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Norwegian Dawn Cruise Review to Caribbean - Western

Cruiser429

Contributor Level: Purser

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 68

Overall rating:

5 out of 5

Verified Review

7 Night Western Caribbean (New Orleans Roundtrip)

Sail date: December 27, 2015

Ship: Norwegian Dawn

Cabin type: Suite

Cabin number: 12026

Traveled as: Large Group

Reviewed: 8 years ago

Review summary

The highlight of our ship board experience was our group dinners at Teppanyaki and Le Bistro. The service in both of these specialty restaurants was amazing. and the food was phenomenal. Everyone in our party was raving about them. We also received great service in Aqua, one of the complimentary dining rooms.

This ship is one of the smaller in the fleet and so you can feel the motion of the ocean most of the time. If you are prone to sea sickness make sure to pack your psi bands or remedies so that you can enjoy yourself.

The stateroom we had was lovely and our steward was fantastic! The shipboard entertainment was good as well. The excursions we took through NCL were well organized and had fantastic guides. The spa is open until 10 pm, so you will be able to enjoy it after your excursions if you are thinking of purchasing a thermal suite pass.

There is no dance club on this ship, they use the Spinnaker lounge as a multipurpose room. It works for entertainment but it doesn't really have a club feel. Because they dedicate so much space to specialty restaurants there are only 3 late night indoor bars so this is not really the ship to take if you are looking to stay up all night. My group being who they are, we still had a costume night and did formal night on our own, as you can see from the picture above.

I was a little disappointed with the communication from Norwegian. We were looking forward to their white/glow party and formal nights. Because of freestyle dining they never did really announce either and it turns out they canceled the white party with no notification.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Le Bistro and Teppanyaki were amazing. La Cucina was all right but not great. Everyone else liked Cagney's but as a vegetarian there wasn't a good dish that was available to me. Aqua had amazing service and great food. The Venetian room had mediocre service and matching food.

Service and Staff

5 out of 5

Ship Quality

5 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5

The cabin was spacious and lovely. There was abundant storage. We didn't use about half of it and we didn't pack light. That is also likely because there were only 2 of us in a cabin that can sleep up to 6. The bathroom had double sinks, a separate bathtub (with bath salts) and shower. The shower was of the rainfall variety with a separate sprayer (so you don't have to do contortions to rinse off). The steward, butler, and concierge were fantastic.