Norwegian Getaway Cruise Reviews - Reviews

Everything that you want to do, plus excellent service and it just feels good to be there! The staff could not have been more pleasant and fun. The game shows, entertainment, Illusionarium, 5 water slides, ropes course (awesome!), could not have been more fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself on this cruise.  I am not one to sit around and I certainly didn’t do this on the cruise. The ship was rather large, but it was not a problem for me as I love walking. I was worried about getting sea sick but incredibly there was only one day where I was a bit queasy. I did not have to take any meds and just chewed ginger gum the one day. More details below.

We just returned on the getaway and we had a great trip. A group of 10, 5 cabins. My husband has celiac disease and we were very pleased with the food and the arrangements. 

There werent kids everywhere. Accomidations seem very good for kids tho. The pool area is packed but we always found chairs in other places on the decks. We loved the spice h20 deck and pool. We did the white glow party, watched fireworks from our balconies (small balconies compared to Norweigan Pride of America)

Improvements: No free internet access, even in the internet cafe. Gluten free at the buffet is by request only, I wish there was a set place to go for it. Also, it would be helpful if things were labeled gluten free. We understand contaminatation is a great risk but it is better than guessing! The soda wasn't good, pepsi products and I didn't like the 7 up or root beer. Next time I would forgo a pop card and just order some virgin daquaris or pay by the drink. They don't help you quickly in the bars when all you want is soda.

I've had experience with NCL epic before and I knew what to expect from this cruise. However, this time it was more than expected. We availed of the specialty dining package and we were eating lobster and steak almost nightly. The food is awesome and the preparation is perfect. The servers even ask if we wanted more. The complementary breakfast dining options were also superb. We didn't avail of the buffet breakfast because we wanted to be more cautious in the food selection (being health conscious). There was daily and nightly entertainment for everyone and we enjoyed all of it. The free nightly shows were also beyond expectations most especially the Illusionarium. All the NCL crew and staff were very friendly accommodating. We were even invited to a special invite at the Ice Bar. We were celebrating our 37th Wedding Anniversary and they even greeted us with a cake in the room. I will be loyal to NCL in our future cruises. Thank you NCL.

Overall very good cruise.   Food and entertainment on board were great.   Layout of ship a little disappointing (not a lot of open area in pool/decks; hard to find chairs).  Bars on decks hopelessly understaffed (could wait 30 min to get a soda).

Hi-

Service was excellent.  The ship was extremely clean. 

The food and disembarking was awful!  I also think that the ship has plenty of time to stayed docked longer than we did.  I would much rather have an entire day at each port that sailing out further just to avoid docking. 

St. Thomas was a great port.  The shore excursion to Norman Island was very nice.  All of the staff made it easy to get organized and off to your destination.

This is for me and my parents' first time to be on a cruise. In a word, we are pretty excited and satisfied with the journey. There are various types of food, beverages, desserts for you to choose. Also, couple of the on-ship entertainments such as rock climbing, swimming and gym. However, one thing I am not too happy are the three destinations the ship chose. There aren't too much things we could do on the islands and pretty much the shopping. I was looking forward to some exotic cultures or attractions which were not on the departures. To sum up, we are glad that choosing Norwegian Getaway as our first cruise on sea and are hoping the next trip to somewhere else!

I am be new to NCL and I thought it was a great experience...the entertainment was excellent...dining choices and ultimate dining package were very convenient...would recommend better TV choices for those tines one just wants to relax in the room. The Getaway was a well laid out ship and the staff was very friendly...Looking forward to another NCL cruise

Overall happy with cruise new ship was nice. breakfast and lunch were good, nice verity. Freestyle dinner not so good slow service and poor food quality.Eat at garden buffet 2 nites because of that. italian res. ok. could not get in the french res. I have mainly traveled on royal car. ships level of service on this ship was good but a stepdown from royal car. i dont understand how a 4000 passenger ship would one small adult pool very little open space, dance type area and a small theater.  

The ship was fabulous. Not glitzy but quietly elegant. The staff all went above & beyond to help. Everyone was cheerful & willing to listen to whatever the question might be.Our cabin steward was wonderful & loved the guy who came through at breakfast with a candle on his head and called out "wakie, wakie.  I have a bright idea." He always brought a smile to everyone's face. Another girl at one of the entrances to the Garden Cafe always said "washie, washie" as she sprayed our hands. Freestyle Dining was a hit & all in all, loved the entire trip. We will be traveling on NCL from now on. We also really enjoyed our cabin stewards "towel menagerie". We had a frog, dog, elephant & a pheasant. Cabin was always neat when we would get back in. Loved sitting on the balcony, watching us come into port, if we weren't already on deck.  We'll be back...

