Food is generally very bland. This is true for the Garden Cafe (self-service buffet) as well as the "included" restaurants. There are daily themes in the buffet such as seafood, asian or Indian, but nothing was outstanding. There was a selection of Indian dishes every day, but I did not see a single Mediterranean dish let alone theme. The service at the included restaurants was good but very slow and dishes often arrived cold. The food at O'Sheehans was served quickly and tasted OK, but how often can one have pub food like wings and burgers on a cruise? There is a good variety of beer at O'Sheehans and good wine selection at the Wine Cellar, but most of those were not available at the restaurants. The beer and wine selection in all restaurants was limited to 3 or 4 choices. Most of the food was very salty. We enjoyed the omelette station at the buffet, Le Bistro and Cagney's. Moderno Churascarria was awful. Instead of a variety of BBQ meats arriving at intervals. All our meats arrived within 5 minutes, they were all overcooked, some already cold and tasteless.

The entertainment at the Stardust Theatre was pretty good. The Norwegian signature show Elements was one if the best on any cruise. It incorporated bits from the Magic and Aerial shows which were featured on different evenings. There are several venues on the Dawn with live music throughout the day. The house band featuring musicians from many countries performed excellent jazz and swing music. Devin Provenzano is an excellent solo performer. There was a female latin singer who was pretty bad and an asian couple playing piano and singing who sounded like really bad Karaoke from a back alley dive in Bangkok.

On our 2 week south Caribbean cruise there were 4 confirmed deaths. We heard "Code Alpha" on the ship-wide speakers too many times. One gentleman died while on a snorkeling excursion, another in the public bathroom by the pool, and the others in different locations onboard the ship. We heard "Code Alpha" in the middle of the big glow party which was interrupted for a minute and then the dancing promptly resumed. I never realized death on cruise ships was such a common occurrence. To be fair, I'd like to point out this was by far the oldest group of passengers we've seen in our 13 previous cruise ships. More than 80% of the passengers were into their seventies and eighties. Most passengers in their sixties were in terrible physical condition. The walkers, wheel chairs and electric scooters everywhere were causing traffic jams everywhere. Even the crew members were making fun of "the assisted" passengers. Read more