We were really excited to be taking the inaugural voyage of the Norwegian Breakaway from Southampton to New York this April but excitement led to let down as we boarded the ship and then throughout the voyage. 1st - the ship was clearly not ready for us. There was no program of the day's activities in the stateroom and the customer service desk said they had run out and no more would be printed. As a platinum Latitudes member I was entitled to a number of amenities but none were present in my cabin. After a complaint the amenities appeared the following evening. Another initial problem was an absence of the shipboard credit my travel agent had confirmed for us. It took 3 more days to get the credit that was confirmed in our reservations.

As for the ship it was rather bland and boring. The food was the same. The pay restaurant Moderno was excellent however, as was the Blues club -we attended it every night and it turned out the be the highlight of our cruise. We highly recommend the band Slam Allen. The Cirque show was good as well, but Rock of Ages was horrible. We walked out after a tedious hour of amateurish singing and dancing. The pool area was totally inadequate. Set in the middle of the ship adjacent to a stage - speakers blasted either canned rock music or music from a live band. The sound was deafening and a total deterrent to using the pool. The children's pool and the water slide pool across the deck were unusable also as this was the area people landed from the huge water slide above. For a transatlantic cruise the pool was not really missed but it certainly would be on a Caribbean cruise.

Another issue with this ship was a lack of quiet reading areas inside. There were almost no public lounges as pay restaurants had replaced these usual lounge areas. People congregated in the atrium mostly but it was extremely noisy. Read more