I first wrote about Norwegian Cruise Line’s Breakaway class back in 2013, and about the Breakaway Plus class in 2017 — both times as pre-sailing previews based on NCL’s marketing materials. Detailed and accurate, but sterile in the way that any review written from a press kit inevitably is. Janet and I corrected that by sailing both the Breakaway herself and the newest Breakaway Plus ship, the Encore. With firsthand experience finally in hand, it seemed like the right time to bring both reviews together into a single piece.

I’ll be honest about something up front: we sailed on a travel agent rate for both ships. That never changes how I write these reviews, but you should know it. I’ll also say that NCL’s style of cruising isn’t entirely my preference — I’ll explain what I mean by that as I go. What I won’t do is let my preferences stand in for a fair assessment. There is more good than bad here, and the bad is often a matter of what kind of cruiser you are rather than a genuine failure of the product.

The two classes are similar enough in layout and design philosophy that reviewing them together makes sense. The Breakaway Plus ships are larger, with a few key differences I’ll note where they matter. Think of them as the same album, different pressings — the track listing is nearly identical, but the sound is bigger on one than the other.

By the Numbers

What Works

Accommodations

The most common complaint about cruise ship staterooms is that they’re too small. Cruise comedians have made careers out of the shower curtain joke. On both Breakaway and Encore, we found the cabins and bathrooms to be comfortably appointed with a more spacious feel than comparable mass-market ships — whether through actual square footage or smarter layout, the net effect is the same. The bathrooms in particular stand out: ample storage, real shower doors instead of curtains, and a level of finish that punches above the category. Inside cabins run 135 to 150 square feet; outside cabins 161 to 218; balconies 207 to 280.

Every stateroom comes with a coffee and tea maker — a small thing that most lines reserve for higher cabin categories, but one that Janet and I appreciated immediately. A morning cup without a trek to the buffet is worth more than it sounds at 6am. NCL also uses a clever two-toggle light system outside each cabin door: one for Do Not Disturb, one for cabin vacant. You can’t accidentally activate both at once — the system requires you to flip one off before the other will engage. It’s a better solution than the hanging door card that gets turned by accident or flipped as a prank.

A practical note for early arrivals: on both ships, NCL allowed us to leave our carry-on bags in our cabin as soon as we boarded — even before the rooms were ready for occupancy. Royal Caribbean offers something similar, but bundles it into a paid convenience package. NCL does it as a standard courtesy. For travelers like Janet, who arrive early to explore the ship before embarkation crowds build, not lugging carry-ons up and down staircases for two hours makes a difference.

The Studio Cabins

NCL has long been the industry leader in catering to solo cruisers, and the studio cabin program on the Breakaway class is the best execution of that concept I’ve seen on any ship. Most lines that offer studio cabins scatter a handful throughout the ship almost as an afterthought. On Breakaway and Encore, the studio cabins — designed for single occupancy with no single supplement — are clustered together in a private keycard-controlled enclave. The cabins themselves are compact but utilitarian, and include a virtual window: a monitor built into the bulkhead displaying live exterior video, giving an interior cabin the visual character of an oceanview stateroom. The enclave includes a dedicated lounge for studio guests only — a genuine social space that tends to become its own community over the course of a voyage.

The Haven

NCL pioneered the ship-within-a-ship concept, and the Haven remains among the best implementations of it in the mass-market segment. Located forward on Decks 15 and 16, it’s a keycard-controlled enclave housing suites, a private restaurant, pool, sun deck, lounge, 24-hour butler service, and a dedicated concierge. Haven guests can venture out to enjoy everything the ship offers — the entertainment, the activities, the dining options across the rest of the ship — and then retreat to a private experience that bears little resemblance to what the other 4,000 passengers are dealing with. It’s the answer to the central problem of big-ship cruising: you can have the scale and the intimacy at the same time, if you’re willing to pay for it. More on the Haven in the caveats section, because the tradeoffs cut both ways.

