I have been working at Cruise.co.uk for coming on 5 years now and up until recently none of my family had set foot on a cruise ship.
On the 15th January my dad managed to get a place on the one night launch sailing of the Norwegian Getaway.
I was really pleased that this ship would be my dad’s first experience of a cruise ship as I was really impressed with the Breakaway when I attended her launch just under a year ago.
What follows is written by my dad personally. As I have spent a reasonable time in the cruise industry myself I thought it would be interesting to see what caught his attention and thoughts in his time on-board as a new comer to cruising.
- The arrangements for getting people onto the ship were well planned. Small groups of people were boarded at a time, which meant that we could relax and sit down until we were called.
- We had an inside cabin which was a bit bigger than we expected and well equipped. In particular the bedding and pillows were top quality and very comfy. I found the TV good, as there was one channel running movies for free. I also liked the way you could check the balance of your room bill on the TV. This made it easy to keep track of what you were spending on board.
- First impressions of the ship were firstly that it was enormous, but surprisingly we found our way around it very easily. It gave some perspective as to the size of the ship when on the top deck, from where you were looking over the rooftops of Southampton. All the facilities such as the theatre and bars were top class and very impressive.
- The food was good. We ate at the Taste restaurant at lunchtime, the Brazilian restaurant (Moderno) in the evening (25$ cover charge pp) and the buffet restaurant for breakfast. All were excellent and we could not fault the food or service in any of them. The cover charge for the Moderno was well worth paying as it was a ‘special’ experience. It was nice chatting to our waiter who was from Goa, where we have holidayed several times. He looked after us very well.
- When cruising we were amazed that you could hardly feel any movement at all. Even when we went to bed we could not tell whether we were still at sea or not! Next morning it was a surprise when we looked at the camera on the front of the ship and see we had arrived back at Southampton.
- Getting off the ship was completely painless and efficient.
- To conclude, we would both like to experience cruising again somewhere sunny!