Having never sailed on a vessel this large before we were concerned about feeling overwhelmed with large crowds on the Getaway. The design of the ship with many different venues (and a lot of them behind closed doors) provides an intimate and enjoyable atmosphere wherever you go. The only exception, of course, is the Garden Cafe buffet, particularly at breakfast time with its pushy and noisy crowds but this is the same on any cruise.

We chose a balcony stateroom on Deck 8 forward. We found this to be a great location - an easy walk to the quieter breakfast venue in Moderno (on the same deck), one flight of stairs down to O'Sheehan's pub and two flights from the main dining rooms. The only time we regretted the location was at 2 in the afternoon on a sea day. I had thought to have a brief nap and was kept entertained by loud, vibrating bass coming from the theatre below as they rehearsed that night's show. Thankfully that only lasted an hour. We had put in bids for upgrades to either a mini-suite or Haven penthouse but the cruise was sold out so we did not receive an upgrade. Balcony rooms on other ships have a small coffee table in front of the sofa but these rooms are smaller. There is a hassock-type piece that can be used as a table (and it includes hidden storage) but we opted to bring in the small side table from the balcony. Otherwise, no place to put your drinks or coffee if you are relaxing on the sofa. We had read reviews from other travellers about bringing an extra card to turn on the lights in the room and brought an old NCL room card for that purpose. There were several announcements and warnings not to leave devices charging in your stateroom if you were not there and we heeded those - we found that when we did charge our phones the chargers became very hot so this is good to pay attention to.

The main embarkation location for this cruise is Copenhagen but we embarked in Warnemunde, Germany. This was very smooth and they opened the doors to let us onboard at 10 a.m. sharp. As most passengers were enjoying the port, we had a very quiet day to explore the ship. Disembarkation was OK - it was a little hectic because there were throngs of new guests who had just got on in Copenhagen the day before wanting to rush out early for their first port. Those of us with bags had to navigate through this crush to the exits. Our platinum status is supposed to give us "priority disembarkation" but that doesn't seem to apply if you are carrying off your own bags. Read more