APDMOM

Dinner and sailaway: Unfortunately, sail away was delayed, so we were at dinner when we left port. We enjoyed dinner in Savor this first night. (Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures. I did not always remember to retake pictures in the MDR with the menu not hidden behind glass):

TIP: If your suitcases are not at the room when you arrive, walk down the hallway on your deck. They line up all the suitcases in one area before delivery, and you can pick yours up to roll to your room. This is what we did, so we were unpacked and settled within 30 minutes after rooms were ready. Bathroom of 9136: I love that NCL has liquid soap by the sink. So much better than the messy bar soap

Storage and such: Fridge has water - not free: Two US and Two Euro plugs: TIP: There are buttons inside the room to have the room made up, or to request not to be disturbed. Below this is a slot to place a card to activate power and lights in the room. You can use any card - we even just put a business card into the slot, and it worked. Remember to remove the card when you leave so that the room steward can know when the room is empty. The card also activates a small light above the door outside the room to indicate when you are 'home' (aka the card is in the slot).

Thank you! Wanted to make sure I would not have to redo everything. 🙂

Request: Please report back if all pictures are posting and loading for you... I am having internet issues due T-Mobile updates in our area. From my views of loading pages pictures seem to not be posting... 😬

Inside Views: Upon arrival and after the 3rd bed was prepared on a different day. We messed it up a bit - the room steward did a much better job! 🙂 TIP: The hat is hanging on a magnetic hook that I had packed to create extra space. Below the hat is our magnetic thermometer that always travels with us to monitor the temperature in the room - DH is OCD that way 😉

Rooms Ready - around 2:20 PM Our balcony: 9136 TIP: Look at the deckplans when you book your balcony. Some balconies are angled, therefore a bit larger than others. The Verdict on this balcony: It was a great balcony overall, but you can hear the music from the shows late at night. I cannot imagine how loud it is on deck 8 if we can hear it all the way on deck 9. There were only late shows 2 nights of our cruise, and everything usually got quiet around 11:30. It is a long walk from the elevators, but we enjoy this for the extra calories we can shed... my excuse to eat more desserts 😁 We were a bit disappointed that we did not have a lounger on the balcony, but we love the extra space... I immediately made a plan to ask for a lounger from our room steward. I would gladly take 'no' for an answer, but would always wonder if I do not ask...more about that to come. The double size on the right side, due to angle: The view aft: The view forward: The View below: The View Above: People abovecan see you when you are on the right side edge of the balcony, but not when you are on the left. It allows for adequate privacy.

Views of Miami while in port:

Welcome Aboard in the buffet, where we grabbed dessert:

TIP: I will rate food as follows - of course based upon the opinion of our family members... "Excellent" means I could eat it every day "Very good" means I will definitely eat it again "Good" means it was good enough for one time, and I may order it again if there is nothing more appealing "Okay" means I liked it okay, but will not order it again "No go" means it was not worth the calories and I most likely did not even finish the meal Boarding Day Lunch: O'Sheehan's DS has been waiting for months to have a Rueben sandwich again, so we went to O'Sheehan's for our lunch: Pretzel bites with cheese fondue: Excellent! Blue Cheese Burger: Very Good! Rueben Sandwich: Very Good! Fries were Excellent - the way we like them.

I believe it is for everyone - there was no checking of levels.

A View of the ship from the terminal: A View of the terminal from the ship: A first view on the beautiful ship: First Things on Boarding Day TIPS: 1. If you want to drop your carry-on luggage off at the Casino, they will keep it safely, with a tag, until the rooms are ready. 2. Go directly to your muster station first to get your seapass card scanned. 3. Open your app and make dining and show reservations. Poor planning on my part: This Over-planner, type AA cruiser really dropped the ball on research and planning for this ship. I forgot to read my own tips from Escape, so we forgot to make our dining reservations immediately. We could not get what we needed in the app, so we showed up at the dining reservations venue in Headliners to see if we could remedy that. This was at 3:45 PM... no surprise, all reservations for Taste and Savor were full, so we just had to show up for dinner. We did snag 2 reservations on the app - one for the first night for the 3 of us, and one for another night for only 2 of us... More about that later.

