OK but the Ship had to Cancel Some Port Stops

Item: Norwegian Breakaway
Rating: 3.3
Author: earlydawn

Norwegian Breakaway Cruise Review to Europe - Northern Europe

earlydawn

Contributor Level: Second Mate

207 Days Till Next Cruise

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Reviews: 5

Helpful Votes: 76

Overall rating:

3.3 out of 5

9 Night Scandinavia & Russia (Copenhagen Roundtrip)

Sail date: September 23, 2018

Ship: Norwegian Breakaway

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

Windy sea conditions eliminated three scheduled port stops - bummer! Also, because of the cool weather, the pools on the top deck were hardly used. This resulted in the majority of the passengers forced on to the remaining venues and crowded conditions everywhere.

Embarkation

3 out of 5

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Moderno on the Waterfront

4 out of 5

This location provided about the only nice quiet place I could find to read, early in the morning. It has nice, well lit tables and usually I could get the staff to shut off the overhead music so I could concentrate.

Onboard Activities

2 out of 5

Entertainment

The Atrium

1 out of 5

For a ship this size, this location is a joke. It has poor seating and is way too noisy. The big screen is good but again, the location is just WAY too crowded. Trivia games should have been held in another location.

Children's Programs

Service and Staff

4 out of 5

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

Ship tip

Sailing the Baltic this time of year apparently comes with some risk. Because of a storm front passing, we remained an extra night at Copenhagen. This resulted in us having to drop the Warnemunde port call. Rough seas caused the ship to remain an extra day at Tallinn so that pushed back the St Petersburg visit by a day. We remained at St Petersburg for 2 days but the delays resulted in the dropping the visits to Helsinki and Stockholm.

Thumbs up

Ports of call

Copenhagen, Denmark

3 out of 5

We booked a pre-trip hotel stay with NCL at the Tivoli Hotel. The transfer to the port from the hotel went well. Overall, the cost was pretty high considering what we got. In the future, I'll book my own hotel and just use a taxi. Taxi fare was about $45 from CPH to Tivoli Hotel.

Thumbs Up 1

Warnemunde (Berlin), Germany Did not visit port

Thumbs Up 0

Tallinn, Estonia

4 out of 5

We did the NCL walking tour and was probably $$$ well spent. We are walkers but were thankful for the bus ride to the top of the town. Lovely, quaint town and I'd suggest walking back to the town square and visiting the shops there.

Thumbs Up 2

St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

4 out of 5

We did an excursion with Shorex. We saw the Peterhof Palace (beautiful fountains), the Hermitage, and the Church of Spilled Blood. These 3 stops certainly had some beautiful aspects. However, we have never been to Russia before and were saddened to see the stark conditions of the Soviet era apartment buildings. Since we are "farm people" and used to wide open spaces, we couldn't imagine living in such concentrated quarters. Our excursion guide (Anastasia) was very knowledgeable but unfortunately we had about 4 persons on the tour (out of 11 total) that kept wandering off and taking 1000's of pictures. Their lack of common courtesy resulted in the rest of the group having to wait for them constantly. Not sure how one could have avoided this.

Thumbs Up 2

Helsinki, Finland Did not visit port

Thumbs Up 0

Nynashamn (Stockholm), Sweden Did not visit port

Thumbs Up 0

Disembarkation

5 out of 5

We used the NCL shuttle service to the airport. It was probably the best value @ $20 each (and cheaper than a taxi fare). Even with a 12:30 flight, we had plenty of time to spare at the airport.

1 Comment

Other reviews of this sailing

Horrific time. Worst travel experience ever!!

Total Frustration!

Disappointing cruise on NCL Breakaway