Ncl escape: My thoughts

[john kaz]

I have sailed over 20 times, not once with NCL until 2 weeks ago. I am 52 years old, traveling with my wife and 15 other people ranging in age 10 - 73. I was very apprehensive leading up to the sailing, as I do not like the thought of booking dinners and shows ahead of time, 4000+ people on the ship, small pool etc. I actually almost cancelled a couple times for these reasons, but I was traveling with a group, so I went for it. I feel you make your own vacation, and in the 20+ sailings, I have never had a bad vacation. So briefly, my thoughts on a few things that I was worried about before my cruise, and other things of interest:

 

Slides: Awesome. Aqua Racer, the ones you stand up in and the bottom drops out, so much fun. Lines were never that long.

 

Drink Package: No problems. NEVER waited for drinks at a bar, got any drink I wanted, bar tenders Yadz and Clarence in Margaritaville bar are AWESOME. Tell them John and Brenda say hi, and call them "Cartoon". They will love it... Roweyna and Rammell at the bar outside Vibe were also awesome. Only thing about drink package that is different than other cruise lines is you cannot get bottles water. At 8AM you can get bloody Mary, but not bottle water...

 

Dinner and show reservations: Never needed reservations for shows or dining rooms, always just walked right in with 6 or less people. Had reservations sometimes, but other times, they just let you in. One of my problems with the dining room, very very slow. 1 hour 40 minutes minimum for dinner, for a salad, main course and desert. One time we ate at 5:30 there were 3 families in the Taste dining room, and it still took that long. And for refills on wine, water and soda, forget it. We just kept getting up going outside to the bar and refilling....

 

Boat Movement: Definitely more movement than any other ship for calm seas. Especially the first 3 days. Once we reached the islands and slowed down, movement was much less

 

Silas the cruise director was very funny and kept everyone well entertained. He did a great job, and was all over the ship meeting people.....

 

to be continued

[OneWord]

Like.

[LrgPizza]

Was the Margaritaville bartender's name actually Yaj (Jay spelled backwards)? He was there on our Escape cruise, and he is terrific, so I'm wondering if your Yadz is really the same person. He was learning flair bartending, and was constantly practicing flipping the bottles around. He and Clarence (Chocolate Cowboy) were the best!

[john kaz]

Smoke near Casino: There was noticeable smell of smoke in and out side the casino. The casino is also near a smaller atrium, so the smoke does work it's way down below to deck 6 as others have mentioned.

 

Pool Chairs: I was always up early and had no problems getting any chair I wanted at 7:30 or 8:00. by 10:00 most chairs were just about taken. I only saw once in 7 days blue stickers put on chairs, but the chair police never came back to check. They put stickers on chairs where people were gone only 5 minutes, because they showed up just after people left, and had no clue how long they were gone. So, saving chairs is still an issue on the Escape There were chairs with towels on them at 8 AM and people would not show up until 11 AM. and nothing was done about it.

 

Towels: First day getting on ship, cabin is not ready, so towels are available on deck 16 by the pool. You sign your name and room number, and they give you towels. You are then suppose to return them. Problem is, no one was there after 5:00 to cross your name off. Towels were just thrown all over the place. People were crossing their own names off. No one really knew if you returned it or not. There will be towels in your room. Just be sure the number of towels you started with in your room on day 1 is the same and not less when you finish your cruise, or you will be charged.

 

Getting on the ship on day 1 was no problem. NCL has it figured out. You go by group numbers. Only issue is, they give 1 group number per family. There were plenty of people getting on ship right away, by walking on with the first group number called, just walking along side people who had that group number. No way to know the difference.

 

Getting off the ship : Each of the 3 islands, there were never lines to get off. We would wait 30 minutes after the announcement we could leave the ship, head on down to deck 4 and walk right off. Not sure why, but I was not complaining.

 

Garden café buffet: Do as others have said, head to the back of the ship, more tables available, same food.

 

Disembarking the ship: We carried our bags off, we were off the ship by 8:00. simple, no lines at customs, no bags to find, the best.

 

Islands: Tortola, we went to Brewers bay beach. Awesome, gorgeous beach. Nothing special, snack bar for food and drinks, a bath room, and nice waves. NOT CROWDED!!! St. Thomas, we had been there many times. Decided to go to Sapphire beach. Smaller than Meaghan's bay, but so nice. again, food, bath rooms, drinks, another perfect day. Nassau, to me a wasted stop. Shopped a little, then hung out on ship, it was our last day, treated it as a sea day.