Port Arrival and Boarding Timeline: 9:42 - First glimpse of the ship: 10:20 - Parked in Garage (GPS got us lost a bit, then we had lots of traffic getting into the parking garage). 10:40 - Boarding Group 9 in hand, all checked in, ready to go! TIP: While waiting to board, we needed to use the restroom. There are 2 single restrooms right by the area where you enter the waiting area. There were two long lines waiting. I noticed a sign on one of the doors indicating additional restrooms on the eastern side of the terminal. So if you walk east (to the right of where you enter), there are 2 large restrooms. They were very clean, spacious, and practically empty! As a bonus, you get to see this display of Norwegian Ships and history. 11:20 - Finally Boarding - wrinkles and all! (Check-in was very fast, but the wait to get onto the ship was the longest in our recent 5 cruises between November 2023 and now)

A Bit of a Panic: When I checked the app the day before and the morning of arrival, it still stated that I had 2 days until boarding. I decided to log into my account on Safari to see what the deal was, just to find my profile telling me I had 'no cruises booked'. 😱 I decided not to enter my reservation number, because I became paranoid that ANY action on my part might make my cruise disappear.🫣 On the way to the port, I grabbed DS's phone, with no cruise showing up on his either. Then I had DH pull out his phone, and relief!!!

My View: Day 1 - Miami

I finally got some time to sit down and start my Breakaway Review... If you are interested in following along, it can be found here:

I am finally getting around to completing my trip report of our cruise on Norwegian Breakaway! Returning to work this week has been a whirlwind, so I will try my best to post and complete this review within 1 week. I post Tips in Red so that skim-readers will be able to just grab what they need to plan their cruise vacation. A bit about us: We are a couple in our 50's with a young adult son who cruises with us. This Breakaway cruise was number 46 for us. We are not overly loyal to any cruise line, but NCL is our favorite to date, with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity being numbers 2 and 3 prior to this NCL cruise... DS would say RCL remains his number 1. 😄 When we cruise, we look at our favorite cruise lines, then price, then ship, then itinerary to make decisions about booking. Most of our cruises are in the Caribbean, since we live in Florida. This cruise was the second week of a 'side-by-side'. We tried Princess for the first time, with Enchanted Princess being our first experience on that cruise line. My review was live from that ship and can be found here:

At the main dining room there is a sign that says shorts are not allowed at dinner. On the first night, DH and DS were wearing shorts and we told the hostess we didn’t mind going to the buffet, as we had not known. She stated that shorts were allowed the first and last night, but that they also don’t really enforce the rule other nights. I am a rule follower 😄 If there is a sign, I am going to adhere to the rule. I don’t care what other people wear - it is just engrained in me to do what is asked…LOL! We only saw 2 people wearing shorts at the main dining room the rest of the week, with no problems entering. So, most people we saw followed the ‘no shorts’ rule on our cruise. Evenings were much more dressy the first half of the cruise, but overall more dressy than we are used to on NCL, RCL, and even Celebrity (at least for Caribbean sailings). It is not a deal breaker for me - DH just does not like wearing long pants on a cruise.

Hi @ebeluga My comparison was to help Princess cruisers understand why we prefer other lines over Princess. MSC used to be great prior to being discovered by the masses in the US. Cruises were super cheap - as low as $105 per person per day in a balcony. Yet, it was not crowded. We enjoyed the European flair in 2019, including healthy Mediterranean dishes. MSC made big changes for the US-based cruises during the past 3 years to draw more business, which changed the atmosphere quite a bit. The longer cruises are still okay, but nothing like what we experienced in 2019. MSC did a very poor job with crowd control and did not address inappropriate passenger behavior on our last 4-day cruise, so that has scarred us a bit for future MSC consideration. Still, we looked into yacht club prices recently, as that may be a great option - it is just too expensive at this point. We prefer to cruise more frequently, rather than paying a high price for one cruise experience. 🙂

FUN!!! Congratulations!

