Norwegian Dawn Review
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I just got back from our family/friends cruise departing Tampa on Jan 5th on the Norwegian Dawn. There were 13 of us total, ages between 21 and 82.
Let me begin by saying my cousin and I (23 and 27) picked the itinerary based on the number of different locations visited and hardly looked at the ship prior to booking. In the future, I think I would do it the other way around. Pick a cruise based on the ship amenities and go where the boat happens to go. I found myself at all ports looking at the other ships and wondering why we didn't pick one with a water slide, or a rock climbing wall, or a ropes course. All in all, with the poor weather we had at the beginning of our cruise, perhaps those amenities wouldn't have been used anyway.
Let's start with the stateroom. We were on deck 10, room 10557. We picked an interior stateroom planning to spend most of our time on deck or elsewhere on the ship and only needing the room for sleeping. We wanted to save extra money for shore excursions. Originally there were three females in this room (a room for four) ages 22, 23, 27. A week and a half before the cruise, another friends wanted to come with, so we added a fourth (21) to complete our room. Having been on other cruises before I was under the assumption that our room would have two twin beds and two the folded down off of the wall. Imagine my surprise when I walked in to the cabin and there was only one bed on the wall. Thinking we had been put in the wrong room (even though we booked over the phone with a Norwegian rep) without the appropriate number of beds we went to talk to Guest Services. I wasn't overly concerned because within our group we had five other rooms, all of which had extra beds, but knew it would be a headache to move someone. As it turns out we had what was called a "pop out bed". We were not impressed. The first night our room was turned down and basically there was one giant bed that took the entire room. They took the fourth bed and put it in between the two on the floor already, creating one giant bed with the middle section being five inches lower than the two on the ends. This made getting into the bed on the wall nearly impossible and I would hate to imagine what would have happened if there was an emergency as there was no way to get down without stepping on two people. On the second day we were able to talk to the room steward and guest services again to see if there was another option. For the remained of the trip we had the three lower beds in a U shape with the third bed being against the back wall and the tables being stacked together to make room. It was work-able and felt a lot safer.
Cabin Review
We were on deck 10, room 10557. We picked an interior stateroom planning to spend most of our time on deck or elsewhere on the ship and only needing the room for sleeping. We wanted to save extra money for shore excursions. Originally there were three females in this room (a room for four) ages 22, 23, 27. A week and a half before the cruise, another friends wanted to come with, so we added a fourth (21) to complete our room. Having been on other cruises before I was under the assumption that our room would have two twin beds and two the folded down off of the wall. Imagine my surprise when I walked in to the cabin and there was only one bed on the wall. Thinking we had been put in the wrong room (even though we booked over the phone with a Norwegian rep) without the appropriate number of beds we went to talk to Guest Services. I wasn't overly concerned because within our group we had five other rooms, all of which had extra beds, but knew it would be a headache to move someone. As it turns out we had what was called a "pop out bed". We were not impressed. The first night our room was turned down and basically there was one giant bed that took the entire room. They took the fourth bed and put it in between the two on the floor already, creating one giant bed with the middle section being five inches lower than the two on the ends. This made getting into the bed on the wall nearly impossible and I would hate to imagine what would have happened if there was an emergency as there was no way to get down without stepping on two people. On the second day we were able to talk to the room steward and guest services again to see if there was another option. For the remained of the trip we had the three lower beds in a U shape with the third bed being against the back wall and the tables being stacked together to make room. It was work-able and felt a lot safer.