This was only our second cruise but I travel a lot, more than 40 weeks out of the year, and after our first cruise with Princess we had a level of expectation for service and quality and NCL Dawn did not meet that expectation. First I should admit if I would have done a little more research I might have not chosen this ship. There is smoking in many of the open areas and I was not aware of that. Open smoking around the pool, throughout all of the open decks and in some of the bars. Trying to relax at the pool to only have someone join you and light up ruins the relaxation for me. There is only one pool worth talking about (the kids pool is too small and really is only for those 5 and under) so yes the ONE pool is very crowed with both adults enjoying their vacation (drinking, smoking, etc.) and kids and did i mention the pool is small.

Our room steward was great and that was the highlight of our cruise. He was the only staff we we tipped extra and he deserved it.

FOOD - oh my this is where the disappointed really hit home. You pay a descent amount for this type of vacation with the expectation of the food being included however, when the service and the quality are poor you end up paying extra for the specialty restaurants just to seek out better food. We ate breakfast in the garden grill 3 times and each time the food (especially the eggs) were poor. So when we discovered the Blue Lagoon breakfast was saved..... We ate at the Aqua restaurant, I had a steak and my husband had some seafood dish neither of us finished even half of the meal. We were just a few bites into our salads when our full meal arrived. The waiters were not even paying attention to when we were done eating, when our drinks needed to be refilled or if we were even pleased with our food. We also visited 3 of the specialty restaurants and both were good but not "write home" good and if they were local restaurant back home they would not be on my list to be a regular at. We also ate at the Bamboo restaurant which was one of the complimentary restaurant and I must say here we found the worse service and the food was only mediocre. We waited almost 5 minutes at the table to get water and then another few minutes to be able to put in our drink. Read more