Stinger-PR's DAWN of an era: A NCL Dawn review (Thanksgiving week 2018)

[VtMac]

5 minutes ago, dltvermont said:

I envy you! I need to get away from this snow and cold. You are on this same itinerary?? Should be a blast.

I hope so.  We are leaving on the 15th for PR and sail on the 17th so we get a couple extra days in San Juan during the San Sebastian festival.  Take care up north there, enjoy your next journey!

[BalconyGal]

Enjoying the review.  I hope you can continue...

[tpnebraska]

20 hours ago, VtMac said:

I hope so.  We are leaving on the 15th for PR and sail on the 17th so we get a couple extra days in San Juan during the San Sebastian festival.  Take care up north there, enjoy your next journey!

Have you joined the roll call for this cruise?  It has been kind of quiet but it is picking up now that the holidays are over and it is closer.  

[Stinger-pr]

On 12/31/2018 at 10:50 PM, bluehawk47 said:

Thank you very much for your great review.  We will be on the Dawn in March and we can't wait!!

Thank you for reading. I'm sure you will have a great time!

[Stinger-pr]

On 1/1/2019 at 10:43 AM, jjlen11 said:

Excellent review!! Thanks! I am sailing on the Dawn April 7 out of Miami...…..feeling good about the decision.  My only thought was their is no roll call...??? So, I am hoping its a lightly crowded cruise or is it a Spring Break trip and will be raucous? Either way Im going and excited after reading your review.  I sailed on the Bliss Sept 30 out of Vancouver on a 5 day repositioning cruise and the Freestyle Daily was in my opinion limited versus what I saw on your postings!!! Seems like more to do!

Thank you!!

 

There didn't seem to be a lack of activities during our week on the Dawn so I'm sure you'll find tons of stuff to do.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Stinger-pr

[Stinger-pr]

On 1/1/2019 at 12:20 PM, mdod said:

 

LOL... it's good exercise and we just can't stand sitting in traffic. I was actually considering walking from our hotel, El Canario by the Lagoon.  Google Maps said it was 2.4 mi, which is not bad, but it doesn't look like it would be pedestrian friendly.  Since the ship doesn't sail until 9, we will probably be boarding later in the afternoon so, hopefully, traffic won't be too bad. 

 

Do you know how ship time compared to local time?  We're booking our own excursions and there's always concern about conflicts between the 2.

 

Thanks for the review!

 

It would be a nice walk the first mile but walking near the pier will be a pain!! For the last 3/4 of a mile there's no sidewalk, the pavement is not in too good of a shape and you'll be walking basically alongside the cars. It will be humid and more than likely in the mid 80's. But if you think you're up for it, by all means go for it.

 

Puerto Rico is in Atlantic Standard Time and does not observe daylight savings time. All the islands you'll visit are within that same time zone so just set your watch to PR time and you'll be in sync with the ship everywhere.

[Stinger-pr]

On 1/3/2019 at 2:55 PM, dltvermont said:

Great start. Looking forward to the rest! The Dawn was our first ship/cruise back in 2014. Our favorite itinerary has been the Fascination out of SJ. Ive been eyeing this cruise so will be great to see what you have to say about it all. When it is just my wife and I we prefer NCL. For cost savings when we have had the whole family we have used Carnival.

The Fascination was almost our choice but we think we had a better value on NCL with the offer we got and the OBC. Carnival seems shy with OBC on their offers. If we decide to go with the kids (all young adults now) We might do Carnival just because NCL doesn't have summer sailings out of PR. The Freedom of the Seas is usually much more expensive than Carnival during the summer, which is the only time of year for now that we can all take time off at the same time.

[Stinger-pr]

On 1/3/2019 at 8:55 PM, bjcruiser said:

So excited about this review!!!! We sail in a year out of Tampa.

Thank you. We have friends in Tampa and we're eyeing sailing on the Dawn again once she repositions there in the future. We'll see...

[Stinger-pr]

On 1/3/2019 at 11:40 PM, tpnebraska said:

We sail in less than 45 days....  I have been so excited about your review as it is the only one so far regarding this itinerary.  Can't wait to see the rest 🙂

I'm glad you're still tagging along. Hope you enjoy!

[Stinger-pr]

Sorry for taking so long to continue guys. The holidays here in PR aren't done yet and work and family have taken my full attention these past few days. And I'm recovering from a slight cold as well. But here's day 2!!

