I'm a huge fan of cruising. I'm 32 years old and this is my 13th cruise (2nd time on NCL line). I went on the Norwegian Dawn with my husband and some family, traveling 6/30-7/7. I've sailed in many different places on Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and of course NCL. After reading mixed reviews, I had medium expectations of the Dawn.

Embarkation was the worst I've ever seen. Nobody organizing things and the check-in people at the desk were not chock full of information nor overly friendly. There was a note lying on the desk noting we'd be arriving at Nassau Bahamas about 6 hours late, leaving us only a little time there. This is HUGE. That was the day we planned to go shopping and now we weren't getting there till 6pm after the stores close!! Each cruiser was getting $25 credit for the inconvenience. This didn't make me feel better at all. They blamed it on engine problems. What kills me is this ship was JUST dry docked to fix the engine problems!

The ship is overall gorgeous. As an Interior Designer, I do have to say that many of the fabrics used on the upholstery in some of the public lounges were VERY cheap looking (Spinnaker Lounge, Dazzles) and the cabins were EXTREMELY small but worse than that, not well designed (square corners on the furniture instead of round making it hard to get around). The bathrooms were very well laid out, though. I also would have made the Bamboo restaurant look more Asian in theme and had fun with that. Other than that, the ship really does look beautiful and is well designed. Although no drink holders in the huge Stardust Theater! NCL would be making LOTS more money on selling drinks in the theater if they had drink holders!!! Shows were good, by the way! "Band on the Run" was surprisingly extremely entertaining. Read more