Our family of 4 sailed on the Getaway on 8/8. Was it perfect? No. Did the non-perfect things affect my vacation? Not significantly. I don’t have any pictures to share since I was in charge of taking them and my phone went swimming in Virgin Gorda. DH had a brain cramp and well, there ya go-no phone, no pics!

First, a little about us, we are DS18, DS20, DH and me. We’ve cruised most of the major lines in previous years but this was our first NCL cruise. Several months ago DH and I booked the NCL Spirit Grand Mediterranean for next May because the itinerary is the best I’ve seen. Ever since we booked I’ve been scouring the NCL boards learning all I could about the line and frankly starting to get a little worried that we had made a mistake! (I’ve already booked the airfare so without paying substantial change fees; we are locked into that cruise).

We haven’t taken a family vacation in quite some time. High School sports and college messed with our ability to go anywhere together. When we found out that all 4 of us had one week where we COULD all do something the search was on. We’ve always enjoyed cruising because everybody can do what they like without being stuck together the entire time and it’s an actual vacation for me! I quickly found 4 cruises for that week to the Caribbean (had to be the Caribbean since there was no time to fly anywhere and we live in Florida): 1 RCCL, 2 Carnival’s and the Getaway. We didn’t really enjoy our one RCCL cruise we took many, many years ago and the thought of being on a ship with that many passengers (it was the Oasis) made me twitch. So I went on both the Carnival and Norwegian boards and asked what college kids could do. When I found out that NCL lets parents sign a beer/wine waiver for 18-20 year old's I was sold. (They may be underage but they’re in college and I’m not naïve!) Read more