my2grls98

Well played Doug, well played. Best review by far! Now, you need a vacation from your vacation!

This past March, we sailed the Getaway, with my DH, myself, 16 and 13 year old daughters. We had the mid ship Minisuite and it was the perfect size for us. The bathroom was huge! We had the pull down bed from the ceiling for one kid and the couch for the other. We really had no space issues. Even with the child who over packed clothes..and shoes..oh yes and hair accessories... Along with the husband who brought every electronic device, chargers..cords. If you keep it tidy and stuff put away, space isn't an issue really. We designated one corner for dirty clothes and that all that really was left out.

P.S. do the towel folding demo, volunteer and you'll get a free bag of laundry done.:D

I purchased and plan on using these batter operated, flickering light lanterns. I got them on clearance at Target for like $2 a piece. Am tempted to add some battery operated tea lights to the counter top underneath the mirror though!

Thanks sjnyc323! Good to know that we have another breakfast option in addition to the MDR and buffet.

Another option for breakfast is also....ROOM SERVICE!! YEAH!:D

I understand the value of organic milk but a week on regular whole milk would not be the end of the world. Far easier answer.

 

 

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amen! geeze...

When we cruised the first week of April 2014, the Getaway didn't seem to have a lot of children on it. Of course, we didn't have our kids with us, so we purposely ignored/didn't hang around the kid area...when we did, it didn't really seem too bad...or maybe I was just in la-la cruise state of mind and didn't notice??? lol

Thanks for the comments! Let's get back to the story. We're about half way through it...

Enjoying your review! Thanks so much! We sailed on her in April and are going to again in March 2015! But by reading your review, I've noticed that we missed quite a bit the first time around! Can't wait to experience the things we missed the first time! Thanks for the photos and videos!:)

On our 7 day Getaway cruise in April, we deposited $300 in travelers checks to our on board account and had no problems. As a matter of fact, we only spent about 1/2 of that all week and that was on a massage package. The last 2 days we bought souvenirs for everyone..still didn't spend it all and ended up getting back some of our cash.

I just booked a last-minute cruise on the Getaway for the upcoming 8/23 sailing. We've cruised Celebrity (bitterly disappointed in our last cruise with them on the Constellation, reminded me of a 2 start hotel...but of course being on the ocean and visiting the ports was wonderful, the food was very good, I want to be accurate, it was just the ship I didn't like), we've been on Princess and Royal. Looking forward to the freestyle dining for sure. We just booked directly with NCL, an Ocean view room with a free upgrade to a guaranteed Balcony for 1327.84 plus 25 in cabin credits, so I'm happy with the price and understand that we have 24 hours to take advantage of any possible price drops.

 

Here's my question: What is your favorite thing about the Getaway?

 

Thanks!

Dining whenever I felt like it, not having to show up at a restaurant at a certain time, and wearing whatever I felt like wearing (of course I still dressed casual nice shorts and a top, nothing "trashy" I should say), I LOVED Cagney's (um, hello? White truffle fries!), loved the shows in the theater and Burn The FLoor in the Tropicana (although BEWARE if you sit right next to the stage, when the dancers are getting their groove on, their sweat can land on your plate! yes, that happened to me and luckily I was done eating)..I LOVED ST. THOMAS-Meagan's Bay! And I loved my balcony room!

(we were on the ship the first week in April, just the DH and myself. We loved it so much, we have the Getaway book for March 2015 with the 2 daughters in a mini suite! need the extra bathroom space!)

HAVE FUN and RElAx!!!

How cool! You know, we were on her in April and I didn't even remember to look out for him! ugh! I'm sure everyone (crew) was on their best behavior too!:D

We sailed the GetAway the first week in April..my husband and I. We loved it so much, we booked her again for March 2015 spring break and we're taking the 2 daughters with us. We only had a balcony, and the next time we got mini suite..glad you enjoyed yourself! We're so excited for the next trip, we're having a hard time waiting!

I am so excited. We are three days away from our cruise, yippee! We have been booked 4 of us in and inside on deck 5. This morning I talked to my daughter and she asked for a copy of the deck plans so she could find exit routes. I told her to go to the rail and jump but I know she didn't appreciate my answer. So knowing she would be more comfortable in a balcony then a inside on a low deck I called ncl and asked if I could still get a balcony, so I did it for $800 and $100 in onboard credit. That is fine I'm just happy I got a balcony. My kids are going to be so surprised and happy. Just had to tell someone!

But you will never book an inside room again now! ahahaha! We are balcony snobs now and will never book anything else! Enjoy the cruise! The balcony really isn't as small as people lead you to believe! ( at least on the Getaway that is) Enjoy!!! It'll be well worth the $..think of it as an extension of your room...

We cruised on her in April and are again in March 2015! Definitely book the Illusionarium (if you're going to do it), Legally Blonde and Burn The Floor before cruising. We did not see Burn The Floor, we only saw their mini performance in The Tropicana-and that was actually enough of a performance for us. We did book CAgney's before sailing. I feel the 3 I suggested needs to be done online, the rest can probably be done when you get on the ship.

