August 25th review of the SS Minnow...I mean the Breakaway

[Shoppie124]

We finally made it to Buffalo at about midnight...

[Shoppie124]

Some random thoughts...

 

A couple in our group live in the Bahama's.  The Bahama's is open for business!!!  Do not cancel your plans if you are scheduled to go.  Nassau is fine!

 

This image is why we decided to start planning for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas

 

The port opened and this is what happened

[Shoppie124]

Now for the hard truth...  The following is my personal opinion:

 

What NCL Did right:

1. Kept us fed

2. Extended our drink packages

3. Extended our internet

4. kept us in calm seas

5. kept us entertained

 

What NCL did wrong:

1. They did not communicate timely.  When the passengers find out from the internet and not the captain, it's a problem.

2.  The did not have a single plan... they kept changing their minds.  Every time they changed their minds, chaos broke out. Royal decided to extend their ships to the Sept 4th.  They never changed their mind. 

3. They put people in a cargo terminal for hours - no food or water (not my experience but a friends)

4.  If you made your own travel arrangements, they dumped you at the airport regardless of the time you were flying out!

5.  They did not have an efficient system to deal with the masses having to make travel changes.  Maybe they should do a callback system.  If your number is between X and X please return to guest services.  People spent countless hours in line and not enjoying being held captive.

6. Keycards...I totally forgot about keycards...We were all issued new keycards.  on the last day the Genpop cards stopped working.  Some people waited in line three different times to get replscements.  Finally they announced that there was a problem and the room stewards would be on hand to let you in your room.  Funny thing is my Haven card worked just fine for our room and the Haven...  No issues at all.

 

HEY NCL...The fear of the unknown is always worse than the fear of the known!!!!

[2bthere]

What a great review!
I agree with your ending with the hits and misses although I think NCL choice (?) of disembarkment ports was pretty limited whilst they waited for POM to reopen - hindsight I guess. Also they should have at least off loaded some of their water - again maybe they had limited dock time and couldn't offload any onboard provisions. This was totally unexpected for the port and for airport.

We want to sail with you! You have the right attitude.

 

[Shoppie124]

General thoughts about NCL (Non-Dorian related)

 

1. We really enjoyed the Haven.  It was worth every penny and more!!!!

 

2.  Our Butler was awful.  Basically, a pizza delivery person...  Out of our 9 days on the ship, she delivered grapes co-mingled 7 days..  She left molded fruit in our room.  She got wise with me on the phone when I called her on the first night to get Sara's bed made.  She actually said "That's not my job".  Like I told Bowen, I would have been fine with.  "That is not part of my responsibility but let me get Aiko for you."

 

3.  Our room steward was brand new - and not just to the ship... She was fabulous!!!! Her name was Aiko.  Always pleasant.

 

4.  The food was outstanding (except the Noodle bar - notice I didn't write about it... yeah, my stomach is churning thinking about it - tell me why would you put a restaurant next to the smoking section of the Casino???)

 

5.  I had read reviews about the portions being small... I found the portions were way too big!!!

 

6.  Davidette, Raymond, Alexsandra, Maiden, Bowen, Christian, Aiko, Mihaela, Pretzel, and Dr L made our trip!!!

 

7. General cleanliness was good except for the passengers who were slobs.  When you walk into Spice H20 and there are cigarette packs on the floor...jello in the elevators... candy wrappers in the hall.

 

8.  The Haven was meticulous.  They should allow kids with adult supervision on the sundeck.  It is currently 16 and over.  My 12 year old was better behaved than some of the 16+

 

I may think of more as the days go by...  It's wine:30 here in WNY!!!

 

[sabrefan15]

3 minutes ago, Shoppie124 said:

General thoughts about NCL (Non-Dorian related)

 

1. We really enjoyed the Haven.  It was worth every penny and more!!!!

 

2.  Our Butler was awful.  Basically, a pizza delivery person...  Out of our 9 days on the ship, she delivered grapes co-mingled 7 days..  She left molded fruit in our room.  She got wise with me on the phone when I called her on the first night to get Sara's bed made.  She actually said "That's not my job".  Like I told Bowen, I would have been fine with.  "That is not part of my responsibility but let me get Aiko for you."

 

3.  Our room steward was brand new - and not just to the ship... She was fabulous!!!! Her name was Aiko.  Always pleasant.

