Got Away on the Getaway! Review of our birthday celebration May 3- 10 2014

[saxgirl84]

A quick summary of the cruisers- Myself (36), my younger sister (33) both cruised the Sky last April for our first cruise & My older sister (40) cruised with Princess last year for her honeymoon/first cruise . We were celebrating my sister’s big 4-0 b-day and wanted to have some fun in the sun. Inspired by the “Bendy Man” reviews, we brought along a trip mascot “Seymore the Sock Monkey” and he will be highlighted in this review, with a few other pictures thrown in (since we sometimes left Seymore in the room on accident. Oops).

On with the review----

After leaving Detroit around 8pm for our 2 ½ hour flight to FLL, we picked up our rental car and headed towards Miami for a good nights sleep before getting on board. Got to the hotel to discover that our reservation was cancelled because I forgot to call in and update my new CC info after I inadvertently lost my CC early last month. Oops… so we spent a bit on the phone calling around to try and find another hotel for the night for relatively cheap. Mission accomplished and we were checked in to a LaQuinta around 1am… a little farther away than we wanted to be, but it worked out just fine in the end…

Woke up around 9:30 on Saturday to head to the port, since we were staying a little farther than we had anticipated, we wanted to get a head start a little earlier. As it happened, we ended up getting to the port around noon, and it was actually a great time, total time before we stepped foot on the ship was about 20 minutes total.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once onboard- we decided to head to O’Sheehan’s for a quick lunch. There was no wait, and plenty of open tables. The Server came over promptly and took our order. We decided to try a few different appetizers to share for a lighter lunch. The food was hot and quick to get to the table.

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch, we decided to check out the ship a little and take some pictures. We headed down the hallway and came across the huge chandelier that I’ve seen so many pictures of and it’s even more beautiful in person. I was super excited to see what it would look like every time we walked past, and it never disappointed!

 

 

 

[saxgirl84]

The casino was right down the hallway from O’Sheehan’s (not active as we were still in port, so we just checked to see what games were available…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We headed up to the upper deck to check it out and saw so much stuff to do!

Water slides-

 

 

 

 

 

Kiddie pool area looked like fun, too bad we didn’t have any kiddos along

 

 

 

 

No one was in the hot tubs yet, but the band was playing all afternoon.

 

 

 

 

Checked out Spice H20

 

 

 

[Luv2cruisewithtwins]

Loving your pics!!

Can't wait to get on the Getaway!!

[Cruisegirl2004]

Great start! Can't wait to read more. The hotel mishap sounds like something I would do...glad it worked out.

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[saxgirl84]

We then headed to the ropes course- my younger sister was eager to check this out, and made sure she wore her tennis shoes on the ship so she could get on it while still in port… Unfortunatley I didn’t think that far in advance, so I wasn’t able to do it b/c I was wearing flip flops, and our luggage wasn’t delivered yet…

Getting suited up:

the guys up on the ropes course were trying to talk everyone into joining in... I admit, I tried it one night after dark, and didn't make it past getting to the top of the stairs... chickened out, and had to do the "walk of shame" back down the "up" stairs. the guys were very nice about it, and made me feel a little better about chickening out... they encouraged me to come back when the ship wasn't rocking in the waves (even though they said they could hardly feel the movement, I definately felt the rocking) but I never made it back up for attempt # 2...

 

 

 

 

my sister Up on the course

 

 

 

 

Walking the plank

 

 

 

 

Mini- golf course under the ropes course:

 

 

 

Rock wall---

 

none of us attempted this, every time my sister worked up the courage to attempt it, there was a line of about 10 people, and only one person working the ropes, so the line wasn't moving very quick... the hours for the rock wall were pretty limited, so that also didn't help.

[saxgirl84]

After checking out the upper decks, our room was ready, so we headed down to check it out. Room 9318- Aft Balcony- Perfect location on the ship for us. Easy to find, and quiet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since we were celebrating the big 4-0, we had the room decorated for the birthday and got a cake as well

 

 

 

 

 

The package came with the streamers, balloons and confetti. when you order the package, you can sepcify what day you want the room decorated, and it stayed up the entire cruise. confetti was just left in 2 bags on the bed (obviously they didn't want to sprinkle it around, imagine the clean-up on that!) not sure why it's even included in the package, I would have preferred streamers or something similar that would have been relatively easy to clean up. We just put the bags of confetti on the counter and never touched it...