I've decided in view of the traffic jams I've heard about, hitting Marigot and Orient Beach in an 8 hour stop is just too much. We will do Orient Beach and if we get back a little early, we can always hit Front Street in Philipsburg. ;)

We docked in St. Philipsburg..taxi/van to Orient for a few hours, Back over to MAHo for a few more hours, then shopped near the ship. Driving to and from Orient took awhile, but those taxi/van drivers know what they're doing. Marigot and Orient are totally doable in one day! Our day there started docking at 8am, and returning by 6pm... You can do it and you'll be fine! Have fun!

This ship has a few issues the ones that I had problems with are as follows:

 

Hallways are too small. When stewards had the carts in the halls you could hardly pass by without bumping the wall or the carts. Especially when carrying a beach bag or anything else.

 

Water in bathroom sink did not get hot (we had 2 rooms and this was an issue in both). Shower water heated up quickly.

 

Getaway Theater not very large for such a large ship. Seats are not as comfortable as some others we have used.

 

Room service is SLOW. We waited 1.5 hours for a late night snack.

 

Room service dishes sit in the halls forever. People put their dishes in the halls and hours later they were still there.

 

Amenities not open long enough (addressed this earlier).

 

You can not really "free style" when it comes to shows. You have to plan in order to get seats. You can not really be spontaneous.

 

Watch the prices in the ships store for booze prices are not really any better than the prices at your local box store.

 

You can not hear announcements in your room. We had to open our doors to hear anything they were saying.

 

Staff did not follow the rules on reservations being 15 minutes prior to show time. They also did not follow the "no late arrivals" rule. It was annoying to have people arriving late.

 

Buffet setup did not make sense in many areas.... for example the hand dipped ice cream. One one side you have sprinkles and stuff, then the ice cream cooler and on the other side was the chocolate and butterscotch sauce. So people walk up the to middle order and then have to go to both sides to get all the toppings they want. It was just a knotted up mess at times.

I will say, when we cruised on her in April, we had the same issue with our room steward. Room 10284, balcony. I started out by giving him a small gift from WDW (where I work), thought it would be a nice gesture and maybe work in our favor..it didn't.

We left a cup stain on the counter, and it didn't get wiped up for 3 days, this was even after cleaning up the counter and making sure it was free of debris, charging cables..etc.

We didn't have any problems walking down the corridors though..didn't have any problem with hot water and didn't have any problem with seating in the theater, being over crowded or what not.

but your review almost matches, what I had said about our cruise! LOL!

NEEDLESS TO SAY..WE BOOKED THE GETAWAY FOR MARCH 2015!! We loved it just enough to do it again...thanks for sharing your review!

NO KIDS! Love em to death but woo hoo they have all moved out finally.

 

We are in a balcony, unless we get upgraded. NCL are you listening.

 

Thank you I will try to locate that review.

Hello! We just sailed the Getaway this past April, just the hubby and I..AAAnd we are cruising on her again with the kids March 2015! We loved it that much. I would say, now this is my opinion and you know what they say about opinions..

If you're a drinker, try to get a drink card from the casino-free drinks!

Enjoy your balcony! I am not a small person and I thought there was plenty of room on it for my husband and I.

Don't miss when Burn The Floor performs at The Tropicana

The Illusionarium--is ok..food is ok, magicians are ok. We paid for the premium table and sat right next to the stage-which wasn't good because we could see everything and had all the tricks figured out.

DO NOT MISS MEAGAN'S BAY AT ST.THOMAS!! Absolutely beautiful! We actually booked the beach and shopping excursion on this one--I am a shopper, but I could have done without it and spent more time at meagan's bay!

Hope this helps, I could go on and on..good luck!

I have cruised with Carnival for years and thought to give NCL a try this year. I have been nothing but disappointed and we are not even set to sail until December. First of all, I have been on hold with them twice for over 20 minutes each time, both of which I ended up hanging up before being helped. Second of all, my teenager loves to get a soda card but we do not drink soda. NCL tells us we either have to inconvenience his privileges and bring his soda on board with us, pay for his individual sodas all cruise or buy a soda package for ALL of us. Totally unacceptable. The boy is already bummed about no free daily sushi. The worst part is every time I do call to ask a question, the customer service is severely lacking. Not that I expect the answer I want every time, but they are not even sorry about having to deliver the bad news. I get a true feeling of 'take it or leave it' from them. Almost to the point of rudeness. I am pretty sure we are going on our first and LAST NCL cruise.

#THIRDWORLDPROBLEMS

if this is what you have to complain about..think about how much more worse it could be. Cancel your cruise and go back to Carnival. We are going on our 2nd cruise on the Getaway next March! (having just cruised it this past April) My sister has been on both Carnival and NCL and says both have their pros and cons and each one cancel each other out. Personally, we are now NCL snobs.

Get yourself a TA and go thru them. We have one thru NCL and I never have to wait for him to pick up, or if I leave a message he calls back within a few mins. I will agree, when calling NCL #1800 it is a long wait, thus why we now have a TA.

Build a bridge...and have fun! Geeze.