 

4.  The food was outstanding (except the Noodle bar - notice I didn't write about it... yeah, my stomach is churning thinking about it - tell me why would you put a restaurant next to the smoking section of the Casino???)

 

5.  I had read reviews about the portions being small... I found the portions were way too big!!!

 

6.  Davidette, Raymond, Alexsandra, Maiden, Bowen, Christian, Aiko, Mihaela, Pretzel, and Dr L made our trip!!!

 

7. General cleanliness was good except for the passengers who were slobs.  When you walk into Spice H20 and there are cigarette packs on the floor...jello in the elevators... candy wrappers in the hall.

 

8.  The Haven was meticulous.  They should allow kids with adult supervision on the sundeck.  It is currently 16 and over.  My 12 year old was better behaved than some of the 16+

 

I may think of more as the days go by...  It's wine:30 here in WNY!!!

 

Great review, looking forward to our trip on BA in 8 days. I am also glad we booked Haven. With terminal at POM under construction do they still have a separate area for Haven check in?

 

PS: Go Bills

[Shoppie124]

Oh yes... the most important thing of all...

 

The new friends we made along the way... I'm glad our paths crossed an we enjoyed this adventure together!!!

 

Holly, Malcolm, David, Ruby, Nick, Sarah, Lucas, Darren, Vannie, Thomas, Darren, Brian, Anson (still waiting for the flamingos!), Charlie, Ryan, Jesse, Tina...  There are so many more!!!!

 

To Sara's posse:

 

Anthony, Charlotte, Bella, Timmy and many more that these kids hung out with in our room!!!  AKA the 11th floor kids club!!!

[Shoppie124]

1 minute ago, sabrefan15 said:

Great review, looking forward to our trip on BA in 8 days. I am also glad we booked Haven. With terminal at POM under construction do they still have a separate area for Haven check in?

 

PS: Go Bills

You will get escorted through security.  We got there at 9:45 and we were in the Haven lounge (in the terminal) within 5 minutes!!!!

 

Go Bills!!!

[Two Wheels Only]

14 minutes ago, Shoppie124 said:

The Haven was meticulous.  They should allow kids with adult supervision on the sundeck.  It is currently 16 and over.  My 12 year old was better behaved than some of the 16+

 

 

My suggestion is for the Haven to take over the entire forward-facing sundeck and make the port side for all Haven guests and the starboard side for adult (18 and up) Haven guests.

[Shoppie124]

Since I figure out how to post video's...

 

The music

The port runners

Never let the bow lines touch the water!!!

 

Remember if you didn't like your time with us...Remember you were in Jamaica!

[Shoppie124]

7 minutes ago, Two Wheels Only said:

 

My suggestion is for the Haven to take over the entire forward-facing sundeck and make the port side for all Haven guests and the starboard side for adult (18 and up) Haven guests.

That is an excellent idea!!!

[Shoppie124]

43 minutes ago, 2bthere said:

What a great review!
I agree with your ending with the hits and misses although I think NCL choice (?) of disembarkment ports was pretty limited whilst they waited for POM to reopen - hindsight I guess. Also they should have at least off loaded some of their water - again maybe they had limited dock time and couldn't offload any onboard provisions. This was totally unexpected for the port and for airport.

We want to sail with you! You have the right attitude.

 

I’ll let you know our next cruise!

[Pat.D]

6 hours ago, Shoppie124 said:

Manatee time!!!

 

I think he liked getting his tummy rubbed!!!

 

I loved Chankanaab Park, my personal highlight was swimming with the Manatees.  They are such majestic creatures it's really amazing to spend time with them.

 

Pat

 

[meatball_nyc]

Great review. Great attitudes. 

Hope all the peeps in the grand Bahamas get the help they need. 

Thanks for sharing it with all of us. 

Making Margaritas out of lemons is always the best way.  

 

Edited September 8, 2019 by meatball_nyc

[Shoppie124]

27 minutes ago, meatball_nyc said:

Great review. Great attitudes. 

Hope all the peeps in the grand Bahamas get the help they need. 

Thanks for sharing it with all of us. 

Making Margaritas out of lemons is always the best way.  

 

Thank you!

 

if you can control it, worry about it...if you can’t make the best of it!

[LisaLisa87]

Your review was amazing. Thanks for sharing your experience!

[Shoppie124]

5 minutes ago, LisaLisa87 said:

Your review was amazing. Thanks for sharing your experience!

Thank you!

