do differently with regard to the Getaway as well as the islands of St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Nassau, Bahamas. We will also try to share as many pictures from our trip as we surely enjoyed many of the picture reviews from previous posters that posted reviews in the past. Here we go!

Our Background

My first cruise was just over 12 months ago on the Breakaway. I did that trip solo in a balcony cabin and did a pretty detailed review which you can find below in my signature. I have been lucky to have travelled all over the world but I would rank that Breakaway cruise up there among my favorite vacations. As soon as I got off, I found myself looking forward to booking my next cruise. This Getaway cruise was my 3rd cruise (2nd on NCL).

I was super lucky to enjoy this Getaway cruise with my incredible girlfriend. We have been dating since December and this was our second cruise. We enjoyed a short 4-day cruise on the Ruby Princess in March to Grand Turk which was fun. By the end of the Princess cruise however, I kept telling my GF that I could not wait to show her how much better a Norwegian cruise was. In all fairness, it’s hard to compare a ship built in 2008 to a brand spanking new ship like the Getaway.

Planning

Soon after we got back from our 4-day cruise on Princess, we started discussing our summer vacation plans. We talked about a bunch of different ideas ranging from a trip to Italy, a week in Jamaica or Dominican Republic, as well as a cruise. Admittedly, I was already leaning towards the cruise option. I also had $250 credit on NCL for a future cruise that I had to use in the next 3 years so that money was burning a hole in my pocket, LOL! We did some cost comparisons and Italy was way over budget due to the pricey airfare. In my experience you really have to book airfare for Europe a good 6+ months out in order to avoid paying through the nose if you want to travel there during the prime summer travel months. We quickly ruled that out (although it is still a dream for both of us). High-end resorts in Jamaica and Dominican were still pretty pricey and did not seem to meet the fun factor that a cruise would.

Once we settled on a cruise we began looking at our options. We wanted to try to stick to NCL since we had a $250 cruise credit and I enjoyed my time on the Breakaway so much. We also contemplated trying Allure or Oasis of the Seas but those prices were a good $1K higher and just did not make economical sense. We quickly determined that the Getaway would be a perfect cruise. It had the perfect mix of 3 sea days (we love sea days) along with some cool ports of call. We also took advantage of the Free Cruise offer when booking the Getaway. It sealed the deal for us. The BOGO offer gives us a free 3 or 4 day cruise on the Norwegian Sky.

Once we settled on the Getaway Eastern Caribbean cruise, we quickly determined that the July 5th date would work great as we could take advantage of the July 4th holiday and turn this trip into a longer vacation. We decided to stay in Miami a few days before our trip to really extend the trip a bit. I also like to get into town at least the day before a cruise to limit the chance of missing the cruise due to unexpected travel issues. Why not get into town 2 days before the trip to enjoy even more beach time?

Cabin Selection

In reading many reviews on Cruise Critic, members appeared to overwhelmingly enjoy their aft facing cabins so I was eager to try one for the first time. We started pricing out regular balcony cabins as well as aft facing cabins. After going back and forth we decided to spring for the aft facing balcony. Ultimately it ended up being about $800 more expensive but it surely was worth it. We knew that the largest balconies were on deck 12 so we looked for available cabins there. We were able to secure cabin 12908. I was desperately trying to find pictures of this cabin balcony on the internet but was unable. I looked for similar pictures for this cabin on the Breakaway as well since both ships are pretty much identical from a layout perspective. The closest we were able to spot were pictures from the neighboring room on the Breakaway. It looked like these balconies were pretty huge and I figured we could not do much better so we settled on this room and locked it down soon after.

Hotel Search

Keeping in mind that we would not have a ton of beach time on the cruise (we knew we wanted to do at least one water excursion on the cruise instead of a day at the beach), we wanted to find a hotel preferably on the beach in Miami. We considered a few different options, but fell in love with the Grand Beach Hotel. It was a resort located just a few blocks north of the Fountaine Bleu on Miami Beach. It offered huge rooms with balcony views of the beach, bay, or both. The resort also had beach access, a large pool, and an adult only pool on the 7th floor with nice views of the city. Like the aft facing cabin, the hotel was not cheap, but it was not bad considering it was a full-fledged resort.

