We were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary and wanted to do something a bit special. We particularly wanted to visit Caribbean islands that we hadn’t visited before such as Antigua and St.Lucia. It was disappointing that we were unable to dock at either of these islands due to bad weather. Whilst I appreciate that this was unavoidable, the replacement stop of Martinique was a big let down.

We hadn’t sailed on the Dawn before, but we liked the idea of a smaller ship. Whilst the staff without exception were fantastic, the whole experience was very disappointing. Food in the main dining rooms were very mediocre. Service was slow and food often cold. We realise that Norwegian is freestyle cruising, but felt generally that standards have slipped. Whilst not everyone wants to dress smartly for dinner, it was sad to see shorts and flip flops to be acceptable in the dining rooms. Although the menu in O’Sheehans was limited, we ended up having breakfast and lunch there most days, where the service and food were good and it was generally quiet.

As part of our package we were given four dinners in specialty restaurants ,but were unable to book any of them at a time or day we wanted because they were almost fully booked on the first day. We were still charged a service charge, for soemething we never had. Read more