 

All in all, after almost changing ships, The Escape ranks 1 or 2 out of all the ships I have sailed. Enjoyed it so much, already booked for next April, with the cruise next deal you can book on the ship. The crew, the shows, the food, drinks, everything was great. Cannot wait to go back...

[john kaz]

Was the Margaritaville bartender's name actually Yaj (Jay spelled backwards)? He was there on our Escape cruise, and he is terrific, so I'm wondering if your Yadz is really the same person. He was learning flair bartending, and was constantly practicing flipping the bottles around. He and Clarence (Chocolate Cowboy) were the best!

 

 

Yadz, he did the bar tender show out by the pool. And yes, the Chocolate cowboy had the best laugh. My favorite drink was the hot hot hot margarita, with Jalapeño's

[TheDougOut]

Nice thoughtful review!

 

I wonder how many people have cancelled a cruise because of the opinions of others, and ended up missing out on one of their #1 or #2 ranked cruises. Glad to see you formed your own opinion and had a great time!

[Sissaaaaaa]

We loved Silas!

[LrgPizza]

Yadz, he did the bar tender show out by the pool. And yes, the Chocolate cowboy had the best laugh. My favorite drink was the hot hot hot margarita, with Jalapeño's

 

It's gotta be the same guy, and he's just changed up the spelling on his name tag. He introduced himself as "Yaj, Jay spelled backwards", and that's what his nametag read. So funny, yet it was pronounced Yadz, as you say.

[tribbs1]

Thanks for posting. I am going on Saturday for a Seminar at Sea and have been somewhat discouraged by all of the pre-planning that needs to be done for a "freestyle" cruise - reservations to dine, shows, etc.

 

Since I am not paying for this cruise I will just have to deal with it and step outside my comfort zone. I hope my preconceived notions will turn out to be nothing just like yours were.

[dizzneebabe]

Thanks for your review and comments. Having sailed on Carnival, RCCL, Disney AND NCL (NCL being my favorite at the time), I've been panicking about all the necessary planning for our upcoming Escape this Saturday, May 7th.

 

We splurged and booked the Haven for our family of 5 (2 adult children, 1 child) to celebrate our oldest's college graduation. We were so excited!! Then I started reading and :eek: started wondering what I had gotten us into! Horror stories about not getting a table for dinner; not being able to get a seat at the shows; waiting too long for drinks; long lines to everything, etc.

 

Booking dinner reservations in advance is not high on my list. It's one of the main reasons we loved NCL so much, albeit it was 12 years ago on the Dawn. As of now, I haven't booked a single thing. Your review has given me hope that we won't have to miss out on the specialty restaurants that came with our booking and might actually enjoy that drink (or two :roll eyes:) by the pool!

[fshagan]

Thanks for the review!

 

We have only been on the Gem since all the free promos and "massive changes" a lot of people complain about, but we didn't notice anything negative in our cruise experience. We also had one of our best cruises ever.

 

We scheduled some of the meals but then changed some reservations. We always were able to "Freestyle" it without any problem by just being a little flexible. I think the commando-style scheduling some people are doing might be because of their own requirements to have a fully structured schedule. Or, they are running into problems we just aren't seeing.

[john kaz]

No worries peeps. One thing I did not mention in my review was the Norwegian Concierge APP. Download it now, at home. When you get on ship you can reserve shows and dining. So simple to use. Have no reservations, no worries, show up and your good. For instance, comedy shows at 7 and 11, they were letting people in at 6:35 and 10:35 who did not have reservations. Dinner, we had no problems getting in as long as you group is not bigger than a table size of say 6. But the service is SLOW!!!! Especially for refills of water drinks and wine.

[iceman2a]

Thanks for your "thoughts"! Nice to hear that your precruise

apprehensions were not realized!

 

You don't need to "pre plan" as much as people think! I am traveling with a

large party and made reservations for the mdr for 1 night. There is no way

the whole party is going to dine together every night. As far as entertainment

it has been my experience that reservations are not always needed!

[Jim The Lizard]

Good review and v comments, the negative reviews simply don't outweigh the positives of this ship and line. Funny how critics call NCL fans"sheep" or blind to the changes many lines are implementing. Glad you had a great time, vacations are treasures in our busy lives!