Norwegian Breakaway Review

4.5 / 5.0
3,880 reviews

First Time on NCL Breakaway

Review for Bermuda Cruise on Norwegian Breakaway
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Papa_Bob_New_Jersey
6-10 Cruises • Age 80s

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Sail Date: May 2015
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony Stateroom

My wife & I sailed on the NCL Breakaway roundtrip from New York City to Bermuda for 7 days starting on 5/3/15. This was our first time on the Breakaway. We thought we did a fair amount of research about the ship prior to booking the cruise, but some of our surprises could have been eliminated with more research before the start of the cruise.

There is a lot of valuable information already available on the NCL web site as well as other reviews on this site, so I will try to minimize duplicating except where I feel something should be emphasized.

Embarking and Disembarking

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony Stateroom

Cabin BB

We were in cabin 9250 category BB Mid-Ship Balcony stateroom. We chose this cabin near the middle of the ship on deck 9 to minimize the chance of sea sickness and noise. We don’t smoke & try to avoid the smell of smoke, but we enjoy sitting on the balcony in the sea breeze. NCL doesn’t permit smoking in the cabins or balconies. Others have written about the areas on the Waterfront on deck 8 where smoking is permitted in front of Maltings & Fat Cats bars on the Starboard (right) side of the ship. We didn’t realize that there is a covering over the Waterfront which not only provides shelter to those sitting outside the Waterfront bars but also prevents smoke from rising directly to deck 9 above unless the breeze is blowing towards this side of the ship. Our cabin was on the port side, so this was never an issue for us.

One area where our research was not thorough enough was the size of the balcony. At 32 square feet, we felt it was tiny compared to other ships we have been on. The ship does have some Large Balcony cabins and we might have thought about upgrading if we had realized how small an area this is.

I was happy with the size of the cabin, but my wife thought it was a little smaller than on other ships. The queen bed can be converted into two twin beds by the cabin attendant. We found the foam mattresses very comfortable. The area between the beds and the wall or room divider & couch was very limited. The night tables were quite small. Part of her perception may have been caused by the decent size bathroom with a nice size semi-circular glass enclosed shower. For us there was ample shelf space in the bathroom as well as in the cabin overall.

The lighting in the cabin was sufficient for our needs & with the full glass sliding doors leading to the balcony; we didn’t need any lights during the day. The cabin was equipped with an energy saving system which requires your room key to be kept in a wall receptacle near the door to turn on the lights and electric outlets in the room. This was a problem for me when I had my laptop computer running when I left the cabin and needed to take my room key with me. The solution was to place almost anything into the wall receptacle, even a piece of cardboard, when we wanted to keep the power on. You can still turn the lights out while the power stays on.

There are two rocker type switches in the cabin, one labeled “Make Up Room” and the other labeled “Do Not Disturb”. These switches control two small lights above the outside of the cabin door so your cabin attendant can see them. The attendant is not permitted to enter your room if the “Do Not Disturb” light is lit.

The temperature in the cabin is controlled by a thermostat that has thirteen positions. It worked very well and we could always adjust it for our comfort. There was a small mini-bar in the cabin where you are charged for anything you take. On the first day we asked the cabin attendant to empty it and then we used it to cool fruit and water bottles we brought on board.

There is a small safe in the closet. The desk chair was cleverly designed as a cube which could also be used as a small table and opened up for storage.

Our cabin attendant, Dionene Johnson, was excellent. She worked around our schedule and kept the room neat and clean without disturbing our personal items. Each night she would leave us a different towel animal and chocolates.

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