Norwegian Dawn Review
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Regular cruisers, my wife and I still had not had the chance to sail the Norwegian Line, so when a July 12, 2013 trip to Bermuda sailing out of Boston, our hometown, came up we jumped aboard. The ship was the Norwegian Dawn, hereinafter, the Norwegian Doom. Early signs of trouble showed up at portside passenger registration, when we were told the ship, rated for 2,224 passengers, had been bumped up to about 3,000 the extra souls on board all apparently children. Clearly, the oil of fresh pressed humanity would soon be oozing out of the Doom's steel pores like sweat dripping down a first time marathoner with 60 pounds still to lose.
Visions immediately sprang to mind of a repeat of the Doom's November 27, 2009 incident when it lost all power while returning to Miami from the blazing Caribbean. The more than 2,000 baked potato passengers endured no running water, electricity, air conditioning or toilets. Add another thousand to that number with this sailing, toss in an extra large pinch of panicky, bawling children and their overwrought patents and the potential for high mayhem on the seas stretched before us like so many ominous Norwegian red Dawns.
If you have ever yearned for an authentic reenactment of your immigrant forbears Coming to America experience, this was the trip for you. Almost every cabin of the Doom was bursting with people, with bunk beds folded down everywhere and elated children bouncing up and down on them like crazed puppies. In our cabin it got no better. The ship's walls were cheap tenement house thin. The two little next-door girls loved to sing and sometimes, their father, who had some pretty decent pipes, also joined in on occasion. It was like shipboard Glee, but of the fever induced kind. I suppose I could have banged on their cabin door, but how often could I do that? These little girls loved to sing their lungs out, AM to PM. Instead, when things got especially raucous I joined in, my crappy voice immediately ruining their dulcet duets and triumphant trios. That usually put a stop to it, at least for a while. Then there were the Ritalin-deprived kids directly above us who continually crashed back and forth down the ship corridor, a cacophonous stampede of desperate little feet with nowhere to exit.