Norwegian Encore

Norwegian Encore is the fourth and last of the Breakaway Plus ships (after Escape, Joy and Bliss), and the point of the class was straightforward: take the Breakaway hull, add about twenty-four thousand tons and eight hundred guests, and use the extra volume to put an amusement park on the roof. She is the version of that idea with all the lessons applied, and she has spent most of her career on the West Coast rather than in the Caribbean, which is the more interesting fact about her.

The stuff on top

The go-kart track is the headline. It runs across two decks near the stern on electric karts, with hairpin turns and sections that hang out past the side of the hull so you are briefly driving over open water. When she debuted in 2019 it was the longest track at sea; Norwegian Viva has since built a longer one, so the claim you will still see in brochures is out of date.

Next to it is Atlantis Laser Tag, an open-air arena themed as a sunken city, and below that the Galaxy Pavilion, a hall of virtual-reality simulators, racing rigs and holographic escape rooms that is the fleet’s answer to a rainy sea day in the Gulf of Alaska. The aqua park has a double-loop waterslide and a tandem racer.

None of this is subtle and none of it is free of lines. On a full Alaska sailing the karts and the escape rooms sell out in advance, and the ship charges for most of it.

What the 2024 refit changed

She went into dry dock at Brest in November 2024. The most useful addition was Spice H2O, the adults-only terrace stepping down over the wake that the older Norwegian ships have always had and that Bliss and Encore were built without. Ocean Blue was converted into Palomar, the Mediterranean seafood restaurant Norwegian is now standardizing on. Cagney’s Steakhouse and the Teppanyaki room were both enlarged. The Haven suites were redesigned, and twenty-four new balcony cabins and two club balcony staterooms were fitted into space the ship was not previously using.

The Haven itself is what it is elsewhere in this fleet: a keycard-gated enclave at the top of the ship with a private restaurant, lounge, bar, sun deck and pool, and butler and concierge service, sealed off from the other three thousand nine hundred people aboard. On a seven-night Alaska sailing where the weather decides how much of the outdoor deck anyone can use, a private indoor lounge with a view forward is worth more than it is in the Caribbean.

Where she actually sails

Two seasons, two coasts of the same ocean. From May through September she runs week-long Alaska round trips out of Seattle, Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, Victoria, with glacier days in Glacier Bay or Endicott Arm depending on the sailing. That is more than half her schedule and it is what she is really for.

The rest of the year she works from Los Angeles on Mexican Riviera runs to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta, with a scattering of longer voyages, plus the repositioning legs between the two homeports, a couple of Panama Canal transits and a handful of Pacific Northwest sailings from Vancouver.

Who she suits

Families doing Alaska who want a ship that can absorb a cold, wet sea day, and anyone on the West Coast who wants the largest and newest hardware Norwegian puts there. She is a good ship for teenagers, which is not something you can say about most Alaska tonnage.

She suits nobody looking for a quiet or a small Alaska experience. Four thousand guests do not fit into a small port gracefully, and Skagway with three ships alongside is a crowd, not a frontier town. She is also poorly matched to anyone who resents paying twice, the go-karts, the laser tag, the simulators and most of the good restaurants all cost extra on top of the fare, and the difference between a cheap week aboard and an expensive one is entirely down to how much of that you say yes to.