Good Caribbean cruise

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Reviews: 4

Helpful Votes: 25

Review summary

This is my review of my 11 day Southern Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Dawn. I just got off of it on Friday, Jan 13th. This was my 8th cruise ( 6th on NCL) and my second solo. My first solo was only 5 days and several years ago so I felt like this was almost my first solo over again. We had a bit of a fiasco on embarkation day with fog delaying us in Tampa. I don’t want to dwell on that too much. NCL corporate should have given notice sooner to people. We received a text at 2 pm in the afternoon not to go to the pier till after 7:30 pm that night. Many of the people were already there. However I had been following the Facebook group and knew they turned away people so I stayed at my hotel with other people from other cruises. I hooked with two other couples from my cruise also and we decided we weren’t even going at 7:30 because it would be a madhouse. We left our hotel at 9 pm. Got there about 9:15. I got onboard about 11. Many people waited in a line for hours and hours. Some of that I blame on NCL that did not communicate. Some I blame on people that just had to rush to the pier no matter what. Then they had no place to wait comfortably. We had to skip Key West the next day to get back on schedule. We were given $100 onboard credit for the delay. Later on the cruise we were given back the $22 Key West port charges in our accounts. Now about the ship- I first thought the layout of the ship was a bit confusing compared to the Escape and the Pearl I have been on. There is only one elevator that goes up all the way to the 14th deck. The others only go to 12. I hadn’t encountered that before. I am capable of walking but for those can’t that is a problem. I did learn to get around but it seemed to take longer than usual. One thing I did really like about the layout is that casino is at the end of a deck. I love, love the Escape but I don’t like that the smoky casino is in the middle of a deck on it and you have to walk through it to get to some places. The staff on the Dawn is amazing! They were very courteous and helpful. My cabin steward Denmark was outstanding! I stayed in a balcony on deck 9. I paid for an inside and used my points from my NCL credit card to do a double meta upgrade to a balcony. It was well worth it on this trip due to the length of the cruise and the beautiful weather to be able to sit on my balcony. The shower seemed a bit larger than showers in other balconies. It was rather spacious. However I had almost no water pressure. Or if I turned it to have more a bit more water pressure then it was lukewarm almost to chllly. But I managed. The door into the toilet is very narrow. I’m not a big person and I turned sideways to go in. I had read about that in other people’s comments and I definitely see what they mean. But I was on a cruise. Better than being at home in cold PA any day! The food was very good in the main dining rooms and the specialty dining rooms. Venetian gets very busy and gets long waits some nights especially on port days. You may want to make a reservation there to avoid that. It isn’t necessary to do that but otherwise you might wait a while to get in. One night we ate at Aqua the other main dining at a prime time and it took us a very long time to get our food. I thought maybe they don’t have as much staff in there?? The only other thing I will say about the food is that I thought there wasn’t as much choice on the buffet. I had read somewhere about NCL may be cutting back on the buffet. Maybe they have started doing that. Either they have or it is just less choice than I’m used to on the Escape that I have cruised the most. Entertainment-is always a little less I have found on the smaller ships. I cruised on the Pearl in June and the only difference I really found between it and the Escape was the entertainment. The bigger ships have the broadway shows like Choir of men and the smaller ships don’t. The Dawn did have an excellent comedian as did the Pearl. One thing is that with these shows that you don’t need to reserve like on the Dawn then you don’t know when they are going to be till that day when you see them in the daily. So you can’t plan with your dining reservations etc. I wish they would post outside the theaters their schedules for the cruise. There was a great rock and roll show that was put on only once early in the cruise and I missed it. I can’t believe in an 11 day cruise they only did it once. The saving of towels - this happens on every ship. People go out early in the morning and stake out their chairs and then don’t show up for hours. Stop being so entitled! It was a fantastic cruise. I am probably going to take a very similar Southern Caribbean cruise at the same time next year on the Pearl so I can hit a couple more ports that I didn’t see yet. I love NCL!

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas

Oranjestad, Aruba

Willemstad, Curacao

Tampa, Florida

Disembarkation

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