I'd rather write good to excellent reviews, but I'm afraid this isn't one of them. We've heard from others that Norwegian Cruise Line is on par with other upscale cruise lines, but that was not our experience on this trip. We've cruised on many other lines, but this was our first experience with NCL.
We traveled with a group of 150 that was booked through a travel agent who was able to get us other amenities, so it seemed like a good deal. The Norwegian Breakaway leaves from New York, and we were told that we would be first to board since it was such a large group. Most of the people came from western New Jersey, so two buses were contracted to get them into the city, and the rest of us rented limos, taxis, etc. We were supposed to be at the terminal by 9:00am, which we were. All of us were wearing the same red shirts to identify us to the cruise line. The first glitch: We couldn't board at 9:00 because apparently no one from the Norwegian staff present knew about it. We sat until 12:00pm until we could find someone from Norwegian high enough on the food chain to board us. We didn't board until around 12:30 with the other 4,000 passengers . . . not a good start. As it turns out, Norwegian "thought" they had already boarded us. I guess they couldn't see 150 people sitting by the gate in red shirts! It was poor communication and disorganization.
On a positive note, our first stop in Port Canaveral was excellent. You can book excursions to Disney, Universal, Sea World, or The Kennedy Space Center. We chose The Kennedy Space Center, that has many new exhibits including the original Atlantis Space Shuttle.
It was clean and comfortable, but extremely small.
Very educational and well run. There are many new exhibits including the original Atlantis Space Shuttle and memorials to The Challenger and Columbia shuttles.
The excursion was cancelled AFTER we made it to the island. It was windy with very high seas, and should have been cancelled BEFORE they sent the crew and 500 passengers ashore in tender boats. Very dangerous.
Very large displays of thousands of different sea creatures. Good for all ages. We were there several years ago and were able to snorkel and swim with the 3 manta rays in the main tank. We did not see the mantas, nor was snorkeling in the tank available as an activity.
Atlantis is a huge water park with beautiful scenery and accommodations. We chose to do SNUBA which is like SCUBA, but with the tanks in a raft on the surface. We were a bit disappointed at the lack of fish and other sea creatures.