The NCL Getaway was an amazing experience for my friends and I. The ship itself was a complete beauty, that had an activity for anyone of any age. With that being said, it is impossible to be bored on the ship unless you choose to be. The freestyle options really do the trick for us, we enjoy not having a set dinner time or location. I have to emphasize this point as it is truly amazing to not have a set time, because it gives you more flexibility when it comes to planning your day. Vacations are all about being relaxed and schedule free, and this is where NCL gets my vote. The pool deck and water slides were extremely fun! Maybe due to the time of the year, but there was only a 2 minute waiting line for slides all day. The rock climbing wall was fantastic, as they have a course for everyone (props to you if you can do the pink one). The ropes course was beyond amazing!! Being able to walk the plank 18 decks above the ocean is an awesome experience. The food was very good at the complimentary restaurants. The bars were always available with very professional staff. The casino has an abundance of slot machine and tables. Overall, I could go on and on about how amazing this ship was, but I would suggest you find out for yourselves. If you're looking for the ultimate vacation, look no further... the NCL Getaway will make it happen. The crew, the ship, the activities, the people, the food...just simply, "cruise like a Norwegian."  

I have done quite a few cruises with many different cruise lines, and I found the staff on this cruise (with the exception of a few) not very friendly. However, I thought the food was excellent, and the entertainment very good. I don't know if I would sail with this cruise line again, I just didn't enjoy myself as much as I'm use to doing when taking a vacation. Another thought, I felt that there should have had more frequent character appearances, even though I am an adult I still enjoy seeing the characters and the children's reactions to them.

I can recommend Norwegian Getaway Cruise for sure. Great food options, two big pool areas, four jacuzzi's, five water slides, mini golf, rock climbing, wooden course, plank, and so much more. I wish there was more things to do for a younger crowd. Only one club. Also, i wish they had a bigger variety of attractions to do daily. Some events repeats daily. But over all i give it 4 stars. It was my first cruise and it was amazing.

We love the ship and the amenities however it was a little over crowded for our taste.  The negative was we could never get a spot at the pool unless we went down really early. I think when the capacity increases the number of pools should.  With only 1 adult pool space was limited.  They do have a foot pool in the adults only area which helped. As for the restaurants and other fun stuff to do it was great.  We especially loved the Mojito Bar.  The service was great as usual for Norwegian cruise lines.  

Got food poisoning on cruise, went to complain and they didn't want to acknowledge. After finally recovering could hardly use drink package as bartenders kept skipping us(not drunk or anything likely age discrimination looking for a bigger tip). Also noticed their topshelf bourbon was off or watered down. Outside of the food and bar it was a good cruise , but I went on a cruise to eat and drink, not lose weight.

The Norwegian Getaway is a nice fairly new ship.  Its clean and rooms are nice.  The food was good however I wish there was more of a selection at the salad bar at the buffet.  They could have expanded their items in this area as alot of people prefer not to eat as much during lunch.

My one misgiving is the daily activities offered on the ship.  My entire family found us to be quite board.  There were not many offerings throughout the sea days to do much.  Much time went by searching for something to do.  It became fustrating.  

The personnel on the ship was excellent.   The ports of call were nice.  Overall a good experience but would I go back on a Norwegian ship no.  RCC offers so much more variety in entertainment and daily activities.

While the ports we visited were great the ship itself was very disappointing.  The noise onboard was non-stop with children running everywhere and, inexplicably, the large screen which is outside and on upper decks on all other cruise lines we have sailed, on Norwegian it was inside in what was called an atrium.  It was about 4 decks high but the seating was on the same level as Guest Services, as was the cruise director/emcee with a very loud microphone hosting trivia games, etc.  Movies were also shown on the screen.  All of this made it impossible to hear the people in Guest Services and because the noise could be heard on many levels, it wasn't a relaxing cruise environment.

Overall a very good cruise.   Here are some of the positives and negatives: Embarkation:  no signage as to where to go and we had to wait in the broiling sun for over 15 minutes while in line to check in.  A cruise member shouted to the crowd to make sure we were in the "correct" line as they were boarding from two entrances.  Luckily, we were in the right line.  If we hadn't, I would have been livid after standing in line for so long.  Once we got inside the terminal, a gentleman told us to go over to a table and fill out the medical survey.  The table was crowded but I was able to get a form and fortunately had a pen so I didn't have to scramble for a writing instrument with everyone else.  After filling out the form, we asked about priority boarding and were sent in a very long line.  Evidently, everyone got priority boarding as everyone was sent to the same line.  So much for the loyalty perks.  We stood in line another 15 minutes until we got to an agent. We've cruise on other lines where the check in process is much quicker and much more efficient.