678 Ocean Place and The Waterfront

The three-deck restaurant and lounge hub spanning Decks 6, 7, and 8 is NCL’s most ambitious design idea, and it delivers on its promise selectively. The concept clusters 17 dining venues and 12 bars and lounges into an interconnected hub — the restaurants on the interior of the ship, the Waterfront promenade running the exterior of Deck 8 on both port and starboard sides. The Waterfront is the standout: a quarter-mile of outdoor boardwalk lined with bars and restaurant terraces, al fresco extensions of the specialty dining inside. It has the feel of an actual waterfront district — casual enough that you don’t feel overdressed wandering through it, lively enough that something is always happening. The food we had along the Waterfront was among the best we’ve eaten on a cruise ship.

The Manhattan Room

Of the three complimentary main dining rooms on both ships — Manhattan Room, Savor, and Taste — the Manhattan Room is in a different class entirely, and not just because it’s on a different deck with its own galley. On Breakaway it is set up as a ballroom, complete with live band and a hardwood dance floor. Dinner with a live band and the option to dance is a combination Janet and I took full advantage of. I was disappointed to find that on Encore, NCL removed the dance floor in favor of more tables, though they retained a small stage for the band. The bones of the experience are still there; some of the soul of it is not.

The Ice Bar (Breakaway only)

On the Breakaway, the Skyy Vodka Ice Bar is one of the more genuinely enjoyable novelties I’ve encountered on a cruise ship. This isn’t the version where a regular bar gets ice-paneled counters. This is a walk-in blast freezer outfitted as a bar, chilled to 17 degrees Fahrenheit, where everything — bar, stools, glasses, even a full-sized throne — is carved from ice. Capacity is 25, and you sign up for time slots. The bar staff rotates with each group so they can warm up between sessions. They meet you at the door, brief you, outfit you with a hooded parka and gloves, and then the bartender for your group escorts you in for 45 minutes to an hour and a half-dozen New York-themed Skyy vodka cocktails. The cover fee is less than the cost of the two included drinks at any other bar on the ship. The bartenders on our visits were liberal with the pours. Janet and I went back three times. I will say no more than that.

NCL replaced the Ice Bar on the Breakaway Plus class ships with a Mojito bar — a more conventional space that I’m sure is perfectly fine and serves no purpose to me whatsoever. Progress, I’m told.

The Speedway and Galaxy Pavilion (Encore only)

The Breakaway Plus ships replaced the Ice Bar real estate with something rather more ambitious: the Speedway, the largest race car track at sea. My first instinct was to read it as an upscale go-kart track. In person it’s more sophisticated than that — a proper two-level circuit on the upper decks, popular enough that you should expect a meaningful wait. The pre-race safety briefing and prep session takes almost as long as the track time itself, which is either a feature or a nuisance depending on your temperament. The Galaxy Pavilion virtual reality center is the other Encore-only highlight. One VR experience allows guests to use a touchscreen to design their own roller coaster and then experience the ride they built through a VR headset. It was remarkable, and I say that as someone who is not inclined to say that about much.

Entertainment

The entertainment on both ships was, with one notable exception I’ll address separately, genuinely impressive when we sailed. Breakaway offered major productions including Burn the Floor, Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, Wine the Musical, and Three Tenors of Rock — all quality shows with highly talented performers. What I particularly enjoyed was the dinner-and-show format: Cirque Dreams performed in the Spiegel Tent while dinner was served, and Wine the Musical wrapped lunch and a guided tasting into the story. Both carried a cover fee. Both were worth it. Among the smaller shows, the Beatles tribute on Encore was the one I’d single out. I am not, as a rule, a tribute band person. This one worked. What made it compelling wasn’t the musical talent so much as the commitment to the presentation — the look, the moves, the four-count head shakes at the start of every number. Ringo looked like John Goodman in a mop-top wig, and after the first song you genuinely didn’t care.

The entertainment picture has changed considerably since those sailings, and the change reflects a deliberate strategic decision by NCL. The line has moved away from licensed Broadway productions toward original in-house shows, citing direct guest feedback that shorter, purpose-built productions outperform two-hour Broadway musicals for cruise audiences. The CEO has said this publicly. The Broadway run on these ships is largely over — Rock of Ages is long gone from Breakaway (more on that below), Kinky Boots ended its run on Encore in early 2023, and Six closed on Breakaway around the same time.

