We had a blast !!!!!

We recently returned from our 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise onboard the Norwegian Getaway and can't wait to go back.  There was myself, my husband and 13 year old son traveling.  This was my husband's and son's first time cruising, I have cruised quite a bit as I used to work on cruise ships years ago in the Entertainment Department.  We all loved it.   We also knew a few people from another group that went as well.  Overall the trip was fantastic.  We had a balcony room on the 14th floor.  We loved the location of our room as we were only one floor down from the buffet and pool deck.  I would pick this floor and location of the ship every time.  While the room was not huge it worked fine for us.  There was lots of storage room and we all had plenty of space for all of our things.  I read complaint regarding the size of the balcony and we thought it was fine.  We enjoyed sitting out there in the mornings with our coffee, especially the morning we were at port and could check out the other ships.  We purchased the Ultimate Beverage Package and for our family it was worth it. I love the frozen drinks and we always had a few of the "Drink of the Day" drinks so if you added them up over the week it was much better to purchase the drink package rather then get a surprise bill at the end.  Our favorite bars were Waves Pool Bar - Jeffery was the best, and Spice H2O.  Our son spent a great deal of time in Entourage the Teen room.  He met many kids from all over the world that he is still in touch with today, in fact we only saw him when we went ashore or when we insisted he have dinner with us (twice).  He loved the rock wall and water slides but LOVED the ropes course.  We all tried it and had a blast.  What a unique addition to a cruise ship.  It was fun for all ages.  The food was great.  We did not purchase the Dinning Package but did eat in one of the $$ restaurants - the Italian restaurant - it was only o.k.  The bread was good but the rest of the food was not great.  I had the calamari appetizer that was fine and a pasta dish that was very bland,  my son said that the pizza at the buffet was better and my husband wasn't all that impressed with his meal either, we felt that the complimentary restaurants were better.  Three of the main restaurants share the same menu.  While some items remain all week many of the items change daily and were fantastic.  The buffet was fine, my favorite time to eat there was breakfast.  There were many items to choose from and you could eat something different every day if you wanted.  We only ate dinner at the buffet once and it was fine.  We only saw the "Burn the Floor" show and found it to be fantastic!!!  The staff have quite a few audience participation shows throughout the week that were very entertaining.  We watched one from O'Sheehan's Pub were we both had the fish and chips that were wonderful.  The show was good too.  The Glow Party was great and was fun to see our son with all the kids from Entourage up there dancing away.  The ports were great, in fact it was nice to only have 3 ports to visit and 3 sea days so that you didn't feel you had to get off the ship everyday.  We went to the airplane beach (Maho I think) and Mullet Bay in St. Maarten.  They were great, Maho is mostly rocks so we only stayed to see a few planes then walked about 10 minutes to Mullet Bay.  We took a cab back to town and did some shopping then back to the ship.  In St. Thomas we went over to Megan's Bay (nice beach but it costs $4.00 per person to enter the beach area)  that's fine if you are planning on spending a few hours there, we went for an hour or so then left as it started to get crowded and went to downtown to eat and shop.  We did not go to Atlantis or any beaches in Nassau.  We walk around and shopped, eat and explored.  The straw market was cool.  We did stop into Senor Frogs just to say we went but didn't stay.  If i have any complaint about the trip or the ship it is the layout of the pool area.  The main pool which is now the Adult Only pool is small and the pool that kids are allowed in is basically useless.  It is glassed in and there is no real area to lounge around it.  The ship needs a bigger main pool for everyone, especially because they do all of the pool games at what is now the Adult pool, and they need to put the adult pool maybe up in Spice H2O as it is mainly an adults only area most of the time.  My husband loved the casino - he even came out $1500.00 up for the week which paid for all of our shopping and then some (go honey!!)  Overall I give the Getaway 2 thumbs up.  It was a great vacation and we are already trying to figure out where to go next.  It will be hard to top the rope course for our son so we may be trying out the Breakaway next, who knows.  If you looking for a great time you will find it here.