LizG12

Late 2012 I took a cruise on RCCL Independence of the Seas, and I got curious about the stats on the 2 ships -

Breakaway - 146K tons, length 1068', passenger capacity 3969

Independence - 160k tons, length 1112', passenger capacity 3634

Breakaway's a smaller ship with almost 400 more passengers (not sure about the crew sizes) No wonder Breakaway felt more crowded and closed in.

In a way, the PCC was right, NCL was the first (IIRC) that got away from the assigned dinner and show times.

I just got the feeling that the Breakaway management is used to smaller ships and don't know how to handle a ship with as many 'bits & pieces' (restaurants, activities, etc) that the Breakaway has. 4K people and the daily activity list doesn't seem that much busier than when I've been on smaller ships, especially once you take out the spa-sell kind of things.

If you go on Breakaway looking for what's 'wrong' you'll find it. If you go on Breakaway to enjoy your trip, you'll do that too.

I've been on other ships (NCL and other) that had complementary MDR and specialty restaurants. Breakaway is the first time I felt like they were 'skimping' on the MDR to ease people toward the specialty restaurants. The funny thing (or not) is that I don't think the specialty restaurants could handle all the passengers if no one ate in the MDR anymore.

yeah, sorry I meant in the public spaces/corridors, not the cabin hallways.

The pictures in the cabin hallways came in a handy a few times when I noticed a new picture. Usually meant I was heading the wrong way! :D

I agree with what the OP said, I don't usually pay for the extra restaurants or shows (I'll pay for some spa treatments, it's not that much different than the same at home, and watching the sea go by while I'm getting a pedicure is a nice little indulgence)

OTOH, on the Breakaway, I really got the feeling that NCL was pushing the extras more than they have on other ships. And it was over the stupid little things. Decks 678 has the stores, atrium, an outside deck with chaise lounges... and NONE of the places have complementary coffee/tea/pastries. If you want a cup of tea or coffee outside on deck 8 away from the pool, you either pay extra for it, skip it, or go upstairs to deck 15 to the buffet and back downstairs carrying a cup of steaming hot liquid. Other ships I've been on offer complimentary drinks in the speciality café too.

I know it's a little thing, but that and a few other hard-to-pinpoint things just felt like they were pushing the extras a lot more on Breakaway than on other ships.

yes he is, and he's got an annoying "mmm'nnnyow" at the start of almost every speech.

What I remember as extras on the Breakaway last week -

Speciality restaurants

Speciality cafe/pastry/ice cream

Spa treatments (Latitudes members get a small discount on port days)

Cirque Show

Bar drinks - soda & alcohol

Stores, including photography and art gallery auction

Tours

Bingo, Casino

Internet minutes

Pre-paid future cruise deposit voucher thing

No idea about kid-specific charges, I wasn't traveling with kids

One thing to remember about the tours, if you buy the NCL tour the ship won't leave until all their tours are back. If you tour on your own, the ship won't wait. Any extra charge for an NCL tour can be considered a 'peace of mind' thing. And yes, I've been on ships that have waited because their tours got back late.

FWIW, I spent less than $350 (spa, tour, bracelet, future cruise deposit). No comment about what I spent in the stores OFF the ship....;)

my studio cabin was a connecting and I never heard a thing.

Thank you for the outstanding review!

Restaurant service 101: Always check in with customers after the food arrives

So sad this seems not to be the standard on NCL lately

 

On Epic, I did not like the noise in the atrium either. We ate at Le Bistro and all we could hear was the spa manager talking about treatments with her microphone. If you watch a movie in the atrium, all you could hear was the air hockey and noise from O'Sheehans.

I wondered where the air hockey was. I could hear it, but I didn't bother to go hunting for it! :p

If I'm remembering right -

It rained the day we left NY

First SeaDay was cool & cloudy, smooth sailing

Pt Canaveral and the private island days were nice

Bahamas was warm/hot

3rd Sea Day - Rocky, rocky, rocky - from the storm that hit the US east cost

4th Sea Day - beautifu,l sunny, smooth sailing, and cool/cold depending on the wind

Arrive NY - cold & rainy

what time did you arrive? The bus I took got to the terminal about 9.45, and by 10.15 I was checked in just waiting for them to let us board at 11.30. OTOH, I didn't have any luggage to drop off, I just had a carry-on that I brought on myself.

