Overall a good erperience

Norwegian Dawn Cruise Review to Caribbean - Western

Cruises: 7+ cruises
Reviews: 6
Helpful Votes: 290

Overall rating:

4 out of 5
Verified Review
Norwegian Dawn

9 Night Western Caribbean (New Orleans Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 11, 2016

Ship: Norwegian Dawn

Cabin type: Suite

Cabin number: 11512

Traveled as: Singles/Friends

Reviewed: 7 years ago

Review summary

NCL does a great job when it comes to their entertainment. The special entertainment is always good and the regular on ship entertainment does a very good job. We had a very nice mini suite for this cruise. Very comfortable. I wish they had more free movies in the rooms. Have basically a free on demand system like we have experienced on Celebrity. We enjoy renting in the room and watching a movie some times. Movie and general TV selections in the room are very limited. Our room steward was GREAT! What a very efficient and all around great guy. We enjoyed the large main dining room for breakfast. The Agua Dining room for some dinners and the 24 hour McSheenans pub themed sit down café for breakfast and lunch. We ate at this pub for all our lunches. We loved this place. Our three up charged package for fancy dining room experiences was  Great in the new Mexican Restaurant. Good dinner, great service and Fantastic Spicy Margaritas! Teppanyaki dinner was almost terrible. Our show was fine.  Very short, but OK. Very loud space! Could not hear anything but the large family of children screaming behind us. Food was extremely over salted and thus terrible. I ate it as I was hungry, but my gut, mouth and lips hated me for two days afterwards. The extreme salt literally burned my mouth and lips!  It was a total waist of our 2nd fancy dinner. Bummer. Final fancy dinner was the steak house. We should have known there was a problem with the very slow disorganized service to even get our order. The two couples next to us at the next table got up and had a total loud melt down about how bad the service was. Very upsetting to us as we were sitting there trying to enjoy our long wait for our food. The waiter we had seem to be having a personal melt down the whole evening. She would disappear for long periods of time. Other waiters were come over and apologize and try and get our meal going forward again. The food was clearly not freshly prepared for us and we ended up taking our dessert to go as we just did not want to sit there any longer and watch the continued melt down going on around us. It was not a good experience. A major bummer as we have eaten at the steak house several times on past cruises with NCL and had wonderful experiences. For the first time on NLC, the Aqua dining room had the fantastic food and service! Why upgrade to the fancy dining rooms? Not worth it this cruise. That is for sure! Only the Mexican Restaurant was a great experience. Over all, the crew were great. NCL does a goo basic job for the price you pay! They are a great less expensive cruise line. I feel the main dining rooms are getting better and better and the new addition of more included dining in other restaurants is great. The fancy dining is going downhill and not work the money when it comes to our experiences. Entertainment always the highlight of the cruise!

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5

Entertainment

5 out of 5

Children's Programs

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

Ship Quality

5 out of 5
The Dawn's new look due to recent remodel is very nice!

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5
Great space and views over all. Only negative is you are directly across from main access door for staff. A lot of opening and closing of the door all hours of the day and night! Would try and not have this room next time due to location. Our room steward was fantastic!

Ship tip

New Mexican Restaurant is hard to find. Across from the Spa entrance on aft of ship. They have a small bar. Fantastic Bar tenders. Try the Spicy Margarita! Order up table side Guacamole! You can enjoy the bar without dining in the restaurant!

Ports of call

New Orleans, Louisiana

3 out of 5

George Town, Grand Cayman

3 out of 5

Cozumel, Mexico

3 out of 5

Coxen Hole, Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras

3 out of 5

Harvest Caye, Belize

3 out of 5
We were the first ship to the new Private Island. Very nice space. Make sure to walk through the butter fly enclosure and look at the animal enclosures. Everything costs money on this island. We did buy some tasty honeys and jams from the small cart selling locally made delicacies. We walked around and then went back to the ship for a late lunch. Why dine and drink on the island for additional $ when you can do the same fully included on the ship with the meal and drink package we had.

Costa Maya (Mahahual), Mexico

3 out of 5
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1 Comment

Gwbigdog    1 year ago

Thanks for sharing your cruise.

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