We are a married couple in our late 40s. We chose the Dawn cruise based on the price and itinerary which included Bermuda, Nassau, and the NCL private island. We used $1,000 in certificates from our NCL MasterCard to help pay for the cruise. Sailing on the 5/20/06 with the Norwegian Dawn was our 3rd cruise with NCL and 6th cruise overall. We have also sailed on Carnival and Royal Caribbean. It was also our first cruise with just my DW and myself and we looked forward to taking a cruise that did not have a lot of families and children.

Day One

We live in CT and downtown Manhattan is only a 1 ½ hour drive. We left our home at 9:30am and arrived at the parking lot just before 11:00am. There were three cruise ships at the pier that morning (Dawn, Spirit, and the Carnival Legend), so it was a little congested. We decided to drive straight up to the parking lot instead of stopping to drop off the luggage with the porters. We had seen on their website that the parking authority would accept credit cards for payment, but when we pulled up, the attendant said the machine was down and that we would have to pay in cash for the $168 weekly parking fee. Once we had our car cleared to enter the parking lot by security, we found a spot to park near the entrance and elevators. We lucked out in that a porters cart was sitting near our car. So, we loaded our 4 pieces of luggage onto it and rolled it over to the large freight elevators they use. Once downstairs, we found a porter to add our luggage to the cart for our deck location on the ship. Read more