Review: We Escape-d 7 days to the E. Caribbean

[Sotermarler]

I was also "one of the 800". A few other things:

 

 

 

- For a ship with 4200 passengers, it was surprisingly easy to get into and out of the main dining room (we did MDR's on 4 nights). I never waited more than a few minutes to get seated in the MDR.

 

 

 

- They have live music (big band type) in the largest dining room, Manhattan. The music is too loud, and needs to be toned down a bit to be enjoyable as background dining music.

 

 

 

- Elevators - there are only two banks of 8 elevators each. At times it can be very hard to get an elevator that isn't full (ie, disembarkation day). I used stairs quite often.... and felt like I was doing a stairstepper at my local gym (ie, 6 to 8 decks at a time).

 

 

 

- Air conditioning. It works too well on this ship. My "group of 800" spent a few hours at a time in the Escape theater, and almost froze on a few occasions. At time is was equally too cool in the Garden Cafe/Buffet.

 

 

 

- Yes, the smoke is bothersome in the Casino. And I found the penny slots to be incredibly tight. PS - this is my first NCL cruise, and was surprised to find that the Casino charges a "$3 per $100" service charge to charge money to your room account. I've never encountered this on Carnival or Princess.

 

 

 

Recommends:

 

- If sailing on the Escape, research and book your dining options AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Being as I was on the first 7 day cruise, all specialty dining was fully booked by day 3 of the cruise.

 

 

 

- Same "early booking"recommend goes for entertainment.

 

 

 

All in all, I was very impressed by this first exposure to NCL. I will definitely consider NCL as a candidate for future cruises. Just wish Escape had more itinerary selections to choose from.

 

 

 

Sonoran

I agree with you on all points! The elevators were a bone of contention for my DH. They were always packed and seemed to stop on every floor. If we were only going 3 or 4 floors we always walked.

 

And yes no lines in MDR's but I thought that was because we ate late most nights. Glad to hear that it was not just later. The ship just never felt crowded.

[aubreyc1988]

are the floor seats for supper club good enough to enjoy the show?

[dreamr]

are the floor seats for supper club good enough to enjoy the show?

 

I went to see the show twice last week (yes, I enjoyed it that much!). The first time, we sat very close to the stage (there was one small two-seater table in front of us) and the view of the stage was amazing, but when the performers would run around the back of the theatre, we had to turn around to watch them.

 

Because of that, the second time we went, we asked to sit a little further back (directly in front of those semi-circle booths at the back) and the view of the stage was just as good (it's not a large theatre) and we had a great view of the performers as they ran around beside us. The "teacher" actually touched my shoulder and complimented my shirt as he walked by me. haha

 

All in all, I'd say both locations were awesome. I enjoyed being further back just as much as I enjoyed being closer to the stage.

 

Hope that helps. The show is amazing and I very highly recommend it.

 

(And sorry to Sotermarler for answering. Just thought I'd throw my two cents in there, since I had two experiences to compare. :P )

Edited November 25, 2015 by dreamr

[Sotermarler]

I

(And sorry to Sotermarler for answering. Just thought I'd throw my two cents in there, since I had two experiences to compare. :P )

 

 

Don't be sorry, I didn't see the show. Thank you for answering! I wish I saw it, but we didn't want to spring for it. Glad it was good!

[harz99]

If I am remembering correctly when I looked at the seven day dailies I saw a show Listed as Tenors of Rock however that is not something that I can book online and it's not showing up. There's also a singer Braxton supper club show that is listed on the dailies but is not available to book online

 

Harriet

 

Tenors of Rock are an English band who were parachuted in when the Million Dollar Quartet had to be cancelled. I have seen them on an RCCL ship off Australia, and I know some like them, I don't. There brand of "rock" doesn't include any roll.

[Rosethorn40]

A couple of quick things (my takeaways from the Escape):

 

1. There were only 800 of us with the TA group, and the name of our conference (not agency) was Connect. We did board before everyone (except Haven guests) - but we weren't competing for your Vibe passes. We had to quickly eat lunch and make it to our general session in the theater.

 

2. The Gelato was awesome. We went there several times, I'm pretty sure we spent more money on Gelato then on booze.

 

3. The wine bar is amazing as well. They have iPads, and you can take a personality quiz and it recommends wine for you. It worked pretty well, I liked the glass that it suggested for me.

 

4. Food Republic was (I thought) the best food venue on the ship. We really like sushi and Asian food, so we may have been biased. I agree about the crab rolls being just OK. I had the bulgogi tacos, the pork belly ramen, and the butter crab roll (which is the single best thing on the menu). My wife had the Pad Thai. We also had some rolls, but I don't remember what they were.

 

5. Le Bistro's menu has changed from the last time I went. I wasn't super thrilled with it.

 

6. There were 7 different large groups on board, that combined with the Freestyle Choice promo is what made the specialty dining so busy. We could only get reservations at 9:15 for Le Bistro. We were up until 11:00PM that night.

 

7. Frank Del Rio was not on board, but Andy Stuart was. He embarked in St. Thomas and left in Nassau. Guy Harvey was there the whole time.

 

8. The Spa is the best one I've been in so far. The snow room is actually quite nice - I found myself bouncing between the sauna, steam room, and snow room fairly regularly.

 

Overall, it was a pretty good cruise - the food in the main dining room seems to have improved significantly, but the service the first two nights was very slow. I'm blaming that on it being a new ship.

 

Our conference next year is on the Carnival Vista (last year was the Regal Princess), since I've never sailed Carnival - I'm curious to see what it's like. There have been a lot of changes by Norwegian over the last several months (which confuses me at times, and makes it hard to explain to my clients), so I'm holding my judgement about the changes being good or bad until they stop making changes.

 

Glad to hear that we weren't the only ones with a bad (no other way to put it) room steward. We came back after our morning general session to drop our stuff off before we headed to lunch. The room still wasn't made up. When we went back at 1:30 (to grab our stuff before heading to our afternoon sessions) our room STILL wasn't made up. This happened twice during our cruise. Smoking in the casino was also very noticeable. They are planning on retrofitting the casino to have an enclosed smoking section - but there's not timeline on that yet. The ventilation in the cigar bar (I enjoy smoking local Miami cigars on my cruise) wasn't working either. I still like the Norwegian product, but there were definitely some "glitches" that would also make me rate this a 4 star cruise.

 

Um, just when is your conference next year? As for Carnival, you may be surprised (For the better). Of course I can't speak for the Vista (None of us can, she is still be outfitted), but I believe they give good value for the dollar spent. We will be going on the Escape next year, followed by a week on the Vista. I know there may be some major differences; a major one is that NCL has better benefits for suite guests than Carnival.

[Sotermarler]

Um, just when is your conference next year? .

 

 

I just googled it. It looks like 12/3/16 on the Vista.

[rg24601]

Thanks for the review, it helped us to decide whether or not to book the escape.

 

Very entertaining.

[Sotermarler]

Thanks for the review, it helped us to decide whether or not to book the escape.

 

 

 

Very entertaining.

 

 

Thanks, what did you decide to do?