I went on the Norwegian Dawn with my entire extended family for a celebration of my great aunt’s 80th birthday. All together we had a group of 19 people in 9 separate stateroom ages ranging from 80 to 1.5 years old. Nearly all of the group had been on Norwegian’s Boston to Bermuda cruise at least once prior, many of us more than that. We all unanimously agreed that the standards on the ship have gone way down over the years.

The boarding process: even with priority boarding the lines were long and the system was far from smooth. None of the staff at the pier seemed to know what the safety regulations are in terms of security, and if you asked the same question of two different staff members, you would always get a different answer. Overall it was extremely unorganized. Once we got on to the ship, we were led to our state room, a family suite with a balcony. The room still had the dirty towels from the previous guests on the floor in the bathroom. The complimentary toiletries were clearly open and had been used as well. We alerted the crew to this and they said they would get to it when they could, which took over two hours. I understand that it is a very large ship and they have a very short turn over times between disembarkation and the new passengers boarding, but I would much prefer to be told my stateroom isn’t ready yet than to be brought to a dirty room. In the room we had three adults and a toddler. There was a king size bed, a pull out couch and a Murphy bed in the room that were made up each night so each adult had their own bed. For my son, the ship provided a pack and play crib. Luckily prior to going I had done some research about tips for cruising with a toddler because they only have a flat sheet on top of the crib mattress that any toddler will move in two seconds and I doubt those mattresses get cleaned very often, so I brought my own crib sheet from home which worked great. I also brought him a blanket from home as well since they do not provide those. Once the room was cleaned and set up it was quite nice. The bathroom was huge and had both a tub (great for toddler baths) and a stand up shower. There was an ample amount of closet space for the four of us. And the balcony was large enough for two chairs and a small table, two lounge chairs and still enough room for my son to play on the floor. The Murphy bed and pull out couch were not very comfortable, but that is to be expected. The king size bed was pretty comfortable. One big problem with the rooms is noise. The family suites are located on the 12th floor right between the elevators/stairs and the pool. This made for some pretty heavy foot traffic, and a lot of congregating outside of our room. The doors are paper thin and you can hear everything and multiple times at night we had to open the door and ask people to move along as there was a toddler sleeping in the room. Because of the location of the room, every morning to go to breakfast in the garden cafe, we had to walk through the smoking area. In addition to being less than pleased to have stale cigarette smoke blown in my face first thing in the morning, I was less than thrilled with having my toddler walk through all that second hand smoke every morning. In my opinion, people should not be allowed to smoke in such a highly traveled area. You couldn’t even go in the pool without the stench of cigarettes.

Moving on to the ship. The pool area, specifically the pool itself, is way too small for a ship of that size. If you want to go in the water, you can’t even move there are so many people in there. The music at the pool is extraordinarily loud. I love laying in a lounge chair and listening to the live music, but you couldn’t even enjoy it because it was so incredibly loud (and all you could smell was cigarettes). At the pool bars I never once saw more than two bartenders at a time, which seemed odd to me as they were definitely the busiest bars on the ship. Also, compared to past cruises, overall, I found the bar tending staff to be much less friendly than before. The staff at the garden cafe was exceptionally friendly. This actually became our favorite place to eat a meal due to the great variety and the staff. The sit down restaurants, the Venetian and Aqua were just so, so in terms of the food, but the service there was always so extraordinarily slow that it always took over two hours for a meal, usually closer to three. We did three specialty meals, Churriscaria, Tempennyaki, and Chaney’s. All of those were excellent. Service again was a tad slow, but the food more than made up for it. We ate at O’Sheehans one night as well, the food was very greasy, and again, service was very slow. It took 25 minutes for two beers! The wine cellar bar was by far my favorite. The selection of wine was exceptional, it was never too crowded and the staff there was excellent. Read more