 

 

 

 

One note on this- there were 3 of us in the room, but only got 2 plates/fork/knives for the cake, also had no way of covering the cake to keep it “fresh” after we cut into it, so it kind of went to waste, as we weren’t hungry for the cake most of the time… there were also only 2 beach towels, and 2 bath towels in the room when we got there, we called house keeping and were told that our room steward was busy at that time, so we called back about 45 minutes later to ask for the extra towels, and to also have our fridge unlocked and emptied, as we had brought our own pop and redbull and wanted to keep it cold. When I called back, I was told that our steward was going on break, but would get the things we requested when she got back. Not a huge deal for us, as we weren’t in a hurry to use the towels etc…

Checked out our HUGE balcony-

 

 

 

 

 

Peeked around the wall to our neighbor’s balcony (Haven Suite 9316) and were awestruck:

 

 

[saxgirl84]

More pictures of our room/balcony view:

 

 

 

 

 

My bed for the week: the couch pulled out to become a twin sized bed and was surprisingly comfortable:

(sorry I never did get a pic of it when it was made up into the bed...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This room had plenty of storage for all 3 of us. We all way over packed, and still had plenty of storage space left over! I was pleasantly surprised at how spacious the room really was. (On a side note, because the bed was by the balcony, it did seem much larger, we saw a couple of other rooms on our cabin crawl that had the beds near the closet, and they seemed cramped. I’m not sure that would have been quite as roomie feeling…)

Roomy bathroom:

 

 

 

 

Nice sized shower for a cruise ship

 

 

 

Plenty of bathroom storage as well:

 

 

 

 

 

View from our balcony while in port- shows how deep our balcony was!

 

 

[saxgirl84]

Sailaway was quite wet, so we were thankful for our covered balcony, so we could still enjoy the view

 

 

 

Our balcony flooded a bit from the heavy rain, but it drained quite quickly, so there was no problem, we just moved the loungers/chairs back a bit to avoid getting wet

 

 

[saxgirl84]

We had booked the Illusionarium for the first night, so we could save a bit of $$. We opted for the 8:30pm show time, so we weren’t rushing around to get ready for the show, incase our luggage didn’t show up early… After browsing the boards for the 2 months prior to our sailing, I knew to show up early to get a good seat since we went with the premium seats. Apparently word has gotten out, as we showed up at 7:45 for the 8:30 show and there were already about 50 people ahead of us in line! I can imagine in a few months, you’ll have to get there almost 2 hours early for a good seat!

They had us snaked around a hall in the back that I’m guessing isn’t normally used for guests based on the surprised looks from the crew that was leaving the welcome aboard show and used that hallway to get back to the main part of the ship… they started seating people around 8:15, so the wait really wasn’t THAT bad, although it did get pretty warm down that hallway with all those people!

 

 

Waiting in line…

 

 

 

Once inside, we were seated at a pretty close table and were ready for some magic!

 

 

I was really surprised at the fact that there were a lot of empty tables, considering it was added on for those that had the UDP for free for the first night. I’m guessing a lot of people didn’t know about that yet though!

The show was great! Very unique, and had quite a bit of crowd interaction. The magicians were very entertaining, and I thought it was well worth the cost. The food was good, however like others I have seen, I thought it was kind of a distraction to the show at times.

The show lasted about 90 minutes and we decided to check out the casino for a bit, as I had purchased the “$50 for $25” deal that was posted on this site.

Didn’t take long to blow through that $50 and we headed back to the room for the night. I was exhausted and decided to do a bit of reading on the balcony and listen to the relaxing sound of the wake behind the ship (this turned out to be one of my favorite ways to end each night!) Being on Deck 9, we were far enough away from the party at Spice H20 we couldn’t hear the music too much, just some random crowd noises, but nothing too distracting.

Seymore had a new friend tonight! (we didn’t get a Daily for the next day… more to come on that at the end of the review)

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Love this review and the pictures are fabulous!