Crew:  the entire crew was extremely friendly and always spoke to you.  We had an issue in our cabin and guest services went above and beyond to make sure it was taken care of.

Food:  we did not dine in any of the specialty dining areas.  I'm old school and feel that your purchase price includes food and you should not have to pay extra to get "better" food.  We tried all of the complimentary restaurants and the food was very good.  The Tropicana has live music and it's pretty loud, so if you want to enjoy conversation, beware.  We ate most breakfasts at the buffet and the food was good and a good variety of items.  We ate dinner one night at the buffet and were disappointed.  The food looked dried out - like it had been sitting out for a while and the selection wasn't much.  Not that we use room service, but they now charge $7.95 to use it.  This was a bummer.  O'Sheehan's was their complimentary pub and had good food and a great atmosphere and décor.  You can sit around a counter and watch the entertainment going on down on the floor below, sit at the bar, or in regular tables.  The menu's not extensive but gives you the feel of a pub.  They held a lot of their games and activities in this area.

Cabins:  We had a balcony on the 9th deck-mid ship.  There was more storage space in this cabin that on any other ship we've sailed on.  The bathroom had a lot of shelving as well but I was a little concerned as the "lip" on the shelf did not extend up very high and if you hit some rough waters, I could see things falling off of these shelves..  The deck was VERY small but sufficed.  The most disappointing thing was the view.  The ship's WATERFRONT is located on the 8th deck and has a roof over it.  This roof is directly underneath the balcony cabins - therefore, you can't see directly down to the water.  This was true of probably 75 - 80% of the balcony's on the ship.  The higher up you went, the less of an obstruction, but nonetheless, if you want to look directly over your balcony and see water, you won't be able to.  We moved mid way through the cruise (due to a cabin issue) to a cabin on the 10th deck-forward.  we didn't have the WATERFRONT roof, but we did have a deck with  shuffleboard on it directly below us.  Again - no view of the ocean directly below us :(  In looking at the balconies overall, it would appear that the suites are the only ones that have this type of view.  This ship was the first one we experienced with using your key card to activate the electricity in your room.  This was great in that you always knew where your keycard was and made it easy to turn everything off when you left your cabin.  They also have two buttons you can push:  one for "make up the cabin" and one for "do not disturb".  This was a big improvement over putting cards in your door.  They also have an interactive TV (which we've used before and it's great) and it was nice to finally see it on an NCL ship.

ENTERTAINMENT:  Their two most publicized shows were "Burn the Floor" and "Legally Blonde".  We really enjoyed Legally Blonde but were a little disappointed in Burn the Floor.  Although it was high energy, it was like watching Dancing With the Stars and after several dances, it seemed redundant.  They had a magician/comedian one night and one night we went to their comedy show (it's on every night).  They were both good - not great.

The itinerary takes you to Nassau.  We've been there so many times that we didn't get off the ship.  Instead we spent the time on some of the deck 16 and 17 activities.  They have a ropes course which was a lot of fun.  You can make your interaction with it as long as you want.  They have 5 water slides - each with increasing degrees of difficulty.  Their green and blue slide will really get your adrenaline going!  They were a lot of fun.  We also played miniature golf and although that's not a novel concept to ships, the course was cute and fun to play.  My husband did the rock wall.  You can go up one deck and get a different view of the wall, but it is a very congested area.  We're not joggers, but if we were, we wouldn't have liked the jogging track.  It went through a lot of high traffic areas.  We tried the hot tubs one night and they were not crowded.  The only negative was that the "adults only" sign was ignored and there were children in all tubs.  We did try the Spice H2O area for adults one afternoon and it was very nice.  The only negative was that there were no shady areas.

DEBARKATION:  We chose to do the self assist debarkation which means you have to carry your own luggage.  Just beware that if you chose this option, you will have a real challenge getting an elevator.  We ended up carrying our luggage down the steps which was not ideal.  Once we got it line (which was VERY long), it moved quickly and orderly.  A big improvement over the check in process.