 

Day 2: Day At Sea

 

Here are today's Frestyle Dailies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mdod]

32 minutes ago, Stinger-pr said:

Puerto Rico is in Atlantic Standard Time and does not observe daylight savings time. All the islands you'll visit are within that same time zone so just set your watch to PR time and you'll be in sync with the ship everywhere.

 

Great. Thanks!  Hope you're felling better.

[Stinger-pr]

You know you’re going to end up a wreck when your cruise starts with a day at sea before doing 5 straight amazing islands and returning to where you started. I know I'm going to need a vacation from this vacation!

 

But anyway, one of the things I usually do is to make it a point to be up before sunrise every day to take some pictures of it and some pictures around the ship. Yeah, I know. Most sane people would not do something like that and to some extent, the ship was FULL of sane people because I was the only SOB out taking pictures. The few others that were up were usually people exercising around the jogging track or coming from or going to the gym. Which made it easier for me to walk all over the ship and take pictures with no one in them. Which is a good thing since this ship’s layout is a bit weird with some decks where you can walk from the front to the back straight, other where you have to go up or down a floor to cross certain areas then go back up or down and other decks where you could walk the length of the ship on one side but not the other. So walking around on an unknown place getting turned around a few times is something better done without anyone else around. But, in its favor, NCL has taken a few nice steps to help you navigate the ship.

 

For example, the rugs on the cabin hallways all have this bunch of fish on them. The detail is that they’re all swimming (or facing) towards the front. That’s all of them except the red one. The red fish is the only one facing towards the rear of the ship.

 

 

They also have these signs on every floor near the stairs and elevators and at the atrium where you’re not only told what deck and location you’re at but also what amenities like pools, restaurants, bars, etc. are on which floor. I found these to be of more help that those simple ship layouts with a “you are here” dot on it and no other info.

 

 

The other thing I found quite useful were these screen inside the elevators. As with the signs above, the give you the floor number and info about what’s located there. This made navigating the ship a little bit easier.

 

 

So the first place I ended up at was at the buffet. And when you enter the buffet area from the back or from the center elevators you come face to face with a hand wash station. Yes, a sink in middle of the buffet. Later during the day, this is usually where the “Washy-washy, Happy-happy” crew stood to squirt some sanitizer on your hands. I tell you, they’re obsessed!

 

 

A section of the seating area at the buffet

 

 

Outside pool area seating. This side was the one assigned as the smoking area. The other side had all the seam setup but was non-smoking. As far as I could tell when we were in the vicinity of the pool, all smokers stayed in the smoking area.

 

 

As soon as I got to the upper decks I noticed it was windy. VERY windy. So much so the it was a bit difficult to walk the higher and more to the front of the ship you were. I made it all the way as forward as possible and the wind sounded like storm winds. I had been in windy conditions on a ship before but these were a notch above!

 

You see those antennae below? They usually sit completely straight. Look how swept back they are. This had the ship rockin’ n’ rolling all day long. At one point I could just barely make out the stabilizers under the water, so I knew they were deployed. They weren’t big movements like big changes in pitch or jaw, but it was still noticeable, especially the shaking movement. It didn’t help that the ship was doing around 19 knots almost head on into 25 knots winds as stated in the  navigation app on the TV in the room.

 

 

Still, the reason I was up so darned early was the sunrise. And I didn’t leave disappointed today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

9 minutes ago, mdod said:

 

Great. Thanks!  Hope you're felling better.

I am, Thank you!!

[mdod]

4 minutes ago, Stinger-pr said:

For example, the rugs on the cabin hallways all have this bunch of fish on them. The detail is that they’re all swimming (or facing) towards the front. That’s all of them except the red one. The red fish is the only one facing towards the rear of the ship.

 

Yes, I loved the fish in the carpet when we were on the Dawn several years ago.  So clever and simple. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until about half way through the cruise!

[Stinger-pr]

Being up so early on a sea day gave me the opportunity to tour and take pictures of almost all areas without basically anyone around. So after taking my sunrise pictures, I walked around for a bit before heading back to wake up DW for breakfast.

 

One thing I found interesting about this ship was it had a deck 13th. Do all “over 12 decks tall” ships have a deck 13? Do they not have the same superstition as in buildings that don’t have a 13th floor?

