Last week, I cruised on the Norwegian Dawn with my fiancE, my good friend and his wife. My fiancE and I had cruised Royal Caribbean last year (Adventure of the seas), so we had a good point of comparison.

As mentioned, I was very disappointed in Norwegian's organization at the ports of call, specifically at Great Stirrup Cay. First, I'd recommend that you try to avoid any port that requires "tender boats." Ultimately this means that the cruise ship docks near an island, but not at a dock and you have to take smaller boats to reach the island. One, this means that the ship is still rocking while it sits out there in the ocean. Two, if the 2,000 people are trying to leave the ship to reach the island, and forced to step on smaller ships to get there, it can be a long and painful process. At Great Stirrup Cap (Norwegian's private island - which makes this even more frustrating) we waited nearly two hours to be called to leave the ship...we didn't step foot on their private beach until 12:30 (the ship arrived at 10am). What was even more frustrating was that when we wanted to leave the beach to come back aboard the ship, we had to wait in a line of about 200 people on the beach, in the blazing hot sun for about 30 minutes, just to get on one of the tender boats. Once on the boat, it took another 30 minutes to reach the ship (which was no more than 200 yards away). Once we reached the ship, they made us sit there, rocking back and forth as the tender boat bounced into the cruise ship, as we each handed our room keys to THE ONE PERSON checking people in. I could not believe that there was really only one entrance letting passengers back on. Really? They couldn't open two doors, or make two lines so people didn't have to stand on this tender boat in the middle of the ocean?

So I've spent a significant portion of this review talking about a bad part of the cruise, which isn't really fair because it wasn't all bad. As mentioned above, the food was very good for the most part. The dinners in Aqua and the Venetian are very good (they advertise 12 or 13 restaurants, but these are the only real "restaurants" that you don't have to pay extra for, and the menu is the same at each place, each night) and the dinner at "Le Bistro" was also great (this was the only restaurant we went to that you had to pay extra for). The fresh fruit and French toast wedges at breakfast made the crowded buffet style of the "Garden Cafe" worth while. Read more