I just returned from a 7 day cruise on the NCL Breakaway. This is my 3rd NCL cruise and my 2nd time on the Break away (last sailing on this ship was 2015 out of NY). We booked a mini suite on deck 11 and paid for NCL's Priority Boarding ($99.00) per cabin, I arrived at 10am and were on the ship before 11am and was the quickest most pleasant boarding I have ever had! We rushed to get tickets to "The Vibe" as this has been very nice on prior NCL cruises, we did get tickets which were now $209.00 per person when we have always paid $99.00 per person in the past. On arrival to our room we opened the door to a very heavy smell of cigarette smoke and my wife and I both smoke, the smell was like sitting in an ashtray. I just used some AXE spray in the room which did help some, I have always had great service in the area on every other cruise but we experienced a very poor room steward who never introduced himself or cleaned our room on a timely basis. I did not complain about this just because, hey we are on vacation. The bed was very rigid and I requested an "eggcrate" pad be put on the mattress which was done and made a big difference in comfort.

As I stated earlier, my wife and I smoke and when we were on this ship in 2015 we found adequate smoking areas located on the ship which has certainly changed since then! When we got on the ship we were told that we could smoke on deck 15 and in the cigar lounge which is where we headed for a quick smoke. When we got to the cigar lounge we were advised that no cigarettes could be smoked there it was only for cigars so we headed up to deck 15 where we found a 10X10 glassed in area with chairs with every smoker on the ship trying to get a place to stand in the tiny little space. We made our way to the "Spice H2O" section where you could smoke on the port side of the ship in a small section but at least it wasn't glassed in holding all of the smoke in a tiny space. I understand that smoking is offensive to some people but I am quite sure that out of 3900 people that over 1000 of us smoked and the tiny space provided was not anywhere near enough, of course you can smoke in the casino but only if you are gaming, if you were not gaming they would quickly move you out and not let you simply have a smoke.

Dining was much better on this trip than our last NCL cruise on the Jade! The service in the main dining rooms was far better than we expected and the food was much better than the Jade. The down side with NCL is that the menu is unchanged all week which just happens to be about the same menu as it was in January on the Jade. The buffet was also basically the same thing every day over and over which is one of the reasons that I will not be on another NCL cruise. Read more