 

 

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[saxgirl84]

Day 2 began with me waking up around 6:30 hoping to see the sunrise… of course, that had passed, but I still enjoyed the peace out on the balcony and read half of a book before my sisters woke up to start the day…

We had the Meet and Greet that was planned for that morning at 11 at Cagneys, so we had breakfast at the buffet (which was our MO every morning… food was good, and there wasn’t usually a problem finding a seat, other than disembarkation day…) My older sister had wanted to do the cupcake decorating class which we thought was going to be on the next day, but ended up being Sunday, so she had to miss the M&G and cabin crawl. – Kimala did a great job of organizing the M&G and I think there were close to 100 people in attendance… it was a fun time, meeting people and the cabin crawl was a great time! It was pretty awesome to see all the different cabins that are available. I’m a bit claustrophobic, but I think I could handle having an inside cabin, as they seemed pretty roomy. We got to see a Haven Suite (our neighbor’s cabin 9316) a Spa Suite, a Mini-suite, a Studio cabin (VERY COOL! I’m thinking I might need to book one of these at some point!) and an inside room (I feel as though I’m missing a couple, but that’s all I can remember…

 

waiting for the M&G to start

 

checking out the Studio Lounge

 

 

 

The only time this ship really felt HUGE was when we were on the cabin crawl. the hallways for the rooms are LONG and Narrow. I guess since we were in an Aft room, walking from the stairway to the back of the ship never felt like a long walk, but walking from the aft stairs to a forward room seemed like it was never ending... On decks 6/7/8, the walk never seemed that long, maybe because I was always distracted by all the things to look at...

[TracieABD]

Love the start of your Sister's Cruise! The photos are awesome. I am looking forward to reading more!

[saxgirl84]

After the M&G, we decided to take a little tour of the waterfront. What a great area! There were so many places to just sit and enjoy the water and some people watching (even though the ship was supposedly full, it very rarely felt crowded… with a few exceptions for the “popular” events)

 

 

Looking for dolphins out in the ocean!

 

found the little "holes" in the floor to check out the water rushing past!

 

 

 

Seymore found the life ring, just in case

 

checking out the back of the ship from deck 8

[saxgirl84]

More exploring- found Carlo's bake shop...

 

 

 

 

 

and met back up with my older sister after her cupcake decorating...

 

 

(note- the cupcake decorating is $39 per person. you get 4 cupcakes to decorate- so if you have more than 1 person that wants to do it, just multiply that # by 4 and you'll have a LOT of cupcakes to eat :))

[saxgirl84]

Back to the note from earlier about not having the Daily delivered on night one... we all downloaded the iConcierge app and paid the $7.95 each to be able to text/call while on the ship. Well worth the price IMO. The app also had a "whats going on" link, which took you to the days schedule of events. The problem was, I don't know how often it is updated, as there were several times that day that we wanted to participate in a trivia session, or some other event, showed up to the location listed on the app, only to discover that it was a completely different event... We could have just gone down and picked up a paper daily, but decided it wasn't really THAT important, as we did get a Daily delivered every night the rest of the cruise, so we just double checked that each night to make sure we were going to the right place!

 

So we ended up wanting to do some trivia but went to the location on the app and discovered it was actually a wine tasting event. I asked someone if they knew where the trivia was supposed to be taking place, and he pointed us over to a different lounge area across the way, but that obviously wasn't the right location either, so we missed that trivia, oh well... we did hang out a bit in the Mojito Bar and then did a little more exploring of the ship.

 

checked out the Grammy Experience- which was pretty fun to look through.

 

 

 

 

Headed back to O'Sheehan's for lunch again today (got something different this time, food was still good, service was a bit slower... they sat us in the way back and honestly I think our server forgot we were there).

[LrgPizza]

I am really enjoying your pictures! There are a lot of unique ones of things I've not seen yet. I'm looking forward to more. Thanks!

[saxgirl84]

After lunch, we headed over to the other side of O'Sheehan's and played some of the arcade games. they had Skee-ball, Electronic Basketball, air hockey, min-bowling and several arcade type games. not too expensive, but I guess it might add up quick if you let the kiddos run wild.

