Norwegian Getaway

Norwegian Getaway is Norwegian Breakaway built a year later. Same yard, same drawings, same 145,655 tons, same quarter-mile open-air Waterfront wrapped around deck eight. Where the two have drifted apart is in what their refits did to them, and in what they are now asked to do, and Getaway is asked to do something quite specific: long weekends.

What the 2019 refit put aboard

She spent two weeks in dry dock at Brest under Norwegian’s Edge refurbishment program and came out with more new rooms than most mid-life refits produce. Syd Norman’s Pour House, a rock-and-roll bar with a live band, replaced a lounge. A full-service Starbucks went in, the first Norwegian had put on a ship in Europe, which tells you where she was headed that summer. The library became a photo studio. Vibe Beach Club, the adults-only sun deck at the stern, was doubled in size. Spice H2O got a water feature. In the Haven, the courtyard was refloored and given a dining canopy and new cabanas.

What she kept is the Illusionarium: a magic-and-dinner theater under a thirty-foot video dome, built into this hull and not repeated anywhere else in the fleet. It is the one venue aboard that is genuinely hers.

Otherwise the hardware is her sister’s. Five waterslides, a three-story ropes course with a plank hanging over the side, three main dining rooms, and the Waterfront, which works considerably better on a Miami ship than on a Boston one.

Freestyle, and the two classes it hides

Norwegian sells the fleet on Freestyle cruising, and the plain version is this: there is no assigned table, no fixed dinner sitting, and no formal night. You eat where and when you like across three main dining rooms and a buffet at no charge, and a dozen further restaurants charge extra. The freedom is real. So is the consequence, which is that on a full ship the good tables and the good show times go to whoever booked them first, so the schedule you were promised you would not need is a schedule you end up keeping anyway.

Sitting on top of that is the Haven. It is a gated block of suites on the upper decks with its own courtyard, pool, hot tubs, sun deck, restaurant, bar and around-the-clock butler and concierge service, reached by elevators that will not open for anyone else’s keycard. Haven guests can use the whole ship; nobody else can get into the Haven. On a hull carrying nearly four thousand people at double occupancy, that is a few dozen suites with a private restaurant and a quiet pool, and everyone else sharing the main deck.

It works; the Haven is a genuinely good product and the reason a lot of people sail Norwegian at all. It is also, unmistakably, a two-class ship, and it is worth deciding how you feel about that before you board rather than while you are looking up at a deck you cannot reach.

Where she actually sails

Miami is her main berth, and the great majority of what she sells there is short: three- and four-night Bahamas runs to Nassau and Great Stirrup Cay, Norwegian’s private island. Port Canaveral takes a large second block of the same thing. New Orleans gets her for a run of week-long Western Caribbean sailings. The median sailing in this inventory is four nights.

Later in the window she crosses to Southampton for a short European season, which is a small fraction of her schedule and the only place you will find her outside the Americas.

Who she suits

Anyone who wants a large, busy ship for a long weekend and does not want to pay for a week to get one. Three nights on a ship this size is an odd trade, you will not see most of her, but the waterslides, the ropes course and the Waterfront are all things you can use in a day, and the Bahamas calls are short enough that the ship stays the point.

She is wrong if you want the ports to matter; Nassau and a private beach are the whole itinerary on most of these sailings. She is wrong if a short cruise’s crowd (younger, more of it, drinking earlier) is not what you want. And she is a 2014 ship with 2014 bones, so if the go-karts and the racing slides are what you came for, that is Norwegian Encore or the Prima ships, not her.