Sailing the Es-cap-ay (Escape)- Western Caribbean Review June 24, 2017

[Suna]

Awesome start ... I am a planning freak (colour coded excel spreadsheets and trip binder) so I am loving how organized you are.

 

 

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[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[Time2CruiseAgain]

 

 

 

Travel Apps

 

 

 

i-concierge

 

I was looking for NCL apps so I downloaded the i-concierge app before the cruise and was very disappointed to see that it didn’t do anything until we got on the ship. Once on the boat though, this app showed us the daily schedule, ship activities and let you book events like the comedy show.

 

 

 

NEWBIE NCL CRUISE TIP- Download this app before you get on the ship or before you embark so that you don’t have to use ship’s internet to get it.

 

 

 

TripRider

 

Another app that I love is called TripRider. This is a travel app setup to handle my packing list, schedule and travel documents! I can schedule things on the calendar day by day and mark some “must do”s like “try the gelato shop on the Waterfront” so that I don’t miss anything that I meant to check out! It also stores pdf documents like excursion receipts, plan expenses, saves maps, has a place to enter people that we meet and their contact info, and my favorite part is that is has a password protected area to save things like photos of our passports, medical insurance cards, etc. You can access everything without internet so it worked for my off-the-grid plan too. It also had a diary section where I took notes of what we did every day- which I used for this review! It even makes a "trip book" with any details you select, so I used that to print our packing list and send our itinerary to our family before we left so they’d know our travel dates, hotels, and when we fly, flight numbers. Here’s a few screenshots of the packing list and schedule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Standard Pre-cruise checklist includes:

 

• 
   
  
• Call credit card companies, which apparently you don’t need to anymore because both companies said they didn’t need that information
   
  
• Get cash for tips and excursions. NEWBIE CRUISE TIP- I’ve found that $50 in ones, $50 in fives, $100 in tens, several $20s more than covers most of what we need. For the large bills ($20), I figured what I needed to spend on excursions and tips (with some thick padding for just in case situations) and take about that much.
   
  
• Print luggage tags and documents- Thanks to AAA for covering this one for me
   
  
• Print excursion confirmations (NCL and independent) because you never know when you’ll need proof that you paid for something.
   
  
• Pay bills due while on vacation
   
  

After all that and asking the neighbors to grab the mail for us, we were all set!

 

 

 

 

 

Is TripRider an Apple app?

[POA1]

Is TripRider an Apple app?

Yes, iOS only.

[locashaina]

 

Now to pick a room! I love having a balcony for a few romantic reasons- you can step out of bed and feel the ocean breeze, you can sit and soak up the rays of a glowing orange sunset- and for a few practical reasons- swimsuits never seem to dry in the bathroom, sometimes there’s odors in a cabin where it would really be nice to crack a window. Come on, you know that’s true.

 

To go a little extra OCD, I also looked at the ship's travel path and picked the side of the ship that would be showing the coast as we sailed from port to port (which happened to be left or port), so that, and limited 4-person room availability at the almost 90 day mark, set us with room 9284 if you’re curious.

 

 

We booked through AAA because we have a membership and they offer good travel insurance. It was the exact same price as booking ourselves online. Our office didn’t have discounts on NCL, but they did take care of all the reminders and they printed our luggage tags and documents for us. It also made me feel better that if we had any issues, our local agent would be there to help and they sent me travel books on Florida so that we could plan a post-cruise fun stop on the way back home.

 

 

Now comes the part that I love and the part that may bore other people to tears- planning! If you’re already starting to zone out, just skip this section- I promise I’ll get to the Es-cap-ay part soon! For those who share my deep appreciation for tripadvisor, spreadsheets, and checklists, jump on in!

 

Kids- to passport or not to passport. That is the question.

 

Our kids have been on 2 Caribbean cruises prior to this one with just birth certificates including one out of San Juan, so I didn’t plan on getting them passports until my travel agent pointed out in a lot of foreign countries, if you get sick while you’re there, you cannot fly back home until arrangements for a passport are made, which could potentially delay you getting appropriate medical care. Eek, that’s a scary thought. Considering a few years back when my son was very close to requiring emergency hernia surgery, I figured that I’d rather be safe than sorry. It’s pricey but we went to the post office right after the reservation was booked and filed the paperwork to get the kid’s passports. The passports arrive in 3 weeks.

 

Excursions- use ship or not use ship. That is the other question.

 

I’m having too much fun with my new info-graphic app (Adobe Spark) so here’s another one!