[Von & John]

8 hours ago, Shoppie124 said:

Ready for a scared face?????  My turn for the foot push... I'm not really one to toot my own horn but I'm really proud of myself for doing this!!!  Again a HUGE thank you to Charlie for going out there with me!  He asked me how far I wanted to go.  I chose medium which is a little closer than what Doug and Sara did.

 

Our trainer knew better than to do the Jaws theme when I went out and I thank him for that!!!

 

Fantastic - all the dolphin experience photos are great...   It’s amazing to see you conquer your fears & enjoy yourself in such a short time!

[Von & John]

8 hours ago, Shoppie124 said:

I should add, we ended up with a total of 257 dolphin photos, 14 manatee photo's and 98 Sea Lion photo's!

 

Wow - those photos will continue to refresh all the fantastic memories!

[JMFS]

Thank you for the detail!  Dec will be my first cruise and I'm going to try my best to remember your attitude so I can emulate it if things go wrong.  I'm going to try real real hard to remember Shoppie124's moto: "if you can control it, worry about it...if you can’t make the best of it!"  (My husband will thank you as he's the one I use as my sounding board, lol.)

 

BTW, high five to Sarah - I'm an adoptee, too.  😄

[Victorious8]

Great report! Loved reading it! What a crazy adventure you will surely never forget! 

[Von & John]

Fabulous Review - Loved it all, great detail & writing... 

The Good, the bad & the Margaritas 🙂  

Thanks for the great read!

Cheers  --  Von

Edited September 8, 2019 by Von & John

[Hotspring]

Fantastic review!  

Yes, it was odd reading how a wine drinker was allergic to grapes.   But agree is pitiful that the butler did not honor your needs.

Hopefully you did not leave her the $15/day/person tip to the butler that Birdtravels likes to recommend.   Our butler did an excellent job,  but we three only tipped him one third  that including the additional 2 days (we did not make any unusual special requests).   If all 14 of the cabins he was assigned were as value minded  as we where he would still be hauling in at least $1,900 for nine days of work, or close to $98,000 annually for a goosed up waiter job.

 

On Roatan, we took the Nature Preserve tour to see the sloths, monkeys, and birds without them being in cages.   What is interesting is that they stated that it has been illegal to kill or eat iguanas for the last five years.   Made sense and can be confirmed by Google.   Now one needs to question the integrity of the outfit that took you someplace to eat endangered creatures.

 

While you mentioned that the passengers were told to return to the ship by early morning Saturday to move to a new pier,

you apparently did not hear from our deck mates and eventually the captain that some folks took one of those independent excursions that would not get them back to the ship until 10:30PM Friday.   That is why we left so late.    One has to wonder if we could have made it back to Miami before it was closed if we left at the scheduled 5:30PM departure time.   After all we were only 89 nautical miles away from Miami when the Captain announced at 10PM Saturday that the Coast Guard closed the port again.  At 21 knots we likely would have been there in under 4 hours, an over an hour shy of the departure delay Friday night.  The ship did not even slow down or change course until after the announcement as observed on the navigation channel 21.

 

The 'Ask the Captain' meeting in the theater Monday was meaningful, the captain and his officers were quite forthright with what was going on.   He made it abundantly clear that it was the Coast Guard driving the decisions.  IMO the cruises line were only working around their idiocy.

 

While we did not RSVP to the Sea Day mingle, we were turned off when we saw the huge numbers that appeared to be attending.   I guess we should have gone when we saw on the other site that anyone just show up.   We only saw your family once, but perhaps that was because we existing more on West Coast time rather than East Coast.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your family and well done trip report.  You are absolutely the best!

 

[Shoppie124]

9 hours ago, JMFS said:

Thank you for the detail!  Dec will be my first cruise and I'm going to try my best to remember your attitude so I can emulate it if things go wrong.  I'm going to try real real hard to remember Shoppie124's moto: "if you can control it, worry about it...if you can’t make the best of it!"  (My husband will thank you as he's the one I use as my sounding board, lol.)

 

BTW, high five to Sarah - I'm an adoptee, too.  😄

I’m glad you enjoyed it!

 

Enjoy your first cruise and don’t forget to celebrate your adoption day!  Awesome to have two Birthdays a year!

[Shoppie124]

8 hours ago, Victorious8 said:

Great report! Loved reading it! What a crazy adventure you will surely never forget! 

Thank you!  It is definitely a trip we won’t forget!