Norwegian Escape Review

4.0 / 5.0
3,047 reviews

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Review for the Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Norwegian Escape
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tkagold
10+ Cruises • Age 40s

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Sail Date: May 2023
Cabin: Mid-ship Mini-Suite with Balcony

If you want to go on vacation to be annoyed and wait in line, then this is the ship for you! We choose this particular cruise due to itinerary (only repeat for was St. Thomas), and that it happened to work out with when we could take vacation time together. Granted, I haven't sailed NCL since the Norway (we have sailed others), but we also never, ever sail them again.

Starting with embarkation - what a mess! The folks from the last cruise were not off yet and there was absolutely no direction from anyone about where to stand, line up, etc. A whole bunch of us were initially herded into a line that was actually a line of folks trying to get out to the airport on buses. How disorganized! Took over two hours to get on the boat, and then another over 2 hours for our room to be ready. Why let people on so early to hurry up and wait? (As an example, Virgin doesn't start boarding until the afternoon, and you can walk right on and into your room.)

Once we finally got to our room (Club Balcony), it was dark and bleak. Who picked brown as the primary room color scheme? I know this ship was built in 2015, but the room felt like 1970. Room had a weird, almost car oil like smell for the entirety of the cruise. No idea what it was. Room was standard size, but run down, small balcony. We were smack dab in the middle of the ship on deck 15. Hallways are nicer than rooms. There was dried ketchup on our carpet that stayed there the whole trip. Shower had mold in corners. And there was a popcorn kernel near the mini-fridge when we arrived that stayed there the whole trip. Something that looked like melted chocolate (or worse!) on the couch. We barely saw our attendant, but it seemed from the looks of it that he had a LOT of rooms, and we felt really badly for him, but we still paid a lot of money to live in a dirty room. You could even seen the oil smears from people’s finger tips (like a dirty glass door would look) on the doors of the closets from where people have opened and shut them. We didn't even have luggage yet. So those weren't wiped down. The room always got made up at least once a day and he seemed very nice.

Cabin Review

Mid-ship Mini-Suite with Balcony

Dirty, rundown, and had the décor of a 70's wood panel filled home.

Port Reviews

St. Thomas

St. Thomas is St. Thomas. We took a discover St. Thomas tour which was fine, but our driver was terrible. Also, it was a two hour tour that one stop was for 45 minutes.

Tortola

We had never been here before, and it was so beautiful. We took NCL's Tortola by Land and Sea tour and it was great!

Great Stirrup Cay

What a disaster. Good luck if you have the misfortune of being there when another NCL ship is also there. Oh, look! More lines to wait in!

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