😂 I don’t mind answering a survey question. Yes, I would recommend it to some of my friends. One of my friends loves to dress up, and I know she will enjoy Princess. When it comes to cruise pricing, Princess is also much more affordable than NCL or Royal. I have already started looking at Alaska possibilities on Princess, but we already have 3 Celebrity cruises and one NCL cruise booked, so I am just playing around with options.

Summary of why Princess did not take the number 1 spot: I want to reiterate what I said last week in my summary - we have only been on one Princess ship and I cannot really judge the whole cruise line based upon just the one experience, so the placement may change over time. 🙂 Why we love NCL: Good loyalty program and benefits. Great food - we had some of the BEST food at sea last week while on Breakaway. I am actually glad the cruise was just after Princess, because we could make a close comparison without the interference of time, which can make one forgetful. The upper level management stands out as caring about both passengers and crew. We had SO many interactions with NCL officers last week, and the assistant general manager even made sure I got a lounger on the balcony. We like the more relaxed vibe on NCL - there is no ‘dress up’ rule. Shorts are always fine in all the free restaurants. Only 2 paid venues require a bit more of a dress up. (I realize that I care more than the average person to ‘follow rules and dress code guidelines’. I know I can ‘be okay’ with pushing the guidelines a bit - I am just not comfortable with doing that.) NCL entertainment is generally excellent, but we are starting to see the cutbacks with the Broadway shows. We still enjoyed “Burn the Floor” on Breakaway, but we will see what happens next year - we booked NCL Aqua. What we love about Celebrity: Excellent loyalty program, which status matched us with our RCL program to ‘Elite’. Includes nightly cocktail hour with free drinks. Includes free special breakfast at a restaurant, exclusive for Captain’s Club Elite and up. Fewer children, since it is not quite as heavily focused on kids’ programs. Lots of public space on the ships - we can usually find a ‘quiet’ spot. Excellent food in the MDR and buffet Adult only Solarium is included in cruise fare - you don’t have to ‘buy a pass’ to have access. Many included food venues, including the Spa Cafe with ‘healthier’ options Crew and officers parade on the last day - a very special farewell. What we love about Royal Caribbean Excellent loyalty program, including 4 vouchers for free drinks per day (up to $14 value per voucher) - no need for a drinks package. Lots of free wifi. One free Photo per cruise. Crystal ship after certain milestones (we got one of Symphony of the Seas). Ships always offer many great activities, including slides, minigolf (something I REALLY missed on Princess), zipline, carousel, ice skating. Although we don’t cruise for most of these attractions anymore, we did miss the variety of options on Princess. I had not realized I would miss the action 😄 Lots of public space, especially on Oasis Class ships. Diamond/Crown Lounge on most ships - an additional public space for Crown and Anchor society (Diamond and up). Excellent shows - we especially love the ice skating shows. Many free venues for meals and snacks (promenade cafe, park cafe, El Loco Fresh, Johnny Rockets breakfast, etc) Please share why you love Princess over other cruise lines. I love that there are different kinds of cruise experiences for all to enjoy. Like I said before, if the price is right, we will absolutely cruise Princess again. It was NOT a bad experience at all - just not our favorite cruise of all time.

I am sorry I don’t know the answer to this. I did not even realize there might be a lounge, as we just assumed it is all Casino - which we avoid due to the smoke. 🙂

I will be working on an abbreviated ‘My View” review for the Breakaway. I actually had 300 minutes internet, but decided to just relax and not do a ‘live’ review, as I did one on Escape, which is similar. We wound down so much that I ended up donating about 200 of our minutes to NCL 😄

Thanks for the input, @KKB! Re Mahogany Bay - I did not notice a drop - it is a little bit steep, but not too bad. LOL! We must have missed that security in Costa Maya, as we have been there many times too. We stay on the ship very often in that port, so it is clear why we missed it before. 😄