We just returned from the Dawn on a back-to-back cruise from March 7th to the 21st. The first leg was a 5 day to the western Caribbean(Grand Cayman and Cozumel) the second leg was a 9 day to the southern Caribbean(Samana, Tortola, Antigua, Barbados, St Kitt's) "Overall, the cruise was wonderful and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We love the freestyle cruising and also the "suite" life and we now would go no other way.

When we first arrived at the ship we were directed to the VIP check-in which was in a room situated directly after we passed through security. However, when we first entered the room we wondered if we had made a mistake when booking this cruise. Unknown to us, it was spring break week and there were 6 young fellows who had booked one of the suites and obviously they had begun their pre-cruise celebrating early in the morning. They were severely intoxicated and extremely belligerent and when we saw this we thought that we were in for some unpleasant times. However, this turned out to be an anomaly. There were over 1200 students on the ship and even the ship's crew were concerned that they were in for some interesting times over the first 5 days of the cruise. All of these fears went for not as it was a pleasure to be around all these young people. They all thoroughly enjoyed themselves but at all times were polite and respectful. After a very smooth and quick check-in we had expected to be escorted to our suite (we had read about this in previous reviews) but this did not happen. I think this was mainly due to the fact that Anshuman, the concierge, was trying to control these young men and minimize their impact on the other passengers and therefore he could not attend to the other suite passengers under his control. We were grateful for his intervention and so off to our suite we went.

Accomodations We were in an AD category suite (10726) which, although it was lovely, did not really fit the description. It is called a romance suite but there is nothing about it that gives you the romantic feeling. Luckily we don't need anything to give us that romantic feeling....LOL. The room was quite spacious and the balcony was amazing as it had enough room to accommodate two large recliners and a small table. The bathroom was a tad small but it really didn't matter to us because it is not a place where you spend a whole lot of time. There was a huge closet and quite sufficient storage for the rest of our clothes. The room had an espresso/cappuccino machine which we thoroughly enjoyed. It was a real treat to start every morning with a cup or two of espresso on the spacious deck. On the first day of each leg of the back-to-back cruise we had a chilled bottle of champagne delivered to our room. We also had arranged for a bar setup which was there when we first arrived on the ship. We did this because we enjoy having a cocktail on our balcony each evening before we go out to dinner and did not want to try and smuggle libations onto the ship and risk being sent to the "naughty room". One of the things that we did bring onto the ship was a supply of Coke whenever we were in port due to the fact that the ship only serves Pepsi and I am a loyal Coke drinker. There is no problem bringing any amount of soda or water onto the ship. I have seen numerous comments on other sites comparing the forward and aft cabins and so I thought I would give our opinions as we have stayed in both ends. We found that the aft cabins were much more quiet than the fwd cabins. Also, you get the sound of the wake at the aft which is quite soothing. I have also seen comments about soot from the stack on your balcony as well as debris and we did not experience either. The only thing that we did experience was water from upper decks. Whenever they cleaned the upper decks at night they would sweep the excess off the edge and it would then fall onto the balcony causing your chair cushions to get wet(we got around this by folding up the cushions at night). We were on deck 10 which had less of an over-hang which was great for tanning but also let a lot more water to fall on the balcony. If you were on one of the lower decks, the over-hang is much more and so it limits the amount of water that falls onto the balcony. One other thing that we noticed on the fwd cabins was that the dividers between the balconies were not full height and therefore the privacy was very limited. We were in a fwd cabin on the Sun and the dividers were full size and therefore you had total privacy...... I guess each ship is different. Staff Our butler was Akhmad who was a very nice and pleasant individual. He ensured that we always had lots of coffee, fresh glasses and the ice bucket was always filled. Every day he would deliver a plate of h'or d'oeuvres which we enjoyed with our pre-dinner cocktails. We are not very demanding people and so we do not use the services of the butler as other individuals but it is nice to know that he is there to attend to any special requests. Our cabin stewards were Maria and Ronald who were also very nice people that always kept our cabin neat and clean. The concierge was Anshuman who is also quite pleasant. We only used his services to make dinner arrangements so again we probably didn't take full advantage of having him available to us. The only disappointment that we had with him was when I asked him if it was possible to have our bar setup replenished (under estimated our need when requested). He said that he would check into it for us but never did get back to us with an answer. I guess we could have pursued the matter but I am the type of an individual that doesn't chase after someone that doesn't respond to a request. It would have been nice, however, to receive an answer no matter whether it is yes or no. We also enjoyed all of the staff in the various restaurants.....all very pleasant and personable. All in all, we feel that Norwegian have excellent staff at all levels who make your cruise experience very enjoyable. Read more