The casino (deck 7) with smoking allowed is open to the main public areas of decks 6 and 8. Cigarette smoke was a major problem for my wife (only distasteful for me) and she could not go anywhere on decks 7 and 8 between the forward and aft elevators. Deck 6 was not quite as bad as the odor from deck 7 mainly spread up and not down. I was able to explore on my own at varying times and the odor of cigarette smoke was always present morning, midday and evening. Another issue I encountered in these areas was crowds. On sea days especially, there were so many people that it was difficult to walk through the atrium area and finding a seat was next to impossible. My recent prior experiences with cruising was on the Princess crown class ships which had lots of walkable inside public areas with lots of quiet smoke free places to sit (not so on Breakaway). The breakaway was also a very loud ship with piped loud music on pool decks at times. Even the public announcements were earsplitting in volume in hallways.

With the negative parts said, I do have to say we very much enjoyed "Burn the floor" in the theater and saw it twice. The room was awesome as was the service, but this was a low end Haven class room. We pretty much ate almost all meals in the Haven and it did not disappoint in any way.

I realize that the amount of cigarette smoke encountered can vary depending on how may smokers (and how often they smoke) are on the sailing. Maybe we had more than average. Nevertheless, I will probably not repeat a sail on this ship class for this reason. I can always hope for future smoke free sailings. Read more