Day 1 of Vacation (Thursday July 3rd)

After waiting a long 2 months for our trip to get here, the day had finally arrived. My parents dropped us off at the airport for a quick, uneventful flight down to Fort Lauderdale. We were going to try to get a shuttle from the Fort Lauderdale airport to the hotel but decided we would rather pay extra to get to the hotel as soon as possible to maximize beach/pool time. We arrived on time at 11am and were checked in at the hotel by 12:30pm. The taxi was not cheap, ($90), but we knew what we signed up for. We also saved a bunch of money flying to FLL so it is what it is.

Miami Hotel- Grand Beach Hotel

The hotel was amazing. It was only built a few years ago and you could tell. The room was massive with 2 full bathrooms. So not needed, but great when trying to get ready to go out! The balcony was amazing with views of both the beach and the bay/city. From the 7th floor adults only pool you could even see the large tails of the ships in port from there (especially the Carnival Smokestacks.)

After a quick bite, we decided to head down to the beach. The weather was perfect. It was a hot one but being from DC, it was not much hotter than home in July. We decided to rent a few beach loungers through the hotel. Soon after the Coronas were flowing and vacation had truly begun!

After spending a few hours at the beach we decided to try out the main pool area. We spent a little bit of time in the hot tubs. It was still pretty crowded but the main pool area did offer quite a bit of shade which literally made the temperature a good 15-20 degrees cooler. We then checked out the adult only pool on the 7th floor. They had a nice bar which had the Brazil World Cup game playing. I went back and forth keeping tabs on the game while My GF layed out enjoying some frozen drinks at the pool.

We wanted to experience South Beach on our first night, so headed down to eat on Ocean Drive for dinner. We found a great place that looked really nice. I later realized it was Café Milano, which is a very nice restaurant we also have in DC. It was pricey but well worth it. They served their frozen drinks in gigantic fish bowl glasses. I had to finish most of My GF’s Mango Daiquiri which was awesome. I also enjoyed a few Mojitos. I don’t know what they do to their Mojitos in South Beach but they are clearly the best I have ever had. We enjoyed a nice dinner while doing some people watching.

After desert we went to a tourist trap called Mango’s that I used to frequent when visiting Miami in the past. It is a fun place that has good music and also has both women and men come out and do some dancing routines. We danced a bit and headed home around midnight. We were thinking about also checking out a night club but decided it would not be worth it. We really wanted to check out Liv at the Fountaine Bleu. If we could do it all over again, we probably would have gone there but we were a bit tired after waking up for the early flight.

Day 2 of Vacation (Friday July 4rd)

We slept in on our second day of vacation and decided to have some coffee on our awesome balcony after slowly rising from bed. From there we decided we would head to the grocery store to pick up some items for our cruise. We found a Publix about 15 blocks away so we decided to jump in a taxi and knock out our shopping so we could get back to enjoy the beach/pool. At Publix we found a nice little café that had some really good empanadas, croquettes, and coffee.

After breakfast we were off to shop. I wanted to get some wine for the room on the ship. We went back and forth pre-trip, trying to figure out whether the UBP would be worth it. It ended up not quite making sense on the Princess cruise we did in March and I was estimating that it would also not make sense on NCL after doing some rough calculations. I drink more than my fair share of booze on a cruise but My GF does not. Since you have to buy the plan for both people in the room, it just did not make sense. We were thrilled to find her favorite bottle of wine so picked up a few of those, and I bought an additional 3 bottles of wine for myself. I was happy to find a few nice reds for dinner and a white for room. Now, some may ask, why did we not just do a wine package through the ship? The answer is, the price is not that much different but I get to choose what wine I bring. The ship had some decent wine selections, but I found some better wine options and still spent around the same amount of money (even with the corkage fees.) There is a hassle factor of carrying the wines onto the ship, but Publix had a great wine carrier that came for free when you bought 4 wines. I will be using that for my future cruises whenever I bring wine onboard. I probably could have found an even better selection of wines at a smaller specialty wine store, but would have paid more as well. I also got some limes for the room in case I needed some for my gin & tonics or Coronas. I did this on my Breakaway cruise last year but later realized it was a waste as the bartenders gave us plenty of limes when I bought beer buckets on the Getaway.

I also decided to get some beer for the hotel room as the resort prices for drinks were, well resort prices for drinks. We also got some snacks for the day we could enjoy on our hotel balcony as well as breakfast for the next day.

Once we got back from the store we spent the afternoon on the beach. Another World Cup game was on so I brought my iPad to the beach and watched the game. We followed the prior day’s plan and spent the later afternoon hours up at the adult pool again. We had met a really nice couple from Belgium the day before at the pool. They were at the tail-end of a 20 day vacation. Damn us, Americans really need to take some notes from the Europeans regarding vacations, LOL! After talking with our new Belgian friends again at the pool, we all decided to go to dinner together and check out the fire works. They must have felt sorry for us since Belgium had beaten the US in the World Cup only days earlier.