 

So, our promotional shore excursion credit gave us a whopping $50 per port to use on shore excursions so you’d think we’d book all our trips through the ship, right? Let’s do some research! My main starting point for research was the Ports of Call forums and google. I found a list of place we might want to go for each port and then researched the reviews for the places/excursion companies on trip advisor as well as the potential timelines (did they give us plenty of time to get back to the ship on time), stress levels (would I be jumping on buses in a country that I didn’t speak the language, etc.), and cost. I’ll talk about it more as I review each port but I looked at the pros and cons and costs of independent vs ship excursions at every port, except Harvest Caye where it’s go ship or go home.

 

So that I can ease you slowing into my neurotical cruise planning world, I’ll just start with the daily chart that I make for each vacation that includes the ports we’ll visit, times in port and what excursion we plan to take (organize level beginning). If you want to totally geek out, also add in the times of all the dinners that you pre-booked (organized level medium) because even though it has freestyle dining, it’s good to plan ahead, and finally the possible activity times based on all the past freestyle dailies that you’ve dug through cruise critic to find like Gollum looking for “my precious” (organized level expert)- double geek points for that one!

 

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Let me know if you want a copy of this Word document template and I’ll send it your way!

 

I'm a planner as well! I appreciate looking at your schedule because you booked two excursions I will be doing in August! Daniel Johnson's and Native Choice... thanks for the review!

[usckatieh]

When guests #1 & #2 get the UBP as a promo, nobody else in the stateroom has to buy anything.

 

When someone BUYS the UBP, all adults in the same stateroom must have the UBP either purchased or promo. Those under 21 must get the Soda Program.

 

You could have had the UBP without the soda program for the kids.

 

 

Thank you for clearing that up!

[usckatieh]

I'm a planner as well! I appreciate looking at your schedule because you booked two excursions I will be doing in August! Daniel Johnson's and Native Choice... thanks for the review!

 

 

Great choices! I'll tell you a lot more about those soon!

[usckatieh]

Awesome start ... I am a planning freak (colour coded excel spreadsheets and trip binder) so I am loving how organized you are.

 

 

Yay! Spreadsheet lovers unite!

[usckatieh]

 

Day 2- Sea Day

It was so wonderful to sleep in on our first sea day! Of course, sleeping for us is around 7:00am. Better than our 5:00am alarm during the week! After rolling out of bed, we stopped at the buffet for breakfast. The sheer variety is what kept us at the Garden Cafe for breakfast all week. And it was always quick to get in and out and on with your day. Favorites for the week were eggs benedict for DH, omelets for DS, Cheerios for DD, chocolate croissants for me, and those circular hashbrown things were a favorite for everyone.

 

One of my favorite Garden Cafe breakfast plates

 

I did miss some of the breakfast items from RC buffet, specifically fried rice (yes, I think fried rice makes an amazing breakfast), but all and all were were pretty satisfied with the buffet!

 

Our next stop was the mini golf course!

 

 

The kids enjoyed the course and it seemed to get lots of use throughout the week!

 

Pool Deck

 

Around 8:30, the kids and I checked out the splash pad. It was tough waiting until 10am for the waterslides to open. Even the slide in the splash area stays closed until 10. The line for slides started around 9:45 and we didn’t have anything else pressing to do, so we joined in.

 

The enclosed tube made DD nervous, but the yellow one was just her speed so she waited in that line, while my daredevil son and I tried out the Aqua Racer! The yellow slide line moved a lot fast than our Aqua Racer line which stayed busy the whole day. DS and I did about 3 slides in 1 hour (1 time down the family slide and 2 down the Aqua racer) while DD got 5 slides in 1 hour (just family slide.) The Aqua loop slide line moved faster than the Aqua Racer one. The Aqua loop was a big 'ol NOPE for me. Over the course of the week, I only saw one person have to use the Aqua loop escape hatch, but I think the tube slide was more my speed. By 11am, there were lines everywhere and it was hard to tell where to start, so we headed back to the room to get ready for lunch. In case you’re wondering, the height requirement is over 40” for yellow and tube slides.

 

This is our view from waiting in line. Kids pool directly below, splash pad on the left with Aqua racer slide above that. Yellow family slide on the right with Aqua loop above that. Adult pool behind that striped ceiling building.

 

We tried lunch at buffet but I found it kind of meh. Not as much variety in the options through the week. The long line of stations meant that you had to walk the entire length of the cafe to see all the options. I missed the “islands” that RC used in their buffet. It seemed to help with some of the congestion. I do however LOVE that they have a real handwashing station at the Garden Cafe. With water and soap and everything! And of course there’s the ever catchy washy washy song. I do appreciate NCL’s commitment to good hand hygiene!

