My husband, daughter (11), son (15) and I sailed on the Dec 29 - Jan 5th cruise. Before leaving I was quite unsure if we made the right decision booking this cruise because of the negative reviews. I'm writing this review because our experience didn't match a lot of what I had read. First let me say this is our 4th cruise so we did have a bit of previous experience. Food on the Breakaway was fantastic. I think for the amount of food they are making everyday the buffet was great. I always found something that I thought was excellent. The free sit down restaurants were ok. I know people think they are being nickeled and dimed by Norwegian, especially for the specialty restaurants with an extra fee but personally I like they way they do things. If everything was included, the price to sail would be much higher. So they leave it up to the traveler to decide if they'd like to pay more for higher quality items. There are a lot of families that wouldn't be able to afford a more expensive trip. The shows were great although we did feel that Rock of Ages was an odd choice for them to perform. I was shocked at how many people walked out during the show.
We lost our son to the teen club. To say he loved it there would be an understatement. He said it was the best one he'd ever been to. When I asked him what was different about it, he said it was the councillors, that they were fantastic and made it so fun to go there. He also said the feel in there was more grown up and less cheesy than other teen clubs on other ships he'd been to. They had lots of activities for them to do and he met some other kids there that he really bonded with.
Splash Academy - my daughter didn't like it but she hasn't liked any kid's club on any ship, she prefers to stay with us so I can't give a review of that.