Port of calls and some staff could be improved

Norwegian Dawn Cruise Review to Caribbean - Western

cosgrovepr

Contributor Level: Purser

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 13

Overall rating:

3 out of 5

Verified Review

7 Night Western Caribbean (New Orleans Roundtrip)

Sail date: December 23, 2016

Ship: Norwegian Dawn

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 5557

Traveled as: Family (older children)

Reviewed: 7 years ago

Review summary

The entertainment in the Stardust is excellent. We have seen theatre all over the world and enjoyed these shows immensely. Even the crew shows were fun. Cruise Director Dan is doing a great job with all of this, also loved the change of pace from sequins to Second City.

Your housekeeping staff are good guys, kept everything ship shape and were always pleasant to be around.

The service in the Venetian is SLOW and poorly paced. We sat down for dinner the first night and did not even have a chance to look at the menu before they were asking for a drink order. Offer a wine menu maybe? a chance to figure out what we were eating first? Then the food took forever to come out. Dinner took easily 1 1/2 hours. We tried it for lunch the next day and the poor pace. We did not go back again. We had a much better experience in the Aqua dining room, O'Sheehans and Bamboo.

The activities on this cruise are lame. Days at sea are boring if you are not a lay around the pool all day person. ( Princess for example, excels in this area.)

The Costa Maya and Harvest Caye ports are uninspiring. Both cruise ship made ports and no real culture, don't think you are actually seeing Belize there, we took an excursion to the ruins in Costa Maya, and then went to Mahahual for lunch. Meh. Roatan and Cozumel were much better.

It's a smaller ship, so decks were closed nearly every night due to the boat rocking.

Guest services are snotty and unhelpful even though we had no real issues, just had questions.

All the ship directors are out and about and available all the time, we saw the Hotel Director, Mr. Alain, everywhere and he was very approachable. Photo services were great too.

We came back relaxed and happy, and that is the point, right?

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Onboard Activities

1 out of 5

Entertainment

5 out of 5

Children's Programs

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

5 out of 5

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

I did not like that one of my children had to sleep on a pull out bed, basically sleeping on the floor. While the other had a typical pull down bunk. I think this should have been disclosed with this cabin.