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Semi-Live Norwegian Breakaway Northern Transatlantic 10/2-10/16


rimmit
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Just wanted to tell you and your wife how much I’m enjoying your blog.  We sail on the Breakaway in April to the Caribbean.  Thanks so much for the shop tips.

i also wanted to share that our son is a Louisville grad - undergrad and grad school - and he now works at Notre Dame.  😊

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Thanks!  Our son had a soccer tournament the last couple days so we haven’t been able to write much, but rest assured the it will be finished over the next week or so.

 

That’s ironic as I went the opposite direction.  I went to ND for undergraduate and did ten years of training at UL.  Go Irish!

 

The Breakaway would be a lot of fun in the Caribbean.  I am not sure I would recommend it in cold weather.

 

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I'm enjoying your blog. I'm not surprised that The Mersey Boys didn't sing anything from Jersey Boys, I believe their name is from the Mersey sound, aka the British beat. I am surprised they did Frank Sinatra and Lionel Ritchie. I would have expected The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemaker etc. (yes, I'm showing my age)

 

Edited by NotLikeBelleRosen,IHope
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I love your blog!  What a sweet family!  We are doing our first TA cruise in April, 2019 on the Epic from Port Canaveral to Barcelona.  We will also stop at the Azores, so I was interested in your day there.  Your blog brings back many wonderful memories.  We lived in England for 4 years when my boy/girl twins were between the ages of 4 and 8 (they are 23 now!).  I know how hard it is to travel with young children, but you and your wife seem like pros!  We also visited Copenhagen, Cork, Blarney Castle, and Salisbury with our kids, so I loved reading about your experiences.  So sorry your missed Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; it is really magical for little ones.  Your kids are adorable and I can speak from experience that doing so much traveling with young children is a great education for them!  I can't wait to read about the rest of your trip and about your New England/Canada cruise, as that is on our radar as well.  

 

One question, with such a long cruise, did you use the laundry facilities on the ship?  Am I correct in that NCL does not have self serve laundry, but that you have to send it out? I'm really picky about how my clothes are washed, so if that is the case, we will most likely only send out underwear and socks!

 

Thanks again for your wonderful blog!!

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On ‎10‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 6:57 PM, NotLikeBelleRosen,IHope said:

I'm enjoying your blog. I'm not surprised that The Mersey Boys didn't sing anything from Jersey Boys, I believe their name is from the Mersey sound, aka the British beat. I am surprised they did Frank Sinatra and Lionel Ritchie. I would have expected The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemaker etc. (yes, I'm showing my age)

Thank you!

You are jumping ahead.  😃  They actually explained there name in the subsequent show. 

 

On ‎10‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 8:07 PM, pcrum said:

I love your blog!  What a sweet family!  We are doing our first TA cruise in April, 2019 on the Epic from Port Canaveral to Barcelona.  We will also stop at the Azores, so I was interested in your day there.  Your blog brings back many wonderful memories.  We lived in England for 4 years when my boy/girl twins were between the ages of 4 and 8 (they are 23 now!).  I know how hard it is to travel with young children, but you and your wife seem like pros!  We also visited Copenhagen, Cork, Blarney Castle, and Salisbury with our kids, so I loved reading about your experiences.  So sorry your missed Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; it is really magical for little ones.  Your kids are adorable and I can speak from experience that doing so much traveling with young children is a great education for them!  I can't wait to read about the rest of your trip and about your New England/Canada cruise, as that is on our radar as well.  

 

One question, with such a long cruise, did you use the laundry facilities on the ship?  Am I correct in that NCL does not have self serve laundry, but that you have to send it out? I'm really picky about how my clothes are washed, so if that is the case, we will most likely only send out underwear and socks!

 

Thanks again for your wonderful blog!!

I don't know if I'd say we are pros, but we definitely do it quite a bit.  There are definitely some days that are better than others, but overall we enjoy it otherwise we obviously wouldn't do it.  Zack and Lucy thankfully travel pretty well, especially Zack, who truly was built for travel.

 

I went to Tivoli when I was kid and loved it. I was so bummed when after I booked the cruise to find out it was between seasons.  I traveled a TON as child, and I didn't appreciate it one bit until, in all honesty, when I became a parent myself.  Then I realized just how much I learned from traveling, and how difficult it must have been for my parents to drag me across the world, especially, when I was less than enthused.

 

There is no self serve laundry.  We did not send it out, but they did have the typical wash and fold bag for 19.99 at one point.  We are pretty efficient packers.  We managed to not do any laundry on the ship and had only 2 luggages and a carry on with a total weigh in of 108 pounds.  The toiletries was a good chunk of that, as those liquids really pack on the weight.

 

Either way, here is Day #14.

https://thesmallworldfamily.com/2018/10/29/northern-transatlantic-cruise-live-blog-day-14/

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I enjoyed the live NFL games, shown on big screens in varying venues (Breakaway theatre, Spice H2O and Bliss Ultra Lounge) on Thursday, Sunday and Monday.  Always a gang rooting for each team.  The Thursday night game was quite late, given the time difference.  The games were also shown on stateroom televisions.  