My GF and I thought it would be fun to experience some Cuban food while in Miami so that was what we were targeting. The Belgians were interested in trying Cuban as well and left the restaurant choice up to us. We knew they were foodies so were really unsure what they would enjoy. We quickly found a place on Yelp that had good reviews and was close to the beach (for post dinner fireworks viewing). The name sounded a bit cheesy but it ended up being a fantastic mom and pop type of restaurant. We chose Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine on Collins Ave and 69th St.

While we were getting ready we spotted 3 ships that had just left the Port of Miami from our balcony. We were getting exciting knowing we would be doing the same thing 24 hours later.

The Cuban flank steak I had was out of this world as were the rice & beans, and fried plantains. We all enjoyed a few pitchers of white as well as red Sangria and had a great dinner with our new friends. Everyone enjoyed their dinner, however, the service was slow, maybe because the place was packed due to 4th of July. If you are a true foodie, this place may not be for you.

The timing could not have been more perfect as the moment we exited the restaurant, we heard the first set of fireworks go off. We quickly shuffled over a block to the beach where we watched the short show. It was a nice show that did not last too long.

After the fireworks show, My GF and I were thinking it would be good to head back to the hotel to get an early night sleep. It quickly became clear we were not going to catch a taxi for a while so decide to have a few drinks outside while the firework crowds started to clear out. It was brutally hot that night and we were soon sorry we chose outdoor seating for our drinks. We were on our way home for an early night about an hour later. I wanted to get to the port fairly early as I was determined to get us Vibe Club passes. The Vibe pass was the absolute best purchase I had made the year before and was confident my GF would enjoy this on the Getaway.

Enjoying the review...

enjoying your review! Can't wait for the rest!!!

I love cuban food! Can't wait to read the rest of your review. That hotel looks awesome as well :)

Even though we chose the Epic for our next cruise, I'm certain the Getaway is in our future. I'm looking forward to your review!

Getaway Day 1 (Saturday July 5th)- Miami

We woke up around 7:30 am and had a nice light breakfast/coffee out on the hotel balcony. We were already packed so it did not take us long to get moving. Especially given that we had 2 full bathrooms- LOL!

I almost forgot to get cash so I hit the ATM in the hotel lobby. We hopped into one of the many cabs that were sitting outside the hotel and left at 9:30 am.

Embarkation

We arrived at the port terminal C at 9:45 am and quickly realized we left the hotel a bit too early. They had not yet opened up the security lines. We waited in the small line that started to form. At 10:15 they opened up the security lines and they started to let us in for registration. I was quickly escorted over to the wine table where I paid the $75 corkage fee for my 5 bottles. From there we got our pictures taken, were given our room keys, and were shown the way upstairs to the waiting area. Not surprisingly, we were in Group 1.

While we waited we enjoyed some complimentary coffee and orange juice. We did not board until 11:30 am so did a fair amount of waiting. I would advise people to not show up until 10:30-11am at the earliest moving forward. We had been sitting in the middle of the waiting room as we were not sure exactly where we would board. We later found out the boarding area was at the far end of the waiting room. If you really want to be one of the first to board the ship (and are in Terminal C), go sit at the far end of the room.

As soon as we boarded the ship we went straight to Guest Services for our Vibe passes. We had no problem getting the passes and 10 minutes later we were done and on to get lunch. From there we headed up to lunch at O’Sheehan’s. My GF enjoyed yogurt and a fruit plate while I had the Corn Beef sandwich and fries. Lunch was good. Service was great. There was a World Cup game on so we watched a bit of that while we waited for our rooms to be ready. From there we decided to tour the ship a bit. We checked out Bliss, the nightclub, The Tropicana Room (MDR), and then decided to take a stroll around the Waterfront. We grabbed a drink at one of the outdoor bars on the Waterfront and by the time we were finished with our drinks, the rooms were ready around 1pm.

Stateroom- 12908

As soon as the announcement was broadcasted stating the rooms were available, we headed directly up to the room. I was eager to check out the balcony. I knew the room would look identical to my standard balcony room on the Breakaway but could not wait to see just how big the balcony was. I also wanted to make sure that there were 2 loungers on the balcony.

