Breakaway to the Caribbean! Day 1

Categories Welcome to my latest trip report!  My family sailed on the Norwegian Breakaway out of NYC from July 1-10, 2017. It was our first Norwegian Cruise. We were four people, my wife (Kathryn), my daughter (Molly), my mother-in-law (Dale) and me.  I'll be talking about the ship, our destinations and shore excursions, and of course FOOD!

Let's get started!

Day 1 – NYC Mid 80’s, partly sunny, changing quickly to overcast


Our embarkation experience was a little confusing, but not horrible. As you might expect with 4,000 passengers boarding, it was very crowded in the terminal. It took us a while (maybe 10 minutes) to find out exactly where we were supposed to go for our check-in. There were people just waving at us to keep going, but the NYC terminal is so big that we honestly didn't know where we were going. But after asking a couple different people, we found the proper check-in desk, and from there, the process was very smooth. We finished our check-in around 12:30 p.m. and immediately boarded.



I had wanted to eat at Cagney’s for lunch on Embarkation Day, because they have outdoor seating and I didn’t want to fight the crush at the regular buffet. Cagney’s wasn’t serving lunch but Moderno (right next door) was. We got a great, very friendly greeting and found a table outside. The buffet didn’t have a huge selection, but there was a salad bar and enough entrée options to find something that we wanted. The Pasta Bolognese and the short ribs (off the bone) were both very good. If they had been served at the proper temperature, I would have said that both were excellent. But for some reason, the hot foods were served lukewarm. The Bourbon Chicken tasted ok, but was so dry that I didn’t eat much of it. The Dahl (a lentil stew) was too spicy for me, so I just had a small taste. There was no peel-and-eat shrimp (although there was a salad with small shrimps in it) and I don’t remember seeing mac-and-cheese or chicken fingers as kid options. The real treat was the German Chocolate Cake for dessert. Yum!


After lunch, we walked straight to our stateroom, which was ready for us. We had a balcony on Deck 12 (12172). The room had a queen bed, a pull-out couch and a bunk that was stored in the ceiling, just like on DCL. However, it was much smaller than a typical DCL family stateroom. It was closer to our balcony stateroom on the Grand Princess, but with four people in it, instead of two. The luggage fit snugly under the bed, but there simply wasn’t enough room for clothes for four people. There was a closet with a shelf above it, and two smaller shelves next to it. (This is where the safe was.) There were two drawers under the sofa, but the stateroom host stored blankets in there, so there wasn’t a ton of room for clothes. And there was a small set of shelves on either side of the refrigerator. This left one of us to live out of the suitcase. That was not a great solution, but as it turned out, the suitcase was easy to pull out from under the bed and then push back under, so it was really just like another big drawer under the bed. It worked out ok.





The balcony was very small. It barely fit three of us and when we sat out there, we could not extend our legs at all. It was probably less than 3 feet deep. It was great to have it, we really enjoyed it; but it was tight.


The surprise to me was the bathroom. It was not a split bath (I know, we’re so spoiled), but it was a decent size. You could actually move in the shower without rubbing up against the walls. There was enough counter space for the essentials and there were a couple shelves underneath for towels and toiletry bags.


After some unpacking, we attended the muster drill in the Breakaway Theater. That was a pretty routine experience, except that we were told to silence our phones or we’d be taken out of the theater and beaten to death. There was moderate laughter, but the guy supervising the theater was making random comments that were intended to be funny, but just weren’t. Oh well. Not a big deal. After that, we wandered the ship for a while to get our bearings and see where the restaurants were. We walked through the shops and the casino, which were all closed, and ended up on deck. The captain had informed us that we’d be departing about a half hour early to try to get ahead of a storm that was moving in. So once on deck, we found a spot where we had a really good look at the Statue of Liberty, as we sailed by. That was important to me, as we missed it on our previous cruise from New York.







Since we had some time to kill until dinner, we grabbed some fries and ice cream as an appetizer at the Garden Café.

While the girls finished unpacking in the room, I headed down to the complimentary restaurants to figure out how that was going to work. I wanted to eat in the Manhattan Room, so I went there first. They told me that they don’t take any reservations unless you’re a really big group. That’s fine; it’s Freestyle, I get it. So just to cover all my bases, I went downstairs to Taste (another complimentary restaurant) and was given the same information. I told the host at the desk that we’d likely want to eat around 7 and we were a party of four people. He said no problem, at 7:00, there would be plenty of available tables. Great! So even if Manhattan Room ended up being crowded, we’d be able to get in downstairs.

Well, I’m sure you can guess what happened. We showed up at the Manhattan Room at about 7, and it’s mobbed. There’s a line at least 12 parties long. We wait 20 minutes and when we get to the front, we’re told that it’s a 40 minute wait. Ok, not ideal, but we know that Taste will be able to take us; so we go downstairs and are told that it will be a 40 minute wait. Of course. So we decide if we’re going to wait 40 minutes, we might as well wait for the Manhattan Room, since that’s where we really wanted to go. By the time we get back up there, the wait was down to about a half hour; and we eventually got seated around 8:20.







So Freestyle Dining got off to a rough start for us. The good news, however, is that I really like the Manhattan Room. Great look, great live music (kind of swing, kind of Sinatra-style classics). It has the feel of a supper club, with high ceilings and a dance floor. I really like the feel of the room. The bad news is that it was incredibly loud. I don’t know if people felt they had to talk over the music, or if it was just a function of how many people can fit in the room, but it was very difficult to have a conversation across the table without really raising our voices.

Our server seemed nice, but overall the service was incredibly slow. This is understandable to a certain extent because of how crowded the restaurant was. But every course seemed to take forever. Additionally, the server dropped a dirty fork on Molly’s back. 

For my appetizer, I had a chorizo and potato salad, served chilled, which I liked very much, and a Caesar salad, which was pretty average. Kathryn had a consommé , which was very good. Molly had a very odd caprese-type salad with whipped mozzarella, which was just ok.

For entrees, Kathryn and I both had the Veal Oscar, which is veal with crab meat, asparagus, and Hollandaise sauce served over cheesy polenta. The veal itself was a little dry, but I thought the taste was fantastic. I liked a lot. Molly and Dale both had shrimp pasta. The shrimp was good and the sauce was tasty, but there just wasn’t very enough sauce, making it a bit dry.

For dessert, Kathryn had the chocolate lava cake, which she said was the best thing she ate that night. I had the chocolate-raspberry truffle cake, which was tasty, but it was HUGE. Much too big to eat after a full meal. Molly had the caramel brulee with mixed berries. The brulee was ok, but there were only three berries.

The girls went to the Welcome Aboard show and absolutely hated it. The show was supposed to be a preview of the week’s entertainment. But it ended up being the Cruise Director talking for 10 minutes, then a song; talk for 10 minutes, then an act. There were three “preview” numbers in 45 minutes. The “interaction” between acts included a lot of jokes about how drunk everybody was going to get, and a lot of insult humor. At one point, an audience member yelled “I’m drunk!” Fun! My advice: skip the Welcome Aboard show.

After the show, it was only about 10:00, but I was tired from getting up early that morning, so I headed back to the room to relax for the rest of the night.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions about our trip!