Norwegian Getaway Review
Not Quite What We Expected- First Time Might Be The Last
Rating by category
Additional details
My family booked this December 11-18 cruise in January of 2016, shivering in the grips of a Midwestern winter. We looked forward to the trip all year, doing some light research on the ports of call and buying fun cruise wear. Although we had never been on a cruise, we had always wanted to and talked about it, even watching several episodes of "Dream Cruises" on AWE to prepare us for the ideal vacation. I paid close attention throughout the year to the Harvest Caye saga including delays, praying that it would be open in time for our visit.
Embarkation-
We flew into Miami (MIA) on December 10 and stayed at the Homewood Suites Blue Lagoon, close to both the airport and Port of Miami, as well as shopping and restaurants. We had an excellent Cuban dinner at Casa Juan nearby. Sunday morning, we booked a shuttle ($12 pp) to take us to port for an 11:00-11:30 am embarkation window. Upon arriving, it was a complete, disorganized mess. Our wait outside of the building was 20 minutes, then another 40 minutes inside in the long lines waiting to check-in. We had already snaked along one cordoned pass when I noticed that everyone around us was filling out the public health questionnaire, which NO ONE informed us of needing and was not pointed out well via signage to alert oncoming passengers that it was needed! My husband snuck out of line and back in with a stack and handed out the extras to the other hapless line-waiters that had also missed this important info. The actual check-in process at the desk was simple and quick. Then we went upstairs to the waiting room/holding area where we strained to hear the garbled announcements of boarding groups against the din of people chatting. Our boarding group number was skipped and a few of us talked amongst ourselves to figure out whether we had all missed something. After a few minutes, I overheard a person saying that they'd asked the NCL employee and our boarding group could in fact board. Once we stood up and got in line, there was an extremely snotty overhead announcement, "We are now boarding group 21, 23, and AGAIN, AS WE ALREADY CALLED, group 19." Uh, nope. It was not called. Just plain rude.
Cabin Review
Balcony Stateroom
Our travel agent talked us into a guaranteed balcony stateroom. We ended up with room 9304, which exceeded my expectations for size, layout, and general amenities. I loved having the natural light from the balcony, and we managed to see some nice sights coming in and out of ports (as well as the coast of Cuba on our initial sea day) from our room. Our room steward was courteous and thorough, but did end up chastising us a few times for neglecting to turn off the DND light when we were out and about. However, we were not even in need of the room being made up. My 7 year old liked sleeping on the convertible couch, but it was not very comfortable and not really fitting for a grown up to sleep on. The bed was average comfort and I was happy with the amount of counter, closet, and storage space for our belongings.
I did not smell smoke on my balcony, but I was able to hear some noise from other rooms/balconies as well as the 678 Ocean Place establishments below us. I LOVED being only 1-3 flights down and up from where a good amount of action was, especially to avoid the terribly long waits for elevators.