With 50+ cruises under our belts, my wife and I have avoided the New York Caribbean departures for a couple of years. With nearly half our cruises on NCL, we decided this year to try the Breakaway out of New York.

There are a set of reactions. First, the 22+ restaurants serve a great variety of very well prepared food, and the clubs and show venues are terrific. But they are very poorly run. Service in restaurants is at best an adventure . . . food arrives is some unknown order that has nothing to do with how a meal is eaten, chances are one person in your party will be served desert while another is eating a salad that was served out of order, and that you'll get bread or butter, but not both. The service quality is not the staff's fault but essentially very poor management!

As another example of poor management, we had a non-working television remote when we arrived. It took a full day and eight different people to get us one that worked! Read more