We did a Mexico cruise in a spa suite on Bliss, which is not a sister ship of Breakaway but similar. We also have sailed on 11
DCL cruises, in non-Concierge and Concierge.
NCL Haven was not for us. The service was lacking, from the stateroom host to the concierge to the dining room staff. We felt it was amateur at best. Our stateroom host‘s schedule was all over the place. We are so used of having our room magically done on DCL that coming back at 11AM after leaving at 8AM for breakfast and seeing it not cleaned yet surprised us. This was a spa suite with a jacuzzi, so they should expect you to spend so time in your room enjoying the bath. The host coming in at all hours to do his job is not very compatible with that.
The concierge did not seem to care about our requests and did not do any effort. One of the problems with anytime dining is that you need to book your meals, much like ADRs in WDW. On day one, we went to the Haven restaurant and realized that the menu was not very interesting and that it remained the same throughout the cruise. We are used to DCL‘s changing menus or Celebrity Luminae, the suite restaurant, which serves gastronomic dishes that also change every day, even on a 14-nights cruise. So we decided, because of that, that we would visit the other restaurants for dinner. Of course, we had not reserved any meal in advance since we thought we would be in Haven every night. On Celebrity, we never eat anywhere but Luminae.
Every restaurant except the BBQ place was sold out by then. We thought that, being concierge, they could squeeze us in. We asked the concierge to try to book three restaurants. Not only could he not make anything magically work, but he never got back to us. Eventually, one reservation appeared in our schedule and we never got news about it or the other two. All he seemed to have done is watch and wait for people to cancel. When we first arrived in the concierge lounge, he treated us as if we had sneaked in there and ask to see our sea card before letting us through to the bar. I get that we are in our 40’s and not the usual concierge crowd, but that’s a big difference with Disney Concierge, where they have a system in place to identify you to the hosts without them asking you directly your name. When they come and see you the first time, they call you by your first name.
Food is subjective, so I’ll just say that NCL food was not for us, except the Indian dishes at the buffet. The upscale Italian place was nowhere near Palo, at a higher cost. We had no interest in finishing our dishes at the other restaurants we tried, and payed for. It was just not very good. The main problem in every restaurant was the service. Servers didn’t know the dishes, the dishes arrived at different times, servers were arguing near us to determine who was taking care of our table...
The only things we positively remember from NCL were the shows - we had Jersey Boys - our butler, the spa room, the bartender at the Haven lounge, the Beatles tribute band, the trivias and the views from the observation deck. The crowd was strange - they had booked three singles group representing a third of the crowd, so you can guess the alcohol was flowing from morning til night, and there was also a furries group that paraded around the ship - but that was very specific to this sailing.
All of that turned us off the NCL completely. If that’s what you get in Haven, we have no intention of trying a regular class cabin anytime soon. We had a much better time on all our non-concierge DCL cruises and would chose that over NCL anytime. I understand that every cruise line has an audience. Our friend sails 4 times a year on NCL and swears by them. It’s just not for us...