The room was identical to the Breakaway. A good sized room with the bed closer to the closet (versus being right next to the balcony). This was my preference so I was happy about that. The bed was super comfortable and the sheets and comforter were nice and soft.

And then we checked out the balcony!

Wow! It was even bigger than I thought it would be. We had more room than we really needed. It was almost as big as the room itself. Thankfully there were 2 loungers, 2 regular chairs, and a small side table. Everything was going as planned.

I fought the urge to start unpacking and decided this would be the best time to snap a few pictures of the room and balcony. My GF was impressed with the full size hair dryer in the room. It came in very handy. There was plenty of storage space in the closet and under the bed. Both of our bags fit under the bed, and we both were able to fit everything that needed to hang, in the closet. I had heard that the aft facing balconies can sometimes experience heavy vibrations when coming in and out of port. We found the vibrations to be very minimal. I am not a heavy sleeper and was surprised that I was never awoken coming into port in St. Maarten or St. Thomas. We were already awake for our arrival into Nassau. Overall I though the room was perfect for 2 people.

The bathroom also was a good size. The shower space was a good size too. It comes with a hand-held shower head. I am not a big fan of the shower designs on the Breakaway/Getaway. You have to stand really close to the wall while rinsing off. That would not be too big of a problem if the soap/shampoo dispensers and metal racks (to hold your own supplies) were not also on that wall. On the Breakaway I banged my elbow pretty hard on one of those metal holders. I almost did the same on the Getaway. The water pressure is not horrible, but could be stronger. That might help with the problem. Basically I had to take the shower head off of the mount to rinse off. Maybe that is the whole point of the hand-held shower head- lol! I am also spoiled with insanely good water pressure at home as I live in an older building.

I am going on the Getaway on 8/9 and this review has me on the edge of my seat! :D

Enjoying the review so far. :)

Nice to see a Getaway review that is not all about the Haven. Keep it up.

I'm hooked and just subscribed to this thread!!

Excellent review so far. I love the details!! :)

Great review! Ready for more thanks for contributing!!

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Hey everyone! Thanks for the comments so far! Sorry, more is on the way tonight. I had hoped to get a few days of the cruise posted yesterday but hit a small snag with my pictures not being uploaded properly to my hosting site. I should have that fixed tonight so I can continue to post. Stay tuned!

I have 19 days to go, so thanks for putting this up and helping me get more excited for my first trip on the Getaway

Getting down to about a month......will enjoy following this one!

Thanks for the report!

Also 19 days before we board!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Thanks for the review and pics.

Spa

Before hitting the Vibe Club, we decided to tour the Spa. We were not sure if we would be using it on this trip so wanted to get in there and take some pictures. We decided that the week-long Spa pass just was not worth it at $200 per person. The Getaway Thermal Spa is amazing if you ask me. I love the steam room and the heated pool. They also had a salt room and a dry sauna. I also liked the large number of super padded lounge chairs and heated tile beds overlooking the front of the ship. The Spa on the Princess cruise we took had no views of the sea, so this was a major step up in my book. I was thinking that maybe I would try to get a one day pass later in the trip.

Vibe

After visiting the Spa, we decided to check out Vibe. Vibe is the adult-only area located on the forward part of the ship. It is usually a nice quiet area with 2 huge hot tubs offering superb views of the sea. The hot tubs have a good sized canvas roof to keep it well shaded. There is a nice bar with bar stools that are also in the shade. The service here is fantastic since they only sell so many Vibe passes and they staff can really give good service to the limited number of customers. Throughout the day the bar staff and waiters will swing by to bring you beverages. They also bring out fruit on skewers and cold towels when it is hot. One day that was very hot, they came around spraying everyone with cool water. As you can see from the pictures there are also a good number of padded loungers as well as flat beds to lay out on. We found the beds to be pretty hot as they were right next to the plastic guard rail with no shade. There are umbrellas located next to the longue chairs so you can have the staff help you in raising those. On the Breakaway I spent a lot of time at Vibe and did the same on this trip. The service is fantastic and there are often a bunch of cool, down to earth people there to talk to and get to know. There are also no screaming children! :)

We spent a short time up in Vibe and had our first frozen drinks of the cruise. It was a bit cloudy that day but we would not let that spoil our mood. This trip was just getting started and we could not wait to get moving!

From there we went to the Muster drill. Our Muster location was the Tropicana Room. It was short and efficient. We did not have to bring our life jackets there like we had to on our Princess cruise. That was nice.

