We arrived at the pier at noon and headed for the Latitudes member line which in and of itself was quite long, but still short compared to the "regular" line. While we waited there were TVs around showing the new EPIC ship, it looks very cool! The wait to check in was about 30 minutes, not bad. As usual you were greeted with hand sanitizer and champagne.

CABIN: We were in an inside cabin on deck 10 FWD (#10587), cabins were ready around 2pm and we received our luggage maybe around 5pm. For 2 people the size of the room was fine, especially when you don't spend much time there. We had a 1 large suitcase and 1 medium sized. We put the medium bad into the large and they fit standing up in the closet so they were out of the way. The room was clean. The bathroom was showing some signs of age. I.e. The clothes line in the shower didn't retract back and was starting to look a bit grimy. Our safe did not work, but within 30 minutes of me calling about it they came to fix it and after that it was no problem at all. My only gripe with an inside room is the darkness in the morning. You never know what time it is. Your cell phone is acting wacky because you are at sea so you can't rely on that for the time (half the time it was on California time...very strange!) and the only way to see the time was to look at the display on the phone, which is dark, so you'd need to turn on the light to see it. Next time I would bring little clock that is visible in the dark. Our cabin stewards were very friendly and always got our room clean and turned down quickly.

SHIP: Some people say that the ship is looking old, but I didn't really get that feeling. I thought it looked great. The Dawn is the same model ship as the Gem which we sailed last year. One of the things that we loved on the Gem was the bar and sitting area at the back of the ship on I think it was deck 12. The Dawn didn't have anything at the back of the ship except for the kids' pool, so we missed that. Our sailing was completely sold out, but I never really felt like I was crowded by loads of people. Read more