My wife and I joined 15 Door County WI camping friends for this cruise, Jan. 20-27th. All our worries were needless. Our local travel agent arranged everything so we had transfers from Miami airport to the Miami port. We arrived at the docks about 11:45 AM and it only took 35 minutes to get processed through. We then boarded the Dawn and had lunch on the 12th deck, the Garden Cafe. We were in our stateroom by 2 PM. We had an inside cabin but it had adequate room, great storage and hang-up room and a nice bathroom with shower. We loved the room but we were next to a crew storage room and under the casino, so it was noisy parts of the night. Sea sickness? No problem. My wife got the patch and I started with Bonine, which was supposed to be the less drowsy variety drug. All I wanted to do was sleep the first day so I stopped taking the drug. None of our party of 17 got ill and we had two days of heavy seas. I personally would not take a drug for a cruise, but have it available. Food! Wow! Out of all our eating, maybe only one meal wasn't great. The Garden Cafe was the buffet open until 11:30 PM each day. There were six lines, so we never waited for food. The variety and taste was excellent. We loved the fresh fruits (and dried fruits). We ate most of our breakfasts here. We had omelets (egg beaters) everyday along with cereal, fruits, bacon, potatoes and rolls. We also ate lunch everyday here. They had great burgers and fries along with something different every day. Fantastic. For supper we ate almost every night at Aqua. It was first class. The menu was different every night. Our waiter was a gem. We asked for him every night. They accommodated all 17 of us nicely. We had never had such fancy and good tasting food. It was presented beautifully. One night we ate at Impressions, the Italian restaurant. It was excellent also. Some of the group paid $20 extra per person at Cagney's, the steak place. They enjoyed it but were happy to get back to Aqua. The Venetian is another restaurant that serves the same menu as Aqua. It was beautiful. We ate breakfast there a few mornings. We now know how the rich eat! There is no need to pay extra at the specialty restaurants but we did hear great comments about them. Entertainment: They had two shows a night. They were first class. They had great musicians, dancers, comedians, magician and acrobats. The shows were 50 minutes which was perfect. The cruise director, Pedro, was fun as was his entire staff. There was always good music or shows in the evenings. There were plenty of lectures, games, exercise, bingo, classes etc throughout the ship during the day. Every crew member was super friendly and there were over a 1000. The crew talent show was fun too. If you got bored on this cruise, you weren't paying attention. We also enjoyed walking the 7th deck in the morning. It was 1/3 mile all the way around. There was a jogging track on the 13th deck. It was great just to sit on these decks and read or snooze. The exercise room had elipticals, treadmills, weights and some weight machines. It was open 24/7 and quite nice. Excursions: We went on the walking tour of Samana and the best of Tortola and St. Thomas. Samana was a disappointment. Our tour ended up with a tour of a hotel, almost a sales pitch. The other tours were okay. I would research the tours a little more carefully next time. The Dawn had many options for other tours and we wished we had tried some of those. My friends ended the cruise with an everglades tour that they loved. In general, it was a great cruise. The seas were heavy on the last day so we could not tender to the private island, instead we stopped at Nassau. The Dawn was a beautiful ship maintained very nicely. The crew was fabulous. The shows were fun. The food was unbelievable. Activities were plentiful. After three nights,we had to give up our 11 PM meal at the Garden Cafe because we were just too tired of eating. Our friends went to the 24 hour Blue Lagoon for comfort food after midnight. They loved that. We enjoyed the ice cream cones by the pool every day. They have a nice little library with great book selections. Almost every dining room or activity room had a super view of the ocean/ports. One can buy an unlimited soda card for the trip ($60) but we decided to reduce our soda on the trip. A few times we paid $2.01 per can. There are extra costs for the cruise, so that has to be considered (excursions, pictures, tipping, soda)in the total package. We loved the freestyle cruising where we dressed casually in the evening and had choices and flexible times for eating. If somehow you missed eating in the main venues there was always another place or two to eat later. We highly recommend the Dawn.