Norwegian Breakaway Review
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We sailed on the NCL Breakaway for the June 2 to June 9 cruise to Bermuda. My fiancé and I had an Aft Mini Suite stateroom. Overall, it was a GREAT week, with calm seas on the way down and slightly rough seas on the way back, abundant sunshine in port, and slight rain on the way home.
Since this is our 5th cruise, we know that no ship can be everything for everyone. Even the Breakaway, which is huge, new, has its share of quirks. Some of these we found to be disappointing, but they certainly are not enough to give an overall merit rating to the ship anything less than 5 stars. Norwegian’s “Free Style” cruising is a good fit for a relaxed, casual, unstructured and informal, non-scheduled style of vacation. However, the requirement for scheduling and preplanning your shows early in the week, or you may not get in, does take away from the Freestyle concept. We did plan and were able to see all of the shows on our list, so please remember to pre-book your choices for entertainment on your first day on the ship.
The New York piers are normally a madhouse, but Norwegian seems to have found a way to move things along quickly once you leave your luggage with one of the curbside porters.
Cabin Review
Aft-Facing Mini-Suite with Balcony
One of the hidden gems on this ship is the size of the Aft Mini suite (10916). The room itself is about 500 sq ft and the balcony can easily accommodate 4 lounge chairs, 2 standard chairs and a small table. The bathroom is tremendous with the feel of a standard hotel bathroom. This room had 6 clothing drawers, 10 storage cubbies in the closet, a mini fridge and a full size standard wardrobe closet. The desk area had another 3 drawers and a huge counter space. Since the room is designed as handicap accessible, it is limited to 2 passengers (could easily accommodate 6). The only downside to the room is the electric door … it takes forever to close and if pushed, reopens and restarts the cycle. We have noticed that many new cruisers do not realize that in most state rooms there is adequate storage for 2 or 3 large suitcases under each bed, total 6 for the room. Just gets the bags out of your way.Since the staterooms are designed to be energy efficient, you need to have a key card inserted into the key slot on the interior of the room or all of the electricity turns off. It really isn’t a big deal during the day in a balcony cabin as there is sufficient light in the room. It does become an issue at night, since the lights in the cabin will not turn on unless you insert a card and the room is quite dark otherwise. Also, since the bathroom has no window, inserting a card into this device is critical or there are no lights in the bathroom either. Leaving a card in the slot is also essential if you intend to charge any electronic devices while you are not in the cabin (any hotel key card works for this purpose).