 

 

The roof-less area poolside is a bit small and crowded and doesn't have much space for many loungers. So this "stadium seating" setup is a welcome alternative, especially later on sea days. This was taken around 6:35am according to the time stamp and if you notice on the lower left you'll see there are already towels on some of the loungers. While chair hogs were not that much in the open on this sailing, as you can see, they were still present.

 

 

 

 

 

The Dawn includes two of these driving “ranges” or more like golf target practice. I really wanted to come and hit a few drives but I really never got around to it.

 

 

The kiddie pool area is located all the way in the back...

 

...And they even have their own whirlpool!!

 

 

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

Then I came across this door to the arcade area which seemed odd to me. I've always seen the access to the arcade to be from inside the ship only. Also, it was one heavy door and today's windy conditions made it a bit dangerous for an unattended kid to operate.

 

 

 

 

 

I saw this and made me wonder about the risks. We have public, unisex bathrooms where I work where only adults are allowed and even when adults are using them they are a PITA, sometimes leaving the door unlocked while doing their business or coming in without knocking. I do know that some adults leave their kids unattended in the arcade and other places of the ship so, is this a good idea overall?? Or am I just too paranoid??

 

The Entourage, Splash Academy and Guppies kids area, near the arcade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The activities for the first three days were posted. They changed them for the next three days after the 3 day of the cruise but I only took pictures for the first ones. The close-up for the Turtles activities came out real blurry so I left it out.

 

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

Sorry for the crappy photo...

 

O' Sheehan's...

 

 

 

 

I found it weird that they had a shuffle board setup in the middle of the promenade. No other activities, not even seats. Just that... There... Right in the middle...

 

 

 

The central atrium, deck 7.

 

 

Tides was where most of the “sales” action took place most nights. They changed up inventory, offerings and sales daily. The raffles and giveaways were also held here. This is just to the side of the atrium.

 

 

I thought the guest services desk was huge (from what I’m used to). But it was divided into three odd sections: Onboard Credit on the left, regular guest service on the center and “Restaurants and Reservations” to the right.

 

 

Opposite to the Tides area was the Shore Excursions desk and besides this (out of view) the Cruise Next desk. See that rack on the far left? That’s where you find shore excursion info pamphlets, flyers, etc and where you find the luggage tags the night before disembarkation.

 

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

To get to the front of the ship on deck 7 you need to walk to the left of the shore excursion desk. This is the only indoors hallway that leads forward. The other side is cut-off at the bathrooms and elevators. You can walk outside on the promenade from the atrium to just before the deck 7 entrance to the theater. For some odd reason, the starboard or right side promenade was usually closed. Today it was supposedly due to high winds….

 

Notice the little white fish on the glass? Most point forward and only one to the back, same as the rugs on stateroom hallways!

 

 

But later, while walking towards the back and crossing The Cellars wine bar, I noticed that there was one door that was open to the starboard promenade (that’s the opened door letting light into the bar). Either on purpose or by oversight, it was the only way to access that area during the sea day. On other days, access was hit and miss, no matter if it was windy (it never really was after today) or not.

 

 

 

 

The wine bar was maybe the less frequented place I found on the whole ship. Every time I crossed through it, it was either empty or close to. I never saw more than 6 people at a time, and they were all in a group.

 

 

 

 

The Bliss Lounge would end up being our go to place to hang out during the evenings. The sign at both entrances stated that after 11pm, it was 18 and older only. While this was announced on the nights we happened to be there after 11pm, it was never really enforced. There was one night where a woman had her three kids running all over the place and she could give a rat's butt about it. And apparently so did NCL crew since no one came to talk to her about it, let alone about the fact they weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

 

 

If you take the stairs down a deck here you reach the entrance of the Venetian Dining Room.

 

 

This was the breakfast menu, at least for today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Stinger-pr

[Stinger-pr]

 

 

 

Boy do I have mixed feelings about the photo gallery. When I came in a few days later to start looking through the pictures we’d taken during the first few days, I had the expectation of NCL having a better system than some Carnival ships (or at least my previous sailings). They do have multiple screens where you swipe your room card to access your pictures but once you do there’s no rhyme or reason as to how and where they are located in the screen. Imagine a table with pictures all spread all over it and you looking straight down from the top. That’s basically what you get. You can resize the pictures using pinch to zoom like on a cell phone or tablet. You can add favorites and/or discard pictures you don’t like. But you only discard them from the collection on the screen. You see, every picture you take lies physically on those red binders behind the screens (see below). So, whether you delete them from you screen or not, they’ll still be there on the binders. Once you decide what pictures you really like or want, you still go through the ones you don’t which, unlike Carnival, you can’t throw them on a bin. You will have your discards all the time in your binder. If you’re like us and like some families we encountered, your binder will get quite cluttered and heavy after a few days.