[kelleyfarms]

Really enjoying your review! Great pictures as well!!! John

[usckatieh]

Meet and Greet

 

About 12:10, I realized that we were a few minutes late to the CC Meet and Greet at the Brewhouse so DD and I rushed over to check it out. Tripleboom did a great job of arranging everything and presenting the prizes! This was by far the nicest meet and greet that I’ve ever been to. The NCL officers went around and introduced themselves, servers brought around appetizers and different beers to try! Also the turnout was great! We had some fun conversations and I got to meet the parents of a little girl that DD had made friends with at kids club last night. They were from Australia and had traveled 30 hours to sail on the Escape! We had more fun with them before the week was over.

 

While we were enjoying the meet and greet, DH was getting sucked in by the deck 8 watch sale. The time changes on the ship to local time throughout the cruise and Nathan lost his to do list while packing, so his watch was sitting on the kitchen counter at home. The good news is that our $100 balcony credit almost covered the cost of the fancy new waterproof watch that he was wearing when he came back to our room!

 

This kids decided to try afternoon Kids club. A note about the 10-12 yr old group. They usually meet on the sports deck and even though my daughter is generally not a sports kid, she really enjoyed the games that they picked to play. Those counselors are top notch. That being said, the sports deck is way hotter mid-afternoon than it is in the evenings after dinner so DD decided that mid-day kids club was not for her. She did go every evening though by her own choice. And at 10-12 yrs old kids have the ability to check themselves out of kids club if they’ve been there for more than 2 hours. They also don’t need a parent to check themselves in. You can choose not to give them this privilege, which I was pretty on the fence about because I was getting a little lost on the ship myself, but we decided to leave it- I guess it really depends on the kid. Most evenings, we picked her up anyways, but I think she felt pretty proud of the fact that we trusted her to go up to the sports deck and check herself in, while we walked DS to deck 5 to the 6-9 yr old group.

 

While the kids were in Splash Academy this afternoon, DH and I hit the fitness center to work off a little bit of those late evening snacks. The fitness center is really well equipped and it has huge ocean view windows so you can watch the ocean as you’re on the elliptical and treadmill. They also have weight machines and a few free weights. DH said that it could get very busy in the early mornings but mid-day we were always able to get a machine.

Some Notes about Free Dining

NCL NEWBIE GUIDE-

When I was first researching the Escape, I had a hard time telling what restaurants were free and which were for charge. I found this helpful dining guide on the NCL website, but here's my quick summary to help out those other NCL Newbies! Free dining includes:

• The Manhattan Room (deck 7)- larger dining room with live music. Open for dinner only.
  
• Taste and Savor (deck 6)- smaller dining rooms but with same menu as Manhattan. Open for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
  
• O' Sheehan's (deck 7)- Irish themed restaurant with casual dining. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and late night snacks. Open 24 hours.
  
• Garden Cafe (deck 16)- Buffet style dining. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks in between.
  

With freestyle dining, you don’t have to participate in formal night, but this is my once a year opportunity to get a good photo of my family so I told them to be prepared for one night of dressing up. It’s funny how for our first cruise, we went out and bought Nathan two suits, the next cruise he says “I bet I can get away with bringing just one” and this course it was like, “so I can’t wear shorts?”. I’ll take what I can get though and it was nice not carrying the garment bag. Photos for formal night start on stairs around 5:25 and I was right there waiting. I wanted to get a photo before they had a chance to dip chocolate ice cream on their nice clothes.

 

Here’s our family cruise photo and the one $25 photo that I purchased from the ship’s photographers.

 

NCL NEWBIE CRUISE TIP- If it was too busy to do photo on formal night, the photographers were available near the staircase and fancy chandelier pretty much every day.

 

Tonight was our reservation for the Manhattan Room, the larger main dining room. We enjoyed the live music and to me, the acoustics were much better than Taste the night before, so the general noise level didn’t seem as loud. DH was asked to remove his hat in several restaurants, including Taste and Manhattan Room, but we saw people with shorts and flip flops so apparently those can make it in. I doubt they want to turn people away as long as you’re not trying to place your napkin in your lap over your swim trunks. The baguettes were a highlight of any dinner but they disappeared pretty quickly at our table. By comparison, RC would offer you all the breads but just give you the one you wanted, which I actually prefer to a basket of breads where the favorites disappear before I could grab one (those kids are fast!) I remember having the salmon for dinner which was delicious but I’m afraid I was too famished to remember to grab any photos, but here’s a few of the Caesar salad, Patrick's PB&J (he tried everything on the kid’s menu once) and the marinated pineapple dessert- yum!