Ports and Excursions -

 

St. Maartens - We arranged, on our own, for a private tour of the island with Jo Junie tours. With 7 of us it wasn't too much different than if we paid individually, but we felt like we'd have a little more control of the trip if it was private. He took us, counter-clockwise around the island. A stop at an oyster bay where a guy showed us a few sea creatures. Could have done without but still not bad and we didn't stay for long. Went to Orient Beach next. Beautiful beach, very glad we went. We had some hesitation about this, being uptight Americans and having 4 teenaged boys with us, with the possibility of seeing nudity on the French beach. I'm glad common sense won out and we still did. He brought us to the "Bikini Beach" area of Orient I believe. Yes we saw maybe 2 topless middle-aged women, no one cared or made a big deal about it. We didn't walk up near the Orient beach nude beach where it might have been more prevalent though so it worked out fine. My only commentary here is, if you have hesitations for the same reason, go to the beach. Its beautiful and what little nudity you might encounter really was a non issue. We got chairs and umbrellas and the teens jumped on a water trampoline thing. All in all a great couple of hours. Next stop was the French village of Marigot. We stopped there to eat lunch. It seems all the restaurants are all connected to each other there and all seem identical. Anyway we chose one and were kind of disappointed. I ordered some kind of rib and chicken dish and the chicken leg looked like it was the size of a seagull and the ribs were tiny, I don't know what kind of animal they were ribs from... and I wasn't asking either. But there were an awful lot of iguanas on the island. And it was overpriced too. But its a pretty little town I guess and we did get pastries from Serrafinas, they were good. Next stop was Maho beach. The famous beach where the planes take off and land right on top of you. The beach was nice, the kids had a blast holding onto the fence for dear life as the jet engines tried to blow them into the water. Fun place to visit for an hour or two but not the place to go if you are looking for a peaceful tropical beach. After all that we were ready to get back to the "ship". I'd recommend Jo, he was great and had unlimited beer, water, soda and rum punch too. And he drives a much nicer van than the Bernards tours we saw. He has an 11 person Mercedes van, at least for our trip he did, which was very comfortable and always had the AC running for when we met up with him.

 

St. Thomas - On St Thomas we did an excursion through the ship, St John catamaran and champagne sail. I've done some great excursions in Alaska and Hawaii among other places and this ranks right up there with the best of them. After a 20 minute ride to the catamaran (forgive me if I call this one a boat?), you get on the boat with about 20 other people. It wasn't crowded, the crew was great, maybe a 45 minute ride over to St Johns. St Johns was awesome! Picturesque. The snorkeling was great, spent maybe an hour and a half there. You could snorkel or swim up to the beach (or they boat you up to the beach in their dingy if you prefer). Apparently this was the beach the Kenney Chesney and Rene Zelwegger got married on, if that means anything to you? Anyway the crew was great, the trip was great, and this goes down as the best thing we did all week. Highly recommend it.

 

Nassau - its Nassau. We've probably ben there 4 or 5 times, stayed at Atlantis a couple times so we had no desire to go to Atlantis or really see any more of Nassau and its straw markets. I wish NCL would change this stop to their private island instead. We just chose to walk off the boat and walk about a mile or so to Junkanoo beach. You could see it from the "ship". Not the best beach but still a beach in the Bahamas. It got us off the "ship" and a chance to stretch our legs and dip our feet in the Caribbean before going home the next day.

we will have a group of 10, can you give me any more details on Jo Junie Tours? Much appreciated and loved your review..we cruised on the Getaway in April and just booked it again for March of next year!

Thank you!

I always book early because I can get exactly what I want. Location, type of room, etc. If you'd be happy with any location, you could wait.

 

 

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Thanks so much! I must say, I am a bit of a planner, so waiting last minute may kill me! But if it's going to save us quite a bit of money, I'm willing to wait...maybe lol! Thanks for your advice!

We are planning a cruise on the Carnival Sunshine March 2015..do we book it now? Or wait and try to get last minute balcony prices? We do live in the Orlando area, and will have the vacation time off from work, so there is no problem there. Traveling will be myself, my DH, 16 yr and 13 yr old daughters.

We hate to book tooooo late and maybe get stuck with an inside cabin, but we know these last minute bookings can be really cheap!

Looking for different opinions and advice!:D

I don't even know what it is!! Where it is! Or what time!! :D

Thank you...your review is awesome!....leaving April 5.... Can't wait!!!!! Thank you!

 

 

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thanks for the review! We will be on the April 5th cruise as well..did you sign up for the meet and mingle?

:)

Here's a link to an album of Freestyle Dailies, Platinum package notices, disembarkation handout, and a host of other informational items from my Getaway sailing, 3/8/14:

 

http://s636.photobucket.com/user/johnql/library/Getaway%20Cruise%20030814/Freestyle%20Dailies%20and%20Scans?sort=9&page=1

Thanks for sharing! We sail April 5th!

So...how was it? did you take any of the Cake Boss decorating classes? How was the food? How were the ports?? How was the food? Was it as salty as some people have said? Hope you had a great time! Our cruise on the Getaway is April 5th!