It was an interesting story. In general we prefer carnival for the Grand appearance of the ships from the atriums, theaters, pools decks and the overall "fun ships" We ended up getting the last room on the Breakaway the night before it sailed due to the hurricane down south and our Carnival Cruise being diverted. Overall the Breakaway was a good time and my twin boys had a great time. The POSITIVES are NEW ship, clean, neat and nice quality craftsmanship of the ship. The staff overall was good and works hard BUT definitely not as attentive as the normal Carnival ships or some of the smaller NCL such as the Dawn or Gem.

Although in general you never felt as if 4000 people were on the ship because of the size of the ship the layout of the ship is terrible. The designer def missed the boat on this one. The ship is very broken up and not laid out well or logically at all. For such a big ship it does not feel open or big except when walking from one end to the other. Forget about some of the other mega ships from Carnival with size. Go back to the 90,000 ton Carnivals and the 110,000 ton carnivals while both technically smaller in the size then this Breakaway, however feel much larger due to the Grand feel of 15 story atriums, grand theaters and open tops decks with much better pool layouts and pool areas.

One of our BIGGEST complaints about the Breakaway is that the MAIN pool where the band, bar, hot tubs are is the ADULT ONLY POOL!!! So basically if you have kids you have no choice but to be at the other smaller pool by the kids splash park and the water park. The water park is for kids and adults. This is the clincher though At the back of the ship is Club H20 which is an adult club during the day with a bar, hot tubs, and cascading waterfall standing pool to cool off. NO ADULT POOL UP THERE????? WHAT????? That should be the adult only pool period. Where this becomes a problem with the main pool is the hot tubs except for one allow kids since there are none at the kids pool. But when the events go on such as relays, ice carving etc the kids want to come over and see it. They can sit along the hot tubs but if they dare sit on the pool benches the staff will yell at them and tell them to leave. I am not kidding when I say reprimand them. I have never done this but on the second to last day and pool games my twins were sitting on the bench and the guy came over and in a nasty voice told them to leave and get up. I actually went right at him and told him " back off, they are watching the games, and they are not leaving. I told my kids to stay put! " he backed off and never returned. Read more