After having such a wonderfully positive experience on the Norwegian Getaway last year my family and I were looking forward to setting sail on the Breakaway.

The room....It was the smallest balcony room I have every had on any boat on any cruise line I have been on...ever. We had an interesting time fitting all the stuff for a family of 3 into the space provided. We figure out a way to make it work but we were tripping over each other quite a bit. Housekeeping brought us most of our bags quickly but had to have him search for our soda. Just before dinner the soda arrived. We went to dinner expecting that by the time we were finished the beds would be made up. At 9pm we had to call to see when he was planning to do so...as our daughter was so overtired and needed to get to bed. There was a coffee maker in the room! Yeah I don't have to go in search of hot water for tea...but had I wanted coffee I was s.o.l. there wasn't any. We had no floor mat for bathroom for 3 days. The tissue box empty when her go on board and was 2 days till that was refilled. We requested the ice bucket be filled in the evenings for our drinks (we bought a bottle of rum from the bar and made our own drinks way more economical then any drink package they had)....yeah didn't happen as reliably as we would have liked. Went in search of ice a few times. There were many days we were lucky to get the room made up by 2pm in the afternoon.....so if we wanted our couch we cleaned up her bed ourselves after that.

Food....Being a gluten-free family ( for medical reasons) we were told to order our dinner the night before after the first evening. Fair enough. It gives the kitchen staff a head start on making gluten free food (deserts for those who order them.) The first day or two things went well. After that the bread kept coming later and later in the meals despite having been ordered again 24 hours earlier. I asked for a gluten free version of the chocolate lava cake (was absolutely delighted with it on the Getaway). Order placed no problem....til it was time to eat it...then I was told I couldn't have it cause it had flour in it....In other words someone decided it was too much trouble to make or word never got to the bakers that one was requested. Either way I was unhappy. So I went back to my old standby Carrot cake...which I had 2 of 3 previous nights. Again told no problem....till it was to be served...could not have it this time...not on the menu. For the record it wasn't on the menu the previous night either. (again the Getaway staff went out of their way to make sure I had wonderful deserts every night on the menu or not). I was assured that the last night I would have carrot cake....I got it alright....hard as a brick and stale! Read more