Overall, the week was great. No major disasters. As always, I'm afraid I am a victim of anticipation and I was so looking forward to this vacation. We have sailed on Royal Caribbean 3 times and Carnival once. In my mind, NCL was a higher line, certainly in competition with RCCL and better than the Carnival Inspiration we went on. This was a mistake. I have several suggestions for their consideration.

First, the kudos ~ the Getaway is an amazing ship ~ completely modern but in an aesthetically pleasing way. The Crew worked tirelessly to clean and maintain the ship; maintained good eye contact when addressing you and were politely professional. Our cabin steward, Rene, was especially good ~ just friendly enough. The officers were quite visible throughout the cruise although I did not see the Captain at all. Very technologically advanced. Loved the i concierge app. ~ very useful. Plenty of public spaces and very well lit. Tons of activities. We did the St John Island Tour and loved it! Our driver, I think his name was Kevin, was the perfect tour guide. We also enjoyed the ferry over to St John as the gentleman providing the narrative was great. We utilized Bernard's on St Maartin (not through NCL) and it was just ok. Blue Lagoon Beach excursion was excellent (the jerk chicken was amazing although small - main meal provided is a "hamburger" or "chicken burger" which I did not eat. The fries were ok and the corn on the cobb and cookies were good.) and I would absolutely do that again.

Now the "wish they'd done that differently" side ~ First and foremost, the food! My expectations were that it would be as good as RCCL and CCL. Nope. Very dissatisfied. Did I complain on board? Nope. What would they do? send out for take out? Some things they did very well, some things were just not worth chewing. Large variety but in spite of that we went the the Garden Cafe (buffet) more than once and walked out. Ironically, the Garden Cafe had the best breakfast for our tastes. If you want real eggs, you will need to specifically ask for them, otherwise you will get the magic yellow stuff. Also, coffee was pretty consistently bad. Thank heaven for Carlo's. Better than Seattle's Best ~ IMHO. Another irritant was the soda thing. We don't drink enough to warrant the $6.50 a day, but sometimes you do want it. I appreciate your paying for a can of soda but would respectfully suggest a generic soda for those served in restaurants at no additional costs, especially in the $30 a meal "upgrade" restaurants. I can tell you for a fact one of the best 3 meals I've eaten in the last 8 days was last night at Outback for $14.99. Oh, and don't expect a lobster. They had meals with lobster in them, but the days of a "lobster night" are apparently gone on the Getaway, The entertainment was just ok. we are not into the dancing shows but the illusionarium was entertaining ~ the food was largely edible ~ the service was not good there, I was given water but not even offered a drink until dessert. Other people had drinks, not sure why we didn't get them but didn't care enough to pursue it at the time. Read more