Sailaway

We decided to go to the Sailaway Party at Spice H20. Our Cruise Director was Joel (pronounced Joe-el.) He was fantastic, super fun, and energetic. He really seemed like he was enjoying what he was doing, for the entire cruise. I have seen other great CDs get up there but you can tell they are manufacturing it a bit. Joel seemed to feel right at home as CD. That has got to be one of the toughest, most grueling jobs out there. I did not care for the assistant CD too much. I cannot remember his name but he seemed to be faking it up there and did not have as good of a personality as Joel.

We were only planning on staying for the Sailaway Party for 5-10 minutes. We were thinking it would be nice to enjoy the sailaway from our balcony. Well, we met a nice couple and hit it off. We hung out with them for a while. Strangely, we did not see them for the rest of the trip. I had purchased a bucket of beer, so after a while we decided to take those down to our balcony and enjoy the rest of the sailaway from there.

On our way back to the room before dinner we ran into our steward, Wynan, who introduced himself. Since we had some white wines, I asked him if he could bring a wine cooler and some ice. He happily did that and told me he would do his best to keep the wines on ice throughout the trip (which he did in fact a good job of staying on top of). He was very nice and we found him to be pretty reliable and attentive. He did forget to unlock the fridge. We had him unlock that mid week and take out everything that was in there so we could use it for various foods/snacks/drinks.

By the time we got to our room, Miami was starting to shrink into the distance.

We spent most of our evenings on the balcony before we went to dinner. During the day the balcony was pretty hot but it cooled down nicely by the evening. I was a bit surprised how little of a breeze you got out there.

My GF was dying to go try the Cha Cha dance class. I had enough beers in me by then and decided to join her. It was held in Bliss. Funny enough, we never made it back there after the dance class. The dance class was fun. It lasted about 45 min. Not sure why, but during the class they played hip hop instead of Latin music. We were a bit bummed about that since we both love dancing to Latin music. It was still fun and allowed us to burn a few calories before dinner.

Dinner- Tropicana Room

For night 1 we had dinner in the Tropicana Room. We were seated right away. I thought the food was very good. I had a salad, some sort of marinated chicken legs and the Pork with Cuban sauce for a main entre. The lime cilantro sauce on my pork entre was incredible as was the pork! We both felt the service was good.

After dinner we walked around a bit. We checked out the dueling piano bar Howl at the Moon. The show had already started so the place was packed. Thankfully the bar had a few open seats so we sat there. Those 2 guys were jamming. They played a ton of great songs that everybody was singing along to. Half way through the show they invited a few kids up to dance and told them to pick a few people out of the audience to join them. Of course they chose my GF which would be the start of many appearances she made on stage this trip. This made her night and we made a mental note to stop back again to see these guys again. I highly recommend them. They are funny and play great music that everyone can enjoy.

We had a long a busy day and were having a great time. We decided to head back to the room and enjoy a late nightcap out on the balcony instead of heading to Spice H2O. You could hear the music on the balcony but it was not as bad as everyone made it out to be. You definitely could not hear the music once you closed the balcony doors. The balcony at night was so relaxing. The temp was perfect and the sound of the wake almost put us to sleep in our loungers. There was a full moon out shining off of the sea which made for a really cool view.

My husband and I got on the ship 7/12! We LOVED it! Can't wait to see the rest of your review. :D

Getaway Day 2 (Sunday July 6th)- Sea Day

We woke up feeling nice and refreshed. We enjoyed a nice coffee out on the balcony. It was already pretty warm out there but it still was nice enough to enjoy. We quickly realized that it was already 9:30 am and we had to get moving if we wanted to enjoy breakfast before the Cruise Critic meet & greet at 11.

Breakfast

We headed up to the buffet for breakfast at the Garden Café. We love hitting the buffet for breakfast on cruises. It is fast and efficient. By the end of the cruise, we are usually sick of the same variety of foods but how much variety can you have for breakfast anyway? By the end of the cruise, I could not spend one more minute in the Garden Café. You have people bumping into you constantly and wandering around aimlessly, LOL- it’s a mess. The food is always good, not great which we found to be the same on Princess. It is however quick and efficient. One thing that a fellow cruiser and I noticed while standing in line for scrambled eggs is that they put them right next to the omelet station. They should put the eggs, bacon, etc far away from the omelets station as it causes major lines to form. We were surprised they had them lumped together like that. We had breakfast at the Garden Café every day of the trip except for one so I will not bore you by repeating that constantly throughout the review.