>Interesting ship, very tall, very long, not very wide.

very true :)

not sure I can answer all your questions, but I'll try -

There is one vegetarian among us. Well actually I am a vegetarian too but I eat fish so I never have a problem finding something that I want. My son does not eat meat or fish. On other ships (when you have a scheduled dinner time) prior to the cruise, you notify the ship and they are able to accommodate. With freestyle dining, I don't think that will work. Any thoughts?

on the MDR menu, I think there was a vegetarian choice every meal. I remember a Veg. lasagna one night (very good by the way) and the 'classics menu' (5 or 6 items that don't change every night) had a entree salad that might work as a last-resort if there's nothing else vegetarian. I'm not sure about any of the speciality restaurants. I'd try calling NCL and see what they say.

Are the shows free or are they charging for that too. I have cruised NCL 3 times and did feel that they nickel & dimed you.

I think Cirque was the only show with a charge. You have to reserve a seat for the other shows if there's a date/time you want, but it sounded like they had seats available for last-minute walk-ins. OTOH, if you're looking for a group of 9 seats together, reserve the show and get there as soon as the doors open (about 30min before)

One of the things I liked on Norwegian was the walking deck that went entirely around the ship. The walking base was very nice to walk on (not slippery) sort of like a cork material. Can you walk entirely around the Breakaway. I saw that they have restaurants on that deck?

You can walk around the outside of deck 8, although at the front, you have to go inside to get from the left to right of the ship. There's a jogging track with the cork surface on deck 15 (passes in front of the Uptown Grille) but it's not very wide. IIRC, deck 16 goes around the ship too.

Thanks for responding. I'm surprised about the noise since you were under another cabin. I'll just have to hope whatever it was is fixed since I've never read about this before and hope that after they took care of the noise they fixed the coffee machine, too. That's a big draw of being in a studio and I'll be really annoyed if it's not working.

They said the noise was something with the heating. It wasn't noise from the deck above the studio. I'm sure there's wiring, ductwork, etc in the space between decks.

The coffee machine was working for the first 2 or 3 days before it got the 'out of order' sign. I did see maintenance guys working on it a few times, but the sign didn't come down. They did leave carafes of coffee, decaf, and hot water, and the snacks were stocked. The snacks were refilled 3 times a day (maybe 4?) and the carafes were re-stocked too, not sure how often. But it wasn't quite the same as being able to make a cappucino or cafe latte whenever you wanted :)

I was in 10509, I'm guessing most/all the cabins on that side of the studio backed against the prep area. (I'm not sure if the cabins on the opposite side - starting with 10541 - back up against another prep area too. The deck plan doesn't look like there's a prep area there, but they don't show the one next to 10509 either.) I didn't go up to the 11th deck, I don't know if the prep areas & cabins are set up the same way.

The ceiling noise wasn't horrendous - the volume went up & down anyway. During the day, turning on the TV at a normal volume was easily enough to block it out. At night, when there's no other distractions, it could be noticeable. At first I thought it was my tinnitus kicking up, but then I realized it was the wrong 'frequency' and coming from the wrong direction. If it didn't sound so much like a 'steady alarm whine', I wouldn't have bothered to mention it to guest services at all.

FWIW, here's my review of the NewYear'sEve Breakaway cruise.

Small-ish disclaimers - I chose Breakaway simply because I didn't want to fly to the cruise and I've been on the RCL ship sailing out of NJ at the same time. The other reason is that my dh passed away 3 years ago around New Years, and I did not want to be at home. In other words, I didn't have any strong reason or desire to MUST BE!! on Breakaway or even to be on a cruise, I just wanted to be not at home for NYE. (I've sailed before, NCL at least 3 or 4 times, and also RCL, Princess, Carnival, Celebrity, maybe one other one, I'm not sure, dh kept track of those kind of things.)

Cabin

I was in one of the studios. Definitely small, but well organized. More storage space than you think at first. Everything's white though. The walls, the bedspread, the towels, everything. No pictures on the walls (except for the blue-ish 'porthole' but I kept that closed because it was a bit of a pain to crawl over the bed to open/close it). Nothing. Just white. It helped to make the room feel bigger I guess, but very bland. The blue lights from the room thermostat, and the reading lights above the headboard, lit up the room more than I'd liked to sleep in. I was able to block the reading lights by standing the magazines straight up in the magazine rack and that helped a bit.

The cabin steward did a good job cleaning the room, but for some reason wouldn't take the extra glasses or coffee cups if I brought one back to the room. I just dropped them off in the studio lounge in the morning. No biggie, just kind of weird.

