Hello fellow cruisers! I will try and cover everything discussed in other reviews and just about the boat in general and give a very reliable and honest review. I traveled with a group of 26 people all over the age of 18 (we were 28 but two had last minute emergencies and had to cancel). We booked the Norwegian Dawn leaving from Tampa and going to Roatan, Honduras, Belize, Costa Maya and Cozumel. Since we cruised on NCL before we were aware that Norwegian offers a beverage package. That is unlimited drinks on board, which for our group saved us thousands of dollars. It is hard to find information on this so here is how it works...You must be a group of 20 or more people in a minimum of 8 rooms. There are 2 packages to choose from, regular or premium. Everyone in the party has to take the package and the same package. Anyone under 21 needs to take the soda package. We took the regular package which included call liquor (Stoli, Bacardi, etc) and most frozen drinks. The cost was $322 for the week. Now on with the rest of the review.

Getting on the boat probably took about 2 hours which was much longer than last year. The first issue came up when my friends got to the front desk and the Guest Services Rep said they do not offer a liquor package on board (which we paid for up front). After getting a manager involved we were able to get that straightened out to an extent but they had no idea what was included. I immediately sought out the beverage manager and spoke with him. His name was David and he explained that they were not used to anyone getting the package and were unfamiliar with it and he needed to confirm what was and was not included. I told him what was included last year and after about 24 hours he was able to confirm everything (except mudslides which were included last year but not this year). We had a problem at every bar getting drinks until everything was straightened out. Very frustrating. If you offer out a service then your staff should be well informed! After those discussions I went to the room and the bags were already there. My roommate has some seasickness issues so months ahead of time we requested to have a room where the beds faced the front of the boat (so he didn't feel like he was moving backwards when in bed). NCL had verified ahead of time that the layout of this room (cabin 9686) met my expectations. Sadly when I got on board the room configuration did not meet my request but they had moved the beds from one wall to the other. By doing this there was no way to watch TV since the TV is now behind us. They stated there were no other rooms available and nothing could be done. The rooms were very small. Plenty of storage but not much room to move around. Great mid ship location, great balcony views, no noise and not too bad to get to the one set of elevators. My room steward was terrible. The room was never made up and not once did we ever get the towel animals that everyone is always talking about.

We hit almost every specialty restaurant and the both the Venetian and Aqua which are the free dining rooms. Getting the check for the cover charge in the specialty restaurants is not very quick but the food more than makes up for it in most of them. For this trip my favorite had to be the Asian restaurant, Bamboo. We had Sushi there one night, Chinese another night and had the noodle bar for lunch one day. Service was great and so was the food. The Food and Beverage manager even sent over 2 bottles of wine for us after hearing about our problems at the Churascaria. We had eaten at the Churascaria on the Epic and it was fantastic. Unfortunately it was the exact opposite on this boat. The salad bar was always empty and the service is the worst I have ever experienced anywhere. A friend of mine ordered a few bottles of expensive wine and they brought them to the table and didn't open them. We had to wait 20 min to get someone to open the wine. 15-20 min spans between each time someone came over with meat and it was gone before everyone in the group was able to try it. I asked for more rice and potatoes and that took 30 minutes. Ridiculous. Overall it took 3 hours to have dinner and another 30 minutes to pay all the bills. As a result, we missed the show as usual (I will get to that later). We had a birthday dinner in the Italian restaurant and the food was pretty good, although I do think the food on the Epic was better. My favorite dishes there were the beef carpacio and the penne with Italian sausage. The food at the 24 hour restaurant called the Blue Lagoon, is not the best but it does the trick. Stick to the wings and burgers in this place. Read more