This was the 3-night US inaugural cruise on the Escape out of Miami. Glitches and growing pains were expected. Overall, it was a great cruise. We had a lot of fun, and saw a lot of old friends (crew) on this ship. We had some issues that we never had before on NCL ... crazy wait times, lack of service both in the MDR and O'Sheehans ... and just overall the staff did not seem happy. I'm not used to that, and I hope it was just because it is a new ship, and people are not used to working together yet.

We arrived at the port at 10:45am. We parked and walked right over to the terminal, where a baggage handler immediately took our bag from us. We went into Terminal C - no lines for security! We walked in, and went to the main room where we filled out our health questionnaire. There was a line for check in at that point, but since we were priority, we bypassed that line and became first in line. Check in was painless. We sat and waited a short time to board.

We were in cabin 11134. This is a category BC balcony, port side. The balcony is much larger than those tiny postage-stamp ones on the Getaway and Breakaway. Kudos to NCL for listening to their customers! The cabin itself appeared to be narrower than those on the 'away ships, but perhaps that was just my perception. We enjoyed our cabin, and had no issues at all. Read more