What’s replaced them is worth knowing. On Breakaway, the current headline production is Red, White & British, developed in partnership with long-time NCL collaborator Burn the Floor — the same ballroom dance company that was part of the lineup when we sailed. The show celebrates British artists who made an impact in the US, with a glam rock section paying tribute to David Bowie and Queen. Burn the Floor itself remains in the rotation. The Howl at the Moon dueling piano show and Famous Riffz music trivia round out the evening program. On Encore, The Choir of Man — the British pub show I mentioned in my original notes as worth watching — is now firmly established as the ship’s signature production and a consistent guest favorite. It’s been joined by ICONS: The Bands, a concert-format show celebrating the anthems of legendary rock bands including Journey, The Police, U2, and Duran Duran, performed by the same nine-person Choir of Man cast. Both ships also benefit from NCL’s new “Mini Moments of More” program — spontaneous pop-up performances in dining rooms, atriums, and poolside — which is the most genuinely interesting new entertainment idea the line has introduced in years.

My honest read: the new direction suits these ships better than Broadway did. A two-hour licensed musical in a theater you have to reserve a week in advance was always a slightly awkward fit for ships built around freestyle flexibility. Original productions that play multiple times a night, with pop-up entertainment woven through the rest of the ship, align better with how people actually move through an NCL cruise. Whether the specific shows match the quality of what we saw when we sailed is something I can’t personally attest to. The reviews from current passengers are broadly positive.

The Carpet

A small thing that deserves mention because it’s a brilliantly simple solution to a real problem. The hallway carpeting on both ships features silhouettes of schools of fish, all swimming in the same direction — toward the bow. When you get disoriented on a big ship, which happens, you look down and let the fish tell you which end of the ship you’re headed toward. It costs nothing, it works perfectly, and I have no idea why every large cruise ship doesn’t do this.

What Doesn’t Work

The Hallways

The stateroom deck corridors on Encore are narrow — genuinely, inconveniently narrow. Using the length of my shoe as a rough measure, I put them at approximately 48 inches wide, possibly a touch less. During active service hours, when cabin steward carts are in the halls, two people cannot pass each other without one stepping back into a doorway. For a passenger with mobility challenges — a wheelchair, a larger scooter — I’m not sure how they get through when the service carts are deployed. It’s a design decision that clearly made something else possible elsewhere in the ship. I don’t know what that trade was, but it wasn’t worth it.

Cabin Numbering and Signage

Most ships number cabins sequentially with odd numbers on one side and even on the other. Encore mostly follows this convention, except when it doesn’t, which is often enough to be consistently confusing. Janet eventually determined that there is an underlying logic to the numbering scheme. I was unable to find it. The directional signage compounds the problem — at best misleading, at times simply wrong. Getting from Point A to Point B on Encore was an ongoing exercise in reorientation. The fish carpet helps. It shouldn’t need to.

Cabin Storage

The bathrooms have excellent storage. The cabins themselves do not. We had an upgraded cabin and still found ourselves managing the limited drawer and closet space carefully. For a Caribbean itinerary with a relaxed dress code, it was manageable. For a week in cold-weather ports with three or four people in the same cabin, I expect it would be a genuine problem.

Savor and Taste

I am a food snob. I acknowledge this freely and try to make allowances for it when I write reviews. The test I apply is simple: if something is bad enough that Janet agrees it’s bad, it’s actually bad. By that measure, the food in Savor and Taste — two of the three complimentary main dining rooms on both ships — failed on multiple occasions. Dishes arrived overseasoned and overcooked. After a couple of unpleasant meals we stopped going and ate exclusively in the Manhattan Room or the specialty restaurants. The Manhattan Room, on its own galley, is an entirely different experience. Why the same cruise line produces such different quality across dining rooms operating on the same ship is a question I can’t answer, but the disparity is real.

The specialty restaurants are genuinely good. They’ve also earned a place in the complaints section, because NCL has moved from a flat cover charge model to à la carte pricing in several of them, and the prices are steep enough to approach what you’d pay at a comparable land-based restaurant. I can accept a cover charge as an exchange for a more intimate, elevated dining experience. Paying full restaurant prices for a meal I’m already paying a cruise fare to eat is a different proposition.