 

The kids weren’t too dirty after dinner so we stopped by the chandelier with my camera so I could grab a few quick photos of just the kids!

 

 

 

I love how the candelier changes colors!

 

[Time2CruiseAgain]

Looking forward to more! We sail on this fabulous ship on 9/2 - my birthday cruise! Question about O'Sheehans - so it is a free restaurant? Even the late night menu that includes wings?

 

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[Suna]

Beautiful photos!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[usckatieh]

Looking forward to more! We sail on this fabulous ship on 9/2 - my birthday cruise! Question about O'Sheehans - so it is a free restaurant? Even the late night menu that includes wings?

 

Yes, I believe so. Even though we never tried it for late night, I'm pretty sure you could stop by any time and order whatever. Everything was free.

 

Beautiful photos!

 

Thank you!

[usckatieh]

The kids went to kids club after dinner and Nathan and I enjoyed walking around and touring this ship. Here’s a quick photo I grabbed of the adult’s pool with my phone. The colored lights looked very pretty at night.

 

It was windy this evening and the ship was rocking back and forth a little. Not as bad as we’ve had it on other cruises but enough to make you zig zag a little while walking down the hall. The windbreakers on the decks though made it so you didn’t get the full blast of the wind unless you walked up to the open portions.

 

We picked the kids up from kids club around 10:00 and our first towel animal was waiting for us! I’m thinking puppy?

 

Here’s how the bed arrangement works for the 4 person room.

 

We had the steward leave the pullman bed down during the day because the kids liked to use it as a hangout spot, but at night DD slept in the pullman and DS slept on the sofa bed.

 

The kids were super excited about tomorrow because we had an excursion planned to go see the monkeys and sloths and we had watched videos of sloths for the past 3 months getting hyped up for our opportunity to hug one.

 

I was sleeping soundly like a baby rocked in her bed, until I woke up to some faint, but urgent calls of “Mommy, mommy” and found that DS had thrown up all over his sofa bed. Oy vey. What was going on? Did he catch the dreaded noro? Did he eat something that didn’t agree with him? Would we make it on our trip in Honduras tomorrow? Dun dun dun...To be continued. I didn’t tell you there would be cliffhangers. :)

[SliderNc]

Katie,

 

Thanks for writing this and I look forward to the rest, especially your excursion with the sloth and monkies, which my wife (who is enamoured with sloths after watching Zootopia so many times with our daughter) is so looking forward to going.

 

I love your organization and we would normally do that when traveling as a family. However, since it is just me and the DW, we're just going to wing it.

 

Looing forward to the rest!

[tawaik]

You have a beautiful family.

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. Sailing on the Escape 10/28 to celebrate my Sister's Birthday.

 

Can't wait continue to reading more about the adventures.

[Dannirose]

Great recap and pics so far! Can't wait to read more ( and hopefully your son wasn't down for the count with noro).

[Newbea11]

Love your review

[Carolina Girl 99]

Fellow South Carolinian following along and getting excited for my upcoming Escape cruise. This time it will just be myself and 20 yr old DS, so lots of late nights and dance party music for us. Great review so far with excellent pics, looking for ward to more!

[CazV]

Loving your review and your wonderful photographs! I had my first cruising experience recently on The Epic, and due to all the great reviews I've read on here, I have the Escape at the top of my list for my next one... hopefully next year.

[usckatieh]

Thanks for all the comments everyone! I'll keep the review going today in between some other errands!

 

Fellow South Carolinian following along and getting excited for my upcoming Escape cruise. This time it will just be myself and 20 yr old DS, so lots of late nights and dance party music for us. Great review so far with excellent pics, looking for ward to more!

 

This ship had a great party atmosphere and tons of music. I bet your 20 yr old will love it!

 

Loving your review and your wonderful photographs! I had my first cruising experience recently on The Epic, and due to all the great reviews I've read on here, I have the Escape at the top of my list for my next one... hopefully next year.

 

Awesome! You'll love it!

[usckatieh]

So, when we left off it was midnight at the end of day 2 and Patrick had just tossed his cookies all over his bed. Sadly, this is not the first time we’ve dealt with him being sick in the stateroom before, but the first time he had gotten a cold and gagged while coughing- poor kid. This was a bit more of a mystery. I pulled off all the sheets and blankets and rolled them into a ball and put that by the door. There are extra sheets and a blanket in some drawers under the sofa so I cleaned everything up and remade the bed. DS and I sat together in the bathroom for a while, but he seemed fine, just sleepy. It was hard to miss the rocking of the boat as we sat together, so I went ahead and got out the previously unused kids seabands and the Motion Ease medication. I read the instructions on the Motion Ease and it said it’s safe for all ages and just put a few drops on your finger and rub behind the ears to help with the inner ear motion symptoms. I put some on Patrick’s ears and the smell was really nice too. After about 15 minutes, I tucked him back into his fresh bed and hoped for the best.

