Well this is my first review so I will try to keep it flowing and honest, but please bear with me. My wife and I are in our late 20's and have been on three cruises each before. We took the Crown to Bermuda in 2006 on our anniversary and had a horrible experience but after some positive feedback from some friends on other NCL cruises, we decided to try again with the Dawn. We celebrated our two year anniversary on the boat, and we are both very happy we decided to do so! So what lies ahead is my best attempt at a review. Just a heads up, I love food, which you will find as you read along.

Day 1: Arrived at the pier at 10:30, sped through the latitudes line and were checked in by 10:45. We were given group six and sat with other to wait. They started with number three and by the second call of groups, we were ready to dock. Entering on Deck 7 is a beautiful sight. We were immediately given our glass of campaign and then headed right to the reservation desk. We booked for Salsa for that night and Cagney's on Tuesday for our anniversary. We had a mini-suite (more on this later) and I don't know if that allowed us to book a couple days in advance or not. With all the people behind us, I think the woman was just happy to give me what I wanted and I was thankful as well. ? We then headed to the Garden Cafe for lunch, which was very good. Excellent chilled banana soup, surprisingly good pizza, and pretty cool stations like the pasta one. We then took our own private tour of the ship walking around checking all the areas out. Major tip here, go to all the specialty restaurants. They have samples on spoons to try! At about 1:30 an announcement was made that our rooms were ready and we checked out our room. Loved the mini suite (11026)! Decent size balcony, nice layout, not a single complaint about the room. That first night we ate at Salsa. The lobster tacos were pretty good, but were served in a hard shell (we found this odd). You get a nice amount of salsa, guacamole, etc with chips and can ask for more. The Sangria is awesome and highly recommended! The welcome aboard show was good, however being that we saw Dave Heenan in the past, he had zero new jokes. We left early. Late night snack at blue lagoon. Awesome wings, but my wife did not really love her spinach and artichoke dip. She said it was edible, but not recommended.

Day 2: Day at sea. Spent most of the day relaxing. Went to Aqua for breakfast which was excellent. The hash browns are great. Service was excellent, extremely fast. Lunch was in the Garden Cafe and the pretzel bread is quite a standout. I would see people taking handfuls back to their rooms. Great stuff. While my wife went to the spa, I hung out in the Casino. As I was at the bar watching sports center, Pedro was there and hung out with my talking football. He remembered me from a cruise back on the Crown in 06. Great guy. Later that day was the meet and great which was well attended. Pedro, the captain, the hotel director and I think the head chef were all present. Later that night was dinner in Venetian. We had no wait at all and found that there wasn't a single wait for us at either dinning room. Service was again good and we had the lobster dish which was good, not great. I thought the lobster was too tough. I had some wings from blue lagoon again and attempted to sit in the pearly king pub with a beer to watch the Monday night football game, but could not because it was back so I headed back to the room. On this night, instead of chocolate on our pillows, we found chocolate chip cookies!! Newlywed game was this night, it was funny. We also sat and listened to Jose and Patti, but they weren't really our style, although they were good. We loved Berni Martini and spent almost every night in Gatsby's listening to him. Read more