We are a mature couple and have been cruising for over 30 years. It is very obvious to us that NCL missed the mark here; cutting corners wherever possible. The balconies are the smallest we have ever seen on a ship. The food was not great and the menu selections in the free restaurants were limited. I ordered fish twice and they had obviously been frozen for too long. The service was terrible. We waited almost 1/2 hour to get our three sushi rolls at Wasabi (paid food option). The staff provided a very small salad for my husband and I to SHARE as consolation. Seriously? The theater chairs are incredibly uncomfortable. I did provide feedback to one of the officers who indicated they knew about the problem and are working on it to fix it. Legally Blonde was corny and the singing talent mediocre. We never travel during family season and this was the beginning of May. There were so many kids onboard and nowhere to relax without hearing screaming kids. Kids were everywhere, including the adults only pool and hot tub. The Haven is the only adults only retreat but it costs $20 daily. The Tropicana Room is a dinner/dance restaurant but there were so many toddlers running around the dance floor that many times we didn't dance afraid of hurting them. Staff unwilling to do something about it. Tortola as a destination has nothing to offer. The area around the port is being developed and in our estimation it will take 5 years for it to develop. The beach was ok but you have to pay for transport, none within walking distance of the port. In conclusion; if this had been our first cruise we would have decided never to cruise with NCL again. But we know they can do better. I think we'll stick with the older ships.

This was our 8th cruise but our first one with Norwegian.  We booked this one because of the great deal it was offering--- Ultimate Beverage Package came with the room! The ship is new, so everything was in pretty good condition.  We found the Getaway to be very compartmentalized and lacking in grandeur (however, that could be because we sailed on the RC Oasis of the Seas a year ago). When we saw the ship held over 4,000 passengers, we expected a much more open floor plan, but it was pretty.

Pros:  Entertainment staff was probably the best of any cruise we've ever taken.  There were deck parties planned every night, and lots of activities/games throughout the day & evenings.  There was always something going on!  Burn the Floor is a must-see.  We found the room to be nice and clean-- the bathroom was a little bigger than others we had stayed on, but watch out if you are tall!  Anyone over 6'5" would have issues getting in and out of the shower (and we saw several 7" men on this cruise... ouch!!). The main buffet was very nice and offered lots of different kinds of food options- serving all day. Great breakfast options, and it never took long to get a fresh made omelet. Also, there was a really neat Irish Pub that offered fresh food all day.  We had several meals at the pub, and they were all very good.  It's also nice because the pub area overlooks the atrium where many shows and activities are held throughout the day.

Cons: Not impressed with the food in some of the restaurants.  We paid extra to eat at one of the "specialty" restaurants, and were annoyed to see that after paying the initial fee to dine, we were charged an additional $10 per person if we wanted to eat lobster or filet... The whole reason we went to this particular restaurant was to get the lobster, so after paying another $10, I expected it to be superb... but after waiting an hour and a half for our food, the lobster did not live up to it's expectations.  I understand that eating in these restaurants is usually an experience that takes some time (which is what we expected), but we ordered our food and actually waited over 90 minutes for it to get delivered.  Only one appetizer per person was allowed (vs. on Royal Caribbean we were invited to order several different dishes to share/try). Others we spoke with had mixed reviews of the restaurants, but we cancelled our second reservation because we were so disappointed with the meal. The food in the main dining rooms was not great compared to other cruises we had been on- who knows, maybe we ordered the wrong thing.  Also, the drink service on this ship was almost non-existent.  If you wanted a drink on the pool deck, you'd better be prepared to get it yourself... there might have been two servers walking around selling drinks, and they were hardly ever in sight.  The set up on the pool deck is terrible... only one small pool for the majority on board (there is also a small kid's pool in the middle of the "slash zone").  It was quite difficult to maneuver to and from the 2nd deck... with just two stair cases (one on opposite sides of the boat), you had to walk all the way around to get up and down.  Also, the average wait at any bar was about 10 minutes for a drink (and that is if there are only a couple people at the bar). I know the drinks were included, but it should never be that difficult to get one.  Perhaps NCL slowed down their drink service because so many people on board had this package... whatever the reason, it was a little annoying (but not enough to ruin your day).  The casino is in a weird place on the ship. You have to basically walk through it to go anywhere because it's at the center of the ship on one of the main decks.  This is the only ship we've been on where you HAVE to walk through the casino to get from one side to another.

Overall, a vacation is a vacation and we did have a good time (once we learned the in's and out's of the ship).  If you like Latin music, this is the ship for you because it is oozing with Miami/Latin flare! The cruise director, Joel was amazing, as was his entire staff.  We have small children (who did not vacation with us this time), but would have loved the kid's "splash academy".  The children's activities on this ship seemed wonderful.