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studios in Jacksonville, Florida. This is Cruise Radio. Hey, what's up? My name is Doug Parker. Thank you so

much for checking out this episode of Cruise Radio. Very happy to have you here, my friend. So, yeah, last week we were on Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas, checking that ship out. If you missed any of it or you didn't catch it, it is the very last episode we uploaded. So we go from New York to Miami to check out Norwegian Cruise Lines, brand new Norwegian Escape.

A ship that's a little bit bigger than Norwegian Getaway and Norwegian Breakaway.

She's a breakaway plus class ship.

This ship is 164,000 tons.

She's 169 feet long.

She's 136 feet wide. 20 passenger decks when you include the Haven as well. So that's a lot.

And over 4,000 people, double occupancy. We're talking about 4,200 people can roll on this ship through the Caribbean.

And she's, of course, home ported in Miami here year round. Joining me right now is Jason Leppard from popularcruising.com. What's up,

Jason? It feels a little bit like deja vu like we just did this. Three days ago, we were just on

another ship doing the same thing in a different balcony state room. So we'll talk about the

state room here a little bit as well. So let's first talk about embarkation aboard the ship here

because we embarked in Miami. I got to say, we both have crews out of Miami a lot. And I think it's pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. What do you think about the embarkation of Miami? Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's always the same kind of thing. You know, you go online, get all your documentation printed out, bring it with you, they give you your key card and you're ready to roll.

I've got to say that it wasn't as tech savvy as whenever we were on quantum with the iPads checking in. There was a little cue there for us to get in line. But yeah, once we did get in line, I think everybody arrived at the terminal at one time. Of course, that was also me trying to get on the ship at noon when the buses arrive and everything.

So it took about 30 minutes from curb to ship. But once I got on the ship itself and checked it out, first impressions, just, wow, what did you think? Yeah, it's nice. I mean, it's definitely an evolution of the breakaway and the getaway, which I really liked. Slightly different decor, a little different color palette. But same thing, they've increased the size a bit, like the Haven that's on here, which is their exclusive ship within a ship. That's a deck taller now, but all in all, same kind of thing. You'd be very familiar with the breakway and the getaway to go on this and you'd feel comfortable. I was going to say, and I've said this before in the past two shows that we taped aboard a breakaway and getaway. When you step on this ship, you don't feel like you're on a ship. No, it does. It feels more like a land-based hotel, I would say. You know, you kind of look at the, they have the 6-7-8 place area, or Ocean Place, I think they call it. And they have, it's like the hub of all the entertainment the the restaurants are all there, and yeah, it does.

It feels more like maybe like a shopping mall kind of a feel going down that. Absolutely. And let's talk about the state rooms because we both have balcony state rooms. And it was funny because I was raving, we were raving on the USB ports and our state rooms on Anthem of the Seas. but we hear, I like them even better here, I think, because they're next to your bed,

where Anthem had a portal and a vanity, where now you have one on the lights on the left and right side of the bed, so you can get some dual charging action here with the USB. But I like the state room. This state room feels very long to me. It does feel long. In fact, I think we were commenting, it feels like the balcony is actually larger than the breakaway and the getaway,

so I'm not sure what they did there, but it feels bigger. One thing I also appreciate is the

bathroom. Michael was saying how most cruise ships feel very clinical the bathrooms do, and I have to

say this is a breakaway from the clinical feeling as well because you have the back splash there and it's just gorgeous.

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