What a great week!

We've cruised many ships over the years. I've been on about 10 cruises and my wife on about 20 cruises. We enjoy RCL but usually take Princess or Celebrity recently. For our anniversary, I wanted to take a cruise that was easy to get in and out of and decided on the Breakaway out of Manhattan. Honestly, I felt that we would be "settling" for Norwegian because the other lines didn't have a date that was convenient to our work schedules. I was wrong!! The breakaway was much nicer than we expected and we had a wonderful time for the whole week.

The embarkation process was seamless and we were on the boat, in about 30-45 minutes after parking our car at a local parking garage that drove us to the boat. The room was a mini suite with a balcony with the largest bathroom that I've ever seen on a boat. While small, the balcony was large enough for the two of us. We had a free upgrade and we used it for the Dining Plan. While the main dining rooms were adequate, I would definitely recommend the upgrade for anyone that enjoys their food. We made reservations in advance and never had to wait for any dinners. The food was excellent (French, Italian, Steakhouse and Brazilian steakhouse) and the service was very attentive. The shows were all well done and high quality. Bermuda was beautiful with sparkling water and powder soft sand. All in all, a wonderful way to spend a week with my wife. The only problems that we found were the same complaints that other people have mentioned...the pool was small with limited space to sit around it. In addition, we had a lot of people that opted for the drinking package on our trip, rather than the dining package and there were some drunk obnoxious people beginning early in the day. Unfortunately, this wasn't NCL's fault, although, giving them unlimited drinks didn't help! Several hints that I gathered from other reviews were helpful:

1. Make your reservations in advance. We reserved all of our meals and shows ahead of time, but did change a few things as the cruise went along.

2. Bring a case of water if you're driving in. The bottles of water are expensive and NCL delivered our case to our room without any difficulty.

3. Bring travel mugs. I like my coffee in the morning and the little cups they provide just aren't large enough.

In summary? I would definitely take the breakaway again...in a heartbeat.