Nice, but crowded (and crew likely overwhelmed)
Norwegian Escape Cruise Review to Caribbean - Eastern
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 4-6 cruises
Reviews: 2
Helpful Votes: 25
7 Night Eastern Caribbean (Port Canaveral Roundtrip)
Sail date: December 17, 2022
Ship: Norwegian Escape
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: 11846
Traveled as: Singles/Friends
Reviewed: 1 year ago
Review summary
Overall a nice enough cruise. Some good, some bad, and service not quite up to snuff but, for now, I'm going to chalk that up to it being a completely full cruise. Back to off-season cruising for me and hopefully that will show me a better side to NCL service the next time.Embarkation
The terminal at Port Canaveral was quite crowded. The initial check-in wasn't bad, however. We had priority embarkation and, at least for that, probably didn't need it, at least with our early check-in time, as the standard line was moving quite steadily so it didn't buy us much time for that part. We did have to wait in a very crowded terminal until they were ready to board the ship and the acoustics were quite bad making understanding of the boarding announcements very difficult over the din of the crowd. I would also note that they gave us a boarding group card but we found out that since we had priority boarding the group we were in meant nothing. We could board at any time we wanted so I don't know why they gave us a boarding group at all. Some things like that were just a little disorganized. Another was that they needed to take our picture at processing even though we give them a picture during the early, online, check-in. No idea what that was about but if it was a problem with the check-in pictures we had provided it would have been nice to know why and if the online instructions might need to be updated to ensure we provide an appropriate picture that way. Not a bi deal, but it still is a few extra minutes the agents have to take with almost all of the guests that you would hope they could save with the online check-ins.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
The buffet was always super crowded, but it was a full sailing for Christmas. It was definitely a mad house. The food was decent enough, though, although not particularly interesting/seasoned/flavorful, a bit on the bland side. The do have read ice cream with flavors that change out daily, though, which is quite nice. MDR was fine, but like everything the crew seemed a bit overwhelmed. Everything took longer than it probably should have and we missed several shows because of it. Service wasn't always "with a smile", mind you, but overall it was decent enough. O'Sheehan's was pretty decent as well with generally a kind of "pub food" menu, but there were specialties every day (the Cuban Pork was very good!) It's right on the main atrium and a busy part of the ship so it can be fairly noisy if you were looking to have a conversation with a partner at your meal, so that's something to be aware of. Cagney's and Teppenyaki were both quite good, but we didn't try any of the other specialty dining. We did have room service one morning for breakfast and it was fine but some of the hot meal items we ordered did arrive more lukewarm. So overall things were decent, but nothing to necessarily rave about.
Onboard Activities
The ropes course has 2 short zip-line runs which I enjoyed, but they are very short and the rest of the ropes course is interesting enough, but generally more fun doing it with my nephew than if I had just been doing it for myself. I was surprised to see that had a bocce course laid out in astroturf. Personally I'd like to see the backboards set up to swing and deaden any ball that hits there because otherwise everyone just plays the backboard which just takes something away from the game, IMHO, but that's just a personal preference. They also use a large white ball for the pallino instead of a small one but that's not really a big problem. It was really nice to see it there and someone was always playing when we went by there! The mini-golf is a fairly standard mini-golf for most cruise ships. Some interesting spots but nothing particularly fancy. The arcade has plenty of interesting games, but I always hate how they charge so much for all of them so I didn't really play any. They did have the section near O-Sheehans with bowling (2 shorter lanes using small balls, no fingerholes) and often folks would pay the $7 to play. A bit pricey but still looked like fun, although we never played it ourselves. They also had carnival-style games of skeeball and basketball hoops games and like which many often would play. I didn't go on the slides, either, even though I wanted to "race" some of my nephews or nieces on them, but we just never got our schedules lined up for that. Still, I love a good drop slide and these apparently pick up enough speed for an uphill section, but they're also pretty short runs, FWIW. I didn't otherwise do pools or hot tubs (way too crowded for me) or the spa (not really a spa kinda guy... sorry), so I couldn't really speak to those.
Entertainment
Solidly mixed bag here. The comedians (there were 2) were fairly decent. "Roddy", who was in the Brewhouse and looks like an older Rod Stewart, seems to be an accomplished pianist but his singing and interpretation of songs like "Rollin' on the River" and "Purple Rain" was just flat, and he kind of butchered those songs, in our opinion. I wouldn't recommend that one. The Argentinian dance show (Molave, I think it was?) certainly seemed to have some very talented performers but the production was rather repetitive and kind of got boring after a short while because of it. Choir of Man was good, and several members of our party LOVED it, going to see it multiple times. Cream of the crop for me was Syd Norman's Pour House, hands down. The space is intimate, almost like a dive bar, and the performers really bring their A game with lots of talent and emotion. Absolutely fantastic, especially if you like rock of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. I saw it on 4 different nights and it was a different set each time and every time it was absolutely worth going to. I highly recommend it! The other musical performers who played often all around the ship otherwise all did admirably well.
