My husband and I cruised on the Dawn to Bermuda, leaving NYC on October 5th. The trip was a family vacation courtesy of my in-laws - all together there were ten of us ranging in age from 15 to about 65 (my husband and I are in our early 30's).

Arriving at the Pier was a bit hairy. We just moved out of NYC so while I am used to NY traffic, the Pier itself was a bit more chaos than even I am used to however I think that was due to the timing (noon) of our arrival. After I parked the car and we got a porter everything went much more smoothly. About a week before the cruise I changed from a room next to our in-laws on Deck 9 to one on Deck 10 (just for a bit of privacy). That was the only real glitch we had checking in - NCL still had us on the 9th deck and I didn't catch the error until after we'd completed check-in so we had to check-in again. Once done we speed through the screening process and were standing on Deck 7 with our complimentary orange juice in minutes. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the buffet while meeting up with family and waiting for our room to be ready.

My memory is a bit hazy but I think our rooms were ready around 2pm. We were in Room 10026 and our excellent Stewards were Boris and Joel. I will request this room again if we are lucky enough to take the Dawn again and I hope we get the same stewards. Read more