We ended up in a standard Balcony Room, #10728 on the front starboard side of the Escape. So we booked a guaranteed balcony and put in our best effort to upgrade but that never happened. This cruise was more of a last minute decision (Booked past final payment) and by the time we booked there were no more Haven rooms available for 4 of us. One more thing to point out is that on our last two NCL cruises we were in the Haven (Our 1st NCL cruise did not have a Haven). All this to set the ground level for the type of cruisers we are and that our experience overall may be very different than that of most on Cruise Critic. This often serves us well but sometime, not so much. A typical excursion for us is to quickly get as far away from the tourist locations as we possibly can and explore the local less beaten path of adventure. When it comes to excursions, nothing is more painful for us than to have to stand in a line with 50 other people and be told where to go, what to do and how long we have to do it. An example of this is that we make an effort to never set foot in an elevator for the entire cruise. Living in the mountains of the PNW we are also highly active outdoors and trend towards a health conscious lifestyle. Along with the 2 bottles of wine we planned on bringing, at an average 10-15$ per drink we would have to drink another 20-25 drinks to make it worth it. Not that it's expensive or that we won't have a glass of beer or wine with dinner and occasionally we will partake in a cocktail while we are out and about but one or two nights of 2-3 drinks is plenty for us. We cancelled the drinking package for this cruise as my wife and I couldn't justify spending $300 on alcohol (The cost of gratuities for the free drink package).

Our family is probably quite different than that of the average cruiser. I'll share a little of their experiences as well. Parents at the 50 year mark and the kids were 18 and 16 respectively. In the past years our 2 oldest would be with us but both having recently been married and starting out in their adult lives, they could not find the time to take off and get away on this one with us. Whilst on this cruise I kept a list of notes during the past week and thought I would share based on our experience on our 4th Cruise with NCL and 7th overall. Thomas and Tortola with an initial planned stop in Great Stirrup Cay.

We were on the 12/9 sailing to Dominican Republic, St. Not even a few hours ago we disembarked the Norwegian Escape.

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