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1 hour ago, rimmit said:

Day #15

If you are a trivia buff,  I strongly recommend against Norwegian Cruise Line.  Throughout the cruise I had noticed a lack of trivia

 

Yes, trivia is poorly executed on the large Norwegian ships because they often use the atrium, which is a terrible location for  the event. However on the smaller Norwegian ships, trivia and especially progressive trivia on the longer cruises, where other venues are used, it is great fun.

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13 minutes ago, JohnChiang said:

 

Yes, trivia is poorly executed on the large Norwegian ships because they often use the atrium, which is a terrible location for  the event. However on the smaller Norwegian ships, trivia and especially progressive trivia on the longer cruises, where other venues are used, it is great fun.

That is good to know.  I did buy several thousand in Cruise deposits with the intent to go on NCL again except just on their smaller ships as I was hoping this this was a large ship problem. 

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we were on the Epic transatlantic in April

trivia was in atrium first day but then moved to nightclub which was a much better venue

it truly was progressive as points not totalled up till last day and each daily winning team had to add a decoration to Marley the towel animal which would be taken home by overall winning team

some people were very creative and it must have been double its original weight by end of cruise!

 

there were about 20 teams regularly taking part and it was great fun

however its all down to the cruise director and Andre Paul Gaffney did a great job

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1 hour ago, fabnfortysomething said:

we were on the Epic transatlantic in April

trivia was in atrium first day but then moved to nightclub which was a much better venue

it truly was progressive as points not totalled up till last day and each daily winning team had to add a decoration to Marley the towel animal which would be taken home by overall winning team

some people were very creative and it must have been double its original weight by end of cruise!

 

there were about 20 teams regularly taking part and it was great fun

however its all down to the cruise director and Andre Paul Gaffney did a great job

 

The cruise director makes or breaks progressive.   It all depends on how high a priority they put on it.  If they do it themselves then it tends to be amazing and sooo much fun and a cruise highlight.  If they outsource it to their assistant CD it still tends to be good.  If they assign it to the lower level cruise staff,  it tends to be a mail in.  On the Breakaway they mailed it in on multiple fronts.   It was terribly inconsistent, broke up into two parts, questions all over the place and literally impossible, tons of dead wrong answers that aren’t even debatable. It was just a disappointment as my favorite part of repos/TA’s/long cruises is the progressive and trivia in general.

 

I did like how Norwegian utilized PowerPoint a lot.  That was really nice.  Really eliminated the accent issue, however, NCL Breakaway has an almost entirely Filipino cruise staff so the accent is not as big of an issue, and I am Filipino on top of that so it really wasn’t an issue. On RCI the accents can really be problematic during trivia as their staff is not as Filipino no heavy.

 

Just out of curiousity, is there typically not any music trivia, movie quote trivia, name the movie etc. kind of trivia on NCL or was the Breakaway just an exception?  I am a huge movie and music buff and love those as the wife and I tend to do pretty well and was really sad there weren’t ANY of those types of trivia on this cruise.  

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Great blogs so far! Been enjoying reading them.

 

Maybe you should try the EPIC TA from Barcelona to San Juan Nov 2019. Great ports and more southernly route. We were on EPIC WB TA twice, and remembered joining the Progressive Trivia in the Headliners on every sea day. The cruise director himself hosted both times.

 

Epic has better dining venues and Garden Café than the breakaway class ships (especially Le Bistro as we hated its location and size on the BA, GA and Escape).

 

We haven't decide yet but we might do it!

 

If you and family haven't been to Barcelona, it's a great city pre-cruise.

 

We have been on most NCL ships and still do not have a favourite ship - each ship has its own pros and cons. The BA class ships do have a pro - Waterfront! 

 

On long cruises people tend to save their dining credits (SDPs) until the final week, so that's why the Garden Café usually empties out during the final week for dinner. We do eat in Garden Café quite a bit for dinner.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, bluesea777 said:

Great blogs so far! Been enjoying reading them.

 

Maybe you should try the EPIC TA from Barcelona to San Juan Nov 2019. Great ports and more southernly route. We were on EPIC WB TA twice, and remembered joining the Progressive Trivia in the Headliners on every sea day. The cruise director himself hosted both times.

 

Epic has better dining venues and Garden Café than the breakaway class ships (especially Le Bistro as we hated its location and size on the BA, GA and Escape).

 

We haven't decide yet but we might do it!

 

If you and family haven't been to Barcelona, it's a great city pre-cruise.

 

We have been on most NCL ships and still do not have a favourite ship - each ship has its own pros and cons. The BA class ships do have a pro - Waterfront! 

 

On long cruises people tend to save their dining credits (SDPs) until the final week, so that's why the Garden Café usually empties out during the final week for dinner. We do eat in Garden Café quite a bit for dinner.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

We have been out of Barcelona a couple times.  Great city.  We just made the mistake of getting a room right on the Las Ramblas when we had a 15 month old.  Nothing like soccer chants at 4AM to get your child going! Lol.

 

We figured people saved up the credits for the end when there was less to do and weren’t in port on a long day.  It definitely made Garden Cafe a much more enjoyable experience.  

 

We will definitely cruise NCL again when the itinerary and dates fit...  maybe just not in the cold on a Breakaway class ship.  I will definitely keep all the tips in mind.  Thanks!!

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Really enjoying your review ,when you'll done with this one, would go to your other travel experiences  on your blog.  This is so true you would enjoy Breakaway in warmer climate much more , because of spacious outside areas.

Edited by KBMILA
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