Children's Programs
I don't have any children of my own and I didn't ask any of my cousins or my sister if they used the kids clubs services. Sorry.
Service and Staff
Definitely a mixed bag here, as well. Our room steward was always friendly and helpful, but most of the crew seemed overwhelmed. I'm chalking it up to it being a very full Christmas sailing rather than a standard for the ship, however. I did notice on at least 5 separate occasions some supervisor (or maybe even just a co-worker) publicly berating/yelling at another crew member about some issue or another. Not something I'm used to seeing happen that often at all, and not something I would encourage to ever have happen publicly in front of guests like that, certainly. There were fewer smiles and hellos and such than I am used to from other cruise lines I've sailed as well (for the record there I've been on cruises with Disney, Carnival and Royal Caribbean, this was my first with NCL). Don't get me wrong, many still had smiles and were courteous, but more than I am used to just seemed to have their heads down focusing on work more than anything, so it wasn't a bad experience, just less than what I guess I've grown used to, is all.
Ship Quality
The ship itself is quite nice and very clean. There are a few design quirks in places that make just a couple of spots a little odd to find (kind of hidden around the stairs without obvious signs that you have to or even can go that way or where you have to go outside and around to get there). But overall it was a nice ship, I think.
Cabin / Stateroom
Pretty much a standard balcony stateroom. Of a size and layout I would expect, so just what I wanted and very clean. Glass shower doors and otherwise decent size (helpful for me since I'm 6'0" tall, but much bigger and you may need to hunch a bit more in the shower as the bathroom as a step up and, thus, is a tad shorter than standard floor-to-ceiling height of the room). Temperature controls worked great (always a good thing, but to be expected on a modern ship) and the balcony was comfortable and I certainly used it quite a lot to relax on, read, watch the water/world go by and the like.
Ship tip
If you like Rock and Roll at all, go see the rock shows at Syd Norman's Pour House every chance you get! No reservations so show up early if you want a seat!
Thumbs up
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Ports of call
Didn't really do much in Port Canveral, mind you, but as an embarkation port it was quite crowded (5 ships in port that day, so getting an Uber from our hotel took some time!) and the terminal for our cruise ship (I forget which number it was, maybe 10?) definitely had issues with acoustics and crowding. On debarkation there was some inexplicable hold-up for folks getting through customs, despite facial recognition and all, and it just wasn't working very well to get people moving and out of there. It's an "OK" terminal, but I prefer even the Port of New Orleans (which is a fairly dated set of buildings and a little awkward to get to, but generally folks get processed through their pretty smoothly despite all of that). Certainly nothing like Port Everglades or, from what I have seen, Port Miami or Port Galveston which all seem much more modern and efficient.
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
We did a Buggy and Horseback riding excursion with Mega Adventures which were quite enjoyable. That took most of our time so we didn't really get to spend much time otherwise checking out the local culture (but that's always an issue with Caribbean ports, isn't it? Always too short of a time in each port!)
We had a large group (43 people) and our travel agent chartered 2 private boats which took us pretty much wherever we liked, from some great snorkeling (in a spot where they had a boat that made fresh pizzas that they'd dinghy over to your boat and were pretty good!), to tour guiding some of the islands, to dropping up off for a bit a walking around St. John and finally anchored off of a beach where we pretty much had the place to ourselves for an overall really great time!
Tortola, British Virgin Islands Did not visit port
We opted to rest up and the time in port was early and super short anyway (something like 6am to 1pm, if I remember correctly) so we made it a ship day instead.
Great Stirrup Cay (Cruise Line Private Island), Bahamas Did not visit port
This ended up initially being a tender port for this ship, but the waves were too rough so they had to cancel this port. We were enjoying our time relaxing anyway so we didn't think that was too big of a loss for us, but they did provide everyone some onboard credit as reimbursement, which was nice.
Disembarkation
The line to get through customs was just ridiculous and some of the agents (presumably in the name of keeping things moving along) were all quite stern, gruff and otherwise obviously didn't want to be there bothering with us. I get it, it was Christmas Eve after all, but still, I got the impression they're always like that there. Even with facial recognition machines (that you had to stand in front of one-by-one and wait for the green light, where they would practically yell at you if you didn't move as soon as that light turned green) it was a pretty slow process. Every other port I've been to has a smoother debarkation process than this one. Yuck.