CC M&G- Cagney’s

After breakfast we headed up to the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet that was held in Cagney’s. This is my second meet & greet. Maybe I have just had bad luck but it is just not our thing. We usually meet a lot of people on our own so I am not sure how many more M&Gs I will be going to. I was just picturing people to be a bit more talkative. The person who organized our event seemed like a very nice person. She got up and mentioned that there was a slot pull and a cabin crawl. I bet the slot pull got people talking more but I was happy to have not ventured into the casino once during the cruise. :D That’s good because I will be in Vegas in November and will be sure to gamble plenty there. We were thinking about trying the cabin crawl but they left so soon we were unable to catch up with them and quite honestly I wanted to hit Vibe soon after that anyways. I will also add that a good 7 or so officers were there talking about their responsibilities. They were very helpful and always saying hello later in the cruise when we ran into them. Jose, the Beverage Manager, remembered me from the Breakaway (or at least pretended to.) I took advantage of what he offered me on the Breakaway last year and that was a free entrance to the Ice Bar. He told me that would be no problem and gave me his card. He is a great guy and was very present throughout the cruise.

Vibe

We spent most of that day up on Vibe. The weather was nice that first sea day. It was pretty hot, but it was very windy. It was actually too windy at times to have the umbrellas up. I tried to hold off on drinking too early but had a frozen drink in my hand by 2pm, LOL! My GF was good and held off until later. We love seas days as you can sleep in, and just do whatever you feel like doing for the day without feeling rushed. I think my GF ate at the Buffet for lunch as well that day. I swung by Flamingo’s and had a small lunch of croquettes and empanadas. They were good and filled me up quickly. We did not want to eat too much as we had an early reservation for the Illusionarium at 5:30.

Dinner- Illusionarium

My GF loves magic so we were really excited to try to get as close to the stage as possible. We got to the show 30 minutes early to make sure we would get good seats. We bought the premium floor seats (which were not much more expensive) and were one of the first groups to be seated. We stated to the hostess that we wanted to be seated as close to the stage as possible, and she put us at the first table next to the stage. I would have preferred to be closer to the middle of the stage instead of off to the side, but it worked out just fine since my GF had the seat closest to the stage. I will not spoil the show for others, but will say that it was awesome. My GF got selected to come on stage at one point as did a few others in the audience. They seem to pick people sitting closest to the stage so don’t sit there if you are too shy to get up on stage. The show was incredible and lasted a good 90 minutes. The dinner however, was not great. I had heard this going in so was not prepared for great food. I don’t like my steak with sauce so that could have had something to do with it as well. The only really bad part of the meal was the steak which was a bit too chewy for my liking. The steak also came with grilled shrimp which was actually very good. The sides were good as was the dessert.

Bong at the Mojito Bar

After the Illusionarium we decided to check out the Mojito Bar. I had heard so much about Bong, the bartender there. Sure enough he was there. I pointed him out to my GF and we were quickly being entertained by him. We ordered a flight of 6 Mojito samplers. Many were good, but my favorite was the spicy Mango Mojito. Bong was a trip. He started making drinks and pouring them out into a glass he had balanced on his head.

Pretty darn impressive. He cracked a bunch of jokes and then won over my GF by showing her a few magic tricks. I guess it was just the night for magic! LOL! He chatted with us for a while and mentioned that he was going on vacation a week after we got off the ship. I state this as he is probably not going to be back on the Getaway for a while which I know will be a bummer for some to hear!

From there, we walked around the Waterfront and caught the sunset. We decided to check out the Newlywed Not So Newlywed game that was playing in the Atrium. We got great seats on the upper level in O’Sheehan’s along the railing. We got there a bit early for good seats and caught the end of Jim Long on the Piano. He was pretty good. The Newlywed Not So Newlywed game was very entertaining and gave us a few good laughs. We later found that you can catch many of those shows later being run on one of the channels in the stateroom. We actually watched it again in the room a few days later since it was so funny.

After that we caught the tail end of the Comedy show going on in Headliners. Mark Viera (the comedian) was really funny but was only on stage for 10-15 minutes before ending. We made a note to come back and check him out later in the week. I want to add that each comedian on the ship has only one show that they repeat twice during the cruise. Don’t go see your favorite comedian twice expecting a different show.

On our way back to the room we decided we would go try out Spice H2O and get a bit of dancing in before calling it a night. They had a great party going on that night and we had a few drinks and danced some as well.

We came back to discover the first of our many towel animals. My GF absolutely adored them and I made sure to tip my steward (Wynan) a little extra for putting that smile on my GF’s face. :)