 

 

While there are no fish in the rugs on deck 7, if you look at the glass doors leading to the promenade, the white fish I pointed out on the last post will tell you which way is which.

 

 

 

View from above of Gatsby’s. There was always something going on here and had good music. It always had a good crowd.

 

 

 

Across from Gatsby’s you’ll find the Havana Nights, cigar lounge. This area was the only indoors area where we actually smelled the smoke other than the casino.

 

 

 

In this area you will also find the entrance to Le Bristro and La Cucina.

 

 

Both restaurants were accessible but when I entered Le Bistro, they were apparently setting up for a wedding.

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

 

 

 

 

 

We wouldn’t be eating at the MDR tonight since we had reservations at Moderno but here’s the MDR menu posted outside the Aqua dining room for the second night.

 

 

The gift shop and Tradewinds duty free shop were the only two shops on the ship, apart from the Tides area mentioned before. Other than the sales that took place over at Tides, the gift shop lacked any sales at all. They put a “everything $10” table up one night and that’s it. No other sales whatsoever from the gift shop which was a bit disappointing.

 

 

 

The Tradewinds shop was your all-in-one stop for the rest of your shopping. Here’s where you find the liquors, perfumes, jewelry and even the OTC meds like pain relievers and sea sickness pills. They has 2 for___ liquor sales every now and then but nothing that would entice me to buy, especially considering that I knew I’d get a better price on St. Maarten or St. Thomas.

 

 

 

 

I wanted a shot of an empty theater but all doors were closed due to rehearsals so I’d have to come back later when they open for activities. I later found out that unless there's an activity going on they always close the doors.

 

 

There were two shows we were interested in tonight but we only made it to one..

 

 

 

We passed the casino several times during the course of the cruise but, enticing as it might seem, I really have no interest in dropping money on it since I already spend way too much time on one back home (not gambling 😉) anyway. But I still checked out the machines, the tables (horrible odds on BJs!!) and overall mix of games and compared to the one back home. Heck, I don't even gable much when I go to Las Vegas!!

 

 

 

Those Lock It Link machines on the left in the picture above almost... almost lured me in. But I prevailed and resisted the urge!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stinger-pr]

So after getting to know the ship, I went to get DW so we could get breakfast since more people were starting roam around and we wanted to get a head start on the lines at the buffet. Yes, we could’ve gone to the MDR for breakfast but we kinnda like to see what we’re getting beforehand and to help ourselves. But one of these days we’ll try it out.

 

We made it up to the buffet around 7:50am, were greeted by the Washy-washy crew and off we went to get our food. The most popular stations were the pancake and waffle station, especially since you could get made to order waffles there and the omelette station. I found it odd that people were a but slow to realize that the buffet was divided into four sections that, while identical on both sides of the ship, were not identical to the station located on the same side. One section had more fruits and grits (oatmeal) while the other had both the omelette station at the end and the waffle station at the beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most days this was basically what would end up in our plates. We might exchange scrambled eggs for an omelette here and there but everything else was almost the same daily. DW was more adventurous than me on that part. She had waffles and french toast among other things and other than cold, hard bread, we never had any complaints.

 

 

There was always more of a line on one side of the ship than the other but we never figured out why. Another thing we couldn’t figure out was people’s lack of common sense. The way I see it (and please correct me if I am wrong here) is that the buffet line starts at the point where you grab your plates, right? It seemed like that for a while until you reached the omelette station. People would sometimes lined up from whichever side they felt like it with no “formal” line. But it became apparent that the line always started from the “exit” coming towards the omelette station. Whatever… At least we didn’t see much line cutting if at all. Most people were very patient and courteous at the buffet. This was true for the remaining of the cruise, at least for us. Also… No bacon police!!!! You could grab as much bacon as you wanted and not have to almost beg for it like on the Carnival cruises I’ve been on. That was cool!!

 

We also noticed there were lots of crew around either busing tables or pushing carts with hot coffee, hot milk and juice for table-side refills. There were also juice machines and coