We have cruised 6 times with NCL and this was our 4th trip on the Dawn. We took along another couple who were 1st time cruisers and I hoped that they would have a wonderful 1st time cruise experience that would live up to everything that they have heard.

Embarkation was easy, we arrived a little early with as we had an early flight from Ohio but as Gold members of NCL's latitudes program, once we cleared security we skipped the line to check in. We only waited about 20 minutes to board and it would have been much sooner had we not arrived before 11:30am. This is our second time at the Tampa port and it is very nice with friendly people, my only issue is that there always seems to be some issue with their passport reader, it took multiple swipes of our passports to (including my friends who have brand new ones) to get the system to read them. We had the same issue last year.

Our Cabin: We were in a mid-ship mini suite which is more than comfortable for a couple, I am not sure I would try putting more than 2 in this room unless they are small children. Our cabin was clean and comfortable, although we did have to request bath robes that are usually on hand in a mini-suite. Ronaldo our cabin steward it seemed had many cabins assigned to him and yet if we needed something extra (towels, ice,etc.), we simply left him a note and it was handled. Read more