 

Ok, enough suspense! We made it to the morning with no more issues, so I think it was a bit of motion sickness, possibly crossed with too many late night snacks. Whoo, thank goodness! Nathan wanted to give DS a bit of the kid’s dramamine in the morning too just to be safe, especially since we anticipated a bit of a car ride to our excursion. We brought Patrick some Cheerios and he seemed back to his old self.

 

Here’s the Freestyle Daily for Day 3.

 

 

 

[usckatieh]

 

Day 3- Roatan Honduras and Sloths!!!!

 

Roatan Excursions

 

I started out my research in Roatan looking at the excursions that NCL offered. The Gumbalimba Preserve and Animal Sanctuary looked like fun but the cost for the 4 of us was $276 or $226 w/credit. The highlights looked like snorkeling and hanging out with the monkeys. A friend of ours had a great time at Big French Key and Maya Key looked beautiful online, but when I saw the facebook page for Daniel Johnson’s Monkey and Sloth hangout, I knew I had to check that out. Those sloths were sooooo cute!

 

Daniel Johnson’s Monkey & Sloth Hangout

 

The reason why we chose to go with Daniel Johnson is because I didn’t see any other excursions that included sloths and I’m not going to lie, hugging a sloth would be the highlight of my entire vacation. I saw they were recommended several times on cruisecritic and the reviews on tripadvisor were overwhelmingly positive. When I messaged them on facebook, they emailed back with several package options, but the one that fit us best included an island tour (driving around to see a few of the sights), the Monkey and Sloth hangout and a stop at Parrot Tree beach for $30/person including transportation. Compared to the $226 discounted ship excursion, that was an amazing deal. And we’re so happy with our choice!

 

CRUISE NEWBIE TIP-Before we left the ship, I took a photo of our port authority phone number and made sure I had a charger for my phone just to be safe. If we were to get into any trouble getting back to the ship on time, that’s a handy phone number to have! I've heard that if you call and they know you're on your way, there's a chance that they'll get the ship to wait for you, at least for a short time. Hoping no one would ever need this, but luck favors the prepared.

 

 

Our instructions from Daniel Johnson’s explained how to walk through port and we were supposed to meet our car right outside of the port gate. Sure enough, before we even walked through the gate, I could see a lady holding the Daniel Johnson’s sign waiting for us. She checked us off her list and introduced us to Norma would would be our driver today. We followed Norma on a short walk up the hill to her minivan and loaded up! I wasn’t sure if it would be just us or several families but Norma was pretty much our personal chauffeur for the day. She started out by giving us some background on the island. They’re about 40 miles off the coast of Honduras. The island was claimed by the British for a while so that’s why most of the signs are in English. Most residents are employed by fishing or tourism.

 

Here’s a photo of the Escape in port as we started our drive.

 

We drove through some pretty little beaches, I think it was West End or West Bay.

 

A restaurant or bar on the water

 

Norma mentioned that we could get out and walk around- take some photos or check out the shops, but Patrick was already starting to doze off, probably drowsy from the Dramamine, so we decide to just catch the sights from the van and keep on the with tour. We drove around for 45 minutes or so and then we arrived at Daniel’s!

[usckatieh]

Once at Daniel’s Johnson’s we paid for our tour and sat down to wait for a larger group on a catamaran to start clear out. They have wifi so you can check your phone while you wait, but we had left all that in the van because I remembered the warnings that the monkeys like to grab things. I had been warned to take off glasses, jewerly and purses so all I brought with us was the cash for the tour (and tip for our guide), the big camera and the gopro for some video.

 

We started out looking at a few different animals. This was the agouti. These little guys were described as the island’s equivalent to rabbits because they breed very quickly!

 

I got a kick out of this raccoon that someone had been keeping as a pet and gave to Daniel. He had no interest in being out in the hot sun. Plus, he’s noctural.

Here’s our buddy the capuchin monkey from outside the cage. I didn’t realize that we’d be getting up close and personal with him later.

 

Tasting our tour guide’s fingers before he gets a chance at us. Just kidding, there was no biting involved.

 

Our family and another family jumped into the cage with the two older monkeys. It’s funny because the monkeys didn’t like you to know that they were jumping on you, so when you turned your back is when they hopped on your shoulders. Surprise, there’s a monkey on your head!