The Lounges on Decks 6 and 7

The Waterfront on Deck 8 works. The lounges on Decks 6 and 7 — the interior spine of 678 Ocean Place — are a study in what happens when a ship designer prioritizes openness over acoustics. Most large ships route foot traffic through a central promenade and position lounges off to the sides with walls and enclosed spaces to absorb noise. NCL took the opposite approach: bars and lounges open outward from a central hub, with no deadening between the traffic flow and the seating. The three-deck atrium amplifies the effect vertically. The result is that interior Decks 6 and 7 are persistently loud in a way that makes any activity requiring conversation — or just a quiet drink — an exercise in patience. The two complimentary dining rooms at either end of the Deck 6 hub share the noise problem. Single-deck rooms should be quieter. They weren’t.

The Pool

The main pool is undersized for a ship carrying 4,000 passengers. I may be understating this. It functions more as a glorified hot tub than a swimming pool — the kind of thing that is technically a pool in the same way that a studio apartment technically has a living room. On our sailings, both at less than full capacity, the pool area was packed by mid-morning on sea days. Janet and I purchased access to the therapy pool in the spa and spent our sea day time there. Another upcharge to get the experience we were looking for. This is a recurring theme with NCL.

The Haven Trade-Off

The Haven is a genuinely excellent product for the guests who book it. For everyone else on the ship, it has a cost. Dedicating the footprint the Haven occupies — decks, suites, private pool, sun deck, restaurant, lounge — requires either reducing cabin count elsewhere, compressing public spaces, or both. NCL appears to have taken the public space trade. The narrow hallways, the undersized pool, the compressed lounge configurations on the interior decks — these feel like consequences of Haven decisions, even if the relationship isn’t always direct. I recognize this is a structural feature of the business model rather than a design failure. But standing in a hallway at 48 inches wide, waiting for a service cart to move so I can pass, it’s hard to feel neutral about it.

The Ugly: Drink Pricing and Rock of Ages

The Drinks

On our Breakaway sailing I decided to skip the beverage package. This was a mistake of the kind you only make once. NCL’s drink prices are substantially higher than other mass-market cruise lines — high enough that a 1.75-liter bottle of premium bourbon at home costs less than two shots cost me at the bar. I am not exaggerating for effect. I wish I were. When I went to the purser’s desk to add a beverage package after this revelation, I discovered that NCL’s drink packages are also more expensive than other lines. The mandatory gratuity is higher as well. As a non-drinker by preference — Janet drinks wine, I occasionally order something — neither of us could drink our way to full value on the premium package. We ended up leaning heavily on NCL’s wine list, which is priced reasonably and was perfectly adequate for our purposes.

The package structure has changed since we sailed, and the update is worth understanding before you book. NCL has consolidated its tiered drink packages into a single Unlimited Open Bar package, now bundled into the Free at Sea promotion — rebranded as More at Sea for 2025 sailings, then rolled back to Free at Sea Plus later that year, because apparently nobody at NCL’s marketing department owns a thesaurus. The net result is cleaner than what I dealt with: one alcoholic package, no tiered upgrades to puzzle over, and a genuinely broad selection including premium spirits. NCL now regularly leads with this as a booking incentive. My original advice still holds — book early to get the package bundled in rather than paying for it separately. The 20% gratuity on the package is mandatory regardless, and Starbucks and bottled water remain conspicuously excluded. Some things don’t change.

Rock of Ages

I want to be clear before I say anything else: the performers in NCL’s production of Rock of Ages were talented. This is not a criticism of the cast. The show itself is another matter.

I had sailed on Royal Caribbean and seen their production of We Will Rock You — a clever, self-aware mashup of Queen songs stitched together with an engaging storyline. I was expecting something in that vein. What I got was an unrelated sequence of 1980s rock tunes by Poison, Whitesnake, and similar bands, connected by what I can only charitably describe as a plot. The content was gratuitously vulgar — not in the way that, say, Chicago is provocatively adult, but in a way that served no purpose the show was otherwise achieving. Janet and I walked out. We were not alone. The show received five Tony nominations and won none of them, which, in retrospect, is the appropriate outcome. NCL pulled it from Breakaway years ago. The broader move away from licensed Broadway shows has followed, for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of Rock of Ages specifically — but I won’t pretend I’m unhappy about the direction.