 

I did note a couple of times when we were at events in the Atrium that if someone was mini-bowling, it was extremely loud, but not too bad.

 

Skee-ball- $1.00/game-

 

 

Mini-bowling- $5.00/person/game

 

 

 

they were also showing "UP" in the Atrium, so we stopped and watched for a short time...

 

 

there always seemed to be something fun going on in the Atrium. very family oriented during the day. it was always fun to walk by when the kids stuff was going on and look down to see all the little munchkins excited by Dora, or Spongebob. I don't have kids of my own, but I have several friends that have kids and I've been talking up this cruise to them since we got off the ship on Saturday. I think they would have so much fun!

[saxgirl84]

We ended up going to several of the Trivia sessions and played a bit of Bingo and Deal or No Deal (well my sister's played, I usually just watched most of the time...)

 

one thing i wished they did more of, was give a short description of the events (possibly on the app, since there isn't much room on the dailies to list what everything is about). I probably would have done a few more activities if I knew what they were actually about. One I almost skipped, and am glad I didn't was the "Art 101 Mythbusters". It's obviously a ploy to get you to come to all of the art auctions, but being a kind of "artsy" person, I really enjoyed it, and we got a free Print from David Lebo- the artist that designed the Hull work, just for showing up!

 

 

I did really enjoy the fact that they changed up the art gallery nearly every day (sometimes multiple times a day) so when you walked down the hallway, you always had something new to look at. Even though I'll never be able to afford most of the artwork, I still enjoyed looking at them.

 

I also loved watching the Chandelier change colors throughout the day too...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the stairway also changed colors several times as well

 

 

 

the only thing that kind of confused me was that they had a photography area set up at the bottom of the staircase, with a ships photographer stationed there. it seemed to be a cause of a lot of bottlenecks in that area most nights. There were several times that there was a big back up of people waiting on a family or group to get situated just right for the photographer to get their shot... kind of inconvienient for those of us that just wanted to get by...

[saxgirl84]

Alright... that's it for tonight... have to catch up on some "real world" things not that I'm back to reality... I'll post more tomorrow after work.... stay tuned! :)

[saxgirl84]

Loving your pics!!

Can't wait to get on the Getaway!!

 

 

Thanks! I wish I was still onboard! I decided I almost need to book a B2B just to get to do everything that is offered! I'll post more tomorrow, posting the pictures is a lot more work than I thought. Glad you're enjoying them!

[saxgirl84]

Great start! Can't wait to read more. The hotel mishap sounds like something I would do...glad it worked out.

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

 

Thanks!

 

I got an email from the company I booked the hotel through, while I was in the air Friday night, so I had no idea until we went to check in... made the best of it, and it worked out just fine! I must admit, when I travel, it very rarely goes smoothly, no matter how much preparation I put into it! :) i try not to stress to much over things though, and just roll with the punches.

[aubreyc1988]

Thanks!

 

I got an email from the company I booked the hotel through, while I was in the air Friday night, so I had no idea until we went to check in... made the best of it, and it worked out just fine! I must admit, when I travel, it very rarely goes smoothly, no matter how much preparation I put into it! :) i try not to stress to much over things though, and just roll with the punches.

 

That's all you can do, definitely have had worse happen to me, but as long as you get on the ship, all is good!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[saxgirl84]

I am really enjoying your pictures! There are a lot of unique ones of things I've not seen yet. I'm looking forward to more. Thanks!

 

 

thanks. I've been following all of the reviews on the Getaway since her TA, and while I was on board, I tried to get pictures of things that I hadn't noticed in other picture reviews, to give some new perspectives... of course, there are quite a few of the same ole stuff too, but we tried to mix it up with adding Seymore into the mix as well :)

[saxgirl84]

Love the start of your Sister's Cruise! The photos are awesome. I am looking forward to reading more!

 

Thanks! It was a fun trip and I can't wait to plan my next cruise! We decided we were going to do another sisters cruise in 3 yrs when I turn 40 as well... can't wait to see which new ship is out from NCL then! (I think we converted my sister to an NCL lover :-P)

 

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[pina28]

Thanks for the review and the great pictures! How did you order the tickets for the Illusionarium? I just see banquet seating.