There was a loud-ish whine coming from the ceiling, that I did report to guest services. Not so much because it was annoying (it was, but really not enough to complain about) but because it almost sounded like an alarm was going off someplace nearby. They said they checked it out and the electrician said it was something with the heating, but they'd have to cut the power to the nearby cabins to fix it and that's not something they can do during a cruise. (I assume if it was a MUST FIX NOW!!!! thing, they would have cut the power and fixed whatever it was). Ok, I was fine with that. They left me a bottle of wine and chocolate covered strawberries in the cabin. I ate the strawberries and brought home the wine.

And apparently, the back wall of the cabin isn't against the hallway. It's the cabin steward's prep area and whatever equipment they have in there can be noisy. Not constant, but once in a while.

Staff/crew

I didn't really have any in-depth interactions with any of the crew, but the ones I did seemed friendly & helpful. Most everyone I passed in the hallways at least smiled, and most said 'hello' or 'happy new year.'

Food/service

I ate in the MDRs, O'sheehan's, or the buffet for all meals. The food was ok. The MDR menus seemed boring, nothing extravagant. I didn't have a problem with the servers, although none of them were great. It's not that I expect specialty-restaurant service in the MDR, but I expect to get at least the same kind of service I'd get in a decent restaurant at home. They'd take the order, bring the food, and disappear until I was done. No checking if everything's ok or anything. I don't know if it's because I was alone so I ate faster than they expected compared to larger tables (I didn't pay attention to the other tables, so I don't know if they 'checked in' with larger parties or not).

The Manhattan décor seemed 'generic elegant' - dark walls, large faux-marble ceiling lights, large wall hangings - but nothing that

stood out. Taste & Savor were interchangeable too - one had blue-ish egg-shaped 'pottery' and the other had yellow ones. The one with the yellow (I think Taste) had slightly better service I thought.

The buffet surprised me by how much fried food was on there. Not something I remember on the Dawn. Decent variety, but nothing earth-shattering.

O'Sheehans was a good 'standard' American-Irish pub. But if there was anything going on in the Atrium, it was LOUD. Service and food were good.

It's funny, the Captain came on the speakers every morning with a "good morning, here's the location, the weather forecast, have a nice day" kind of greeting. Everyone stopped & listened to the Captain's entire speech. EXCEPT at O'Sheehan, people stopped and once they realized it was the Captain's daily greeting, started talking and continuing their conversations. Odd that only happened at O'Sheehan's, no idea why.

Nickel&Dime'ing

Ok, now back when I started cruising, the only edibles that weren't included was alcohol & soda. I've even been on NCL before they went free-style. I've been on plenty of cruises since the cruise lines (not just NCL) decided that they can make money on charging for specialty restaurants, bakeries, coffee-shops, etc. At the same time, I've never had the feeling that NCL was 'cheating' to make people buy the extras. But on the Breakaway, I finally got that "we're going to make you buy extras" feeling people have posted about here.

The included restaurants were ok, but bland. You want exciting & elegant? La Cucina! Teppanyaki! Churascaria!! (that's probably not spelled right) Ice Bar!

You want coffee? Free up on deck 15. Oh, you're on deck 6 in the Atrium? Oops, well, you can go all the way up to deck 15, or buy a cup in the Atrium Café. I suppose you could've gone to one of the MDR's or O'Sheehans and asked for coffee, but I'm not sure you could get it 'to go' and I didn't ask. Yeah, there's also coffee in the Studio lounge (deck 10), but um, well, the coffee machine is out of order, and the coffee carafes aren't refilled that often.

It really did have more of a "yeah, it's free because you pre-paid for it in the cruise fare, but we're going to make you work for it" feel than the Dawn or other cruise lines I've been on.

Activities

I didn't participate in a lot of these. Many were spa-sell's (foot analysis anyone?) or sports-related (NFL games in the Atrium big-screen). I've been on cruises enough that I tend to bring my own entertainment since I'm not a big fan of 'let's look silly playing games' activity - although the Battle of The Sexes Revenge was funny to watch. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the library, and read 3 of their books instead of the one I brought.

Overall Ship Feeling

I just had the impression, nothing specific I can pin it to, that the ship's too big and they're not sure how to handle it. And it always felt crowded - I don't mean the pool had all the chairs filled - something like walking the buffet - even when there weren't many people there, there wasn't much space between tables, or the aisle between the food and the table. The Atrium had lots of chairs - maybe 60 - 75 - but they were packed together and even empty, you had to walk carefully between the rows to not trip over anything. The chairs were high too, so even sitting in one, it felt closed in. Walking down the center of the 678 decks, the aisle felt tight with the restaurants & stores & some seats along the sides and then with people in there, and it got a very closed-in-feeling pretty quickly. Even in the MDRs, it felt like the tables were on top of each other.

The ship decor's was lacking too - except for the art gallery displays, there was almost no artwork or sculptures or anything. The staircase landings were just large mirrors. On other ships, I've walked every staircase top to bottom (elevator back up :) ) to see all the artwork and I've spent hours walking up & down the decks to see the artwork & sculptures. On the Breakaway... nothing. I was on RCL last year, and they had tours of the artwork on display (and it wasn't the art gallery for sale stuff, it was the ship's décor artwork).

Outside decks

Deck 8 had the most outside seating of decks 678. The NYE cruise sea days weren't warm enough (for me) to spend a LOT of time outside (and I burn easily, so I don't usually stay out in the sun anyway), so I don't know if the almost-empty deck 8 was weather related or people just didn't know it was available. Deck 8 Aft had good views of the fireworks (wouldn't win any awards against the Boston Pops July 4 fireworks, but not bad considering they probably are limited to the size & amount of fireworks they can shoot off the ship). Deck 16(?) forward - all the way forward - had 5 or 6 large round 'wicker' chairs with clamshell half-covers. Sitting in the chairs between the clamshells and the plastic barriers, there was NO wind up there. It was the only outside deck that had a view of the stars, maybe it's a little less lit, or it was cloudier than I thought. I went up there most nights, and I think only one night I wasn't the only one up there.

Overall

Definitely prefer the smaller ships - like the Dawn or smaller. I wasn't whoopee-do thrilled with Breakaway, but not pissed-off 'wasted a vacation' either. And yeah, it's entirely possible that having dh's anniversary in the back (and front) of my mind for most of the trip colored things for me.

I did get one of the cruise deposit voucher things, so sometime in the next 4 years I'll be on another NCL cruise. Just not one of the super-huge ships.

It was just a little troubling that there were other dishes that looked exactly like this (canned shape, garnish, and all) and didn't contain the words "tartar" or tartare in them (see: crabcakes).

I'm not big on shellfish, but all the crabcakes I remember seeing are round. Doesn't mean they came out of a can. Especially not at the beachfront 'seafood shacks' that make the cakes themselves.

They must be different nights because IIRC Rock of Ages is also in the theater. You might not need reservations though - about 10 minutes before they let everyone in if there's seats. A few times they announced they still had 100 or 200 seats for whatever show was playing.

In the theater. I don't remember which nights, but it was 2 shows each night it was on.

I was on this cruise too (haven't posted a review yet though). I had the same problem with the remote, I called the guest services desk and asked for new batteries - my remote at home behaves the same way when the batteries are low. Not even fifteen minutes later a brand-new remote was delivered to the cabin.

I have an indirect answer - I was just on the Breakaway and met someone who'd been in the studios on the Epic and the Breakaway. She said the studio cabins were the same but the Epic studio lounge was much stricter in keeping non-studio people out.

You cannot carry it over to your next cruise because there's nothing to carry over. You pay $250. You get an automatic credit of $100, reducing your cost to $150. The OBC is gone.

oh right. the $250 is charged to the room account, not a separate credit card. Got it. Thanks

Thanks! Looks like I'll (probably) be getting one on my next cruise. Just curious, hypothetically speaking... if you don't use all of the $100 OBC, does it 'carry over' to a future cruise?

I mean the ones you buy on board for a future cruise. On the surface, they sound reasonable - pre-pay $250 and get $100(I think) in OBC. Is there something that makes it not as good as it sounds? (and if this has been discussed before, sorry for the repeat, but I didn't see a recent-ish thread about it). Thanks!

Thanks for the info! I'm still very new to the Android tablet, so knowing it's not me is good :) I wasn't sure if the iconcierge was used so much that the paper dailies etc were replaced because *everyone* (or at least, a large majority) had it online - or there were iconcierge-only specials to encourage people to use it.

I did manage to download the deckplans to the android... I think I prefer the paper version I've gotten on other ships. If nothing else, the paper version is smaller and fits in my pocket. Carrying around a table just to have a deckplan handy? Not likely to happen.

Is it possible to download iconcierge to an android tablet? I can find the app in the google appstore, but it won't download

how much does iconcierge really help with? If I don't have it, will I end up losing out on things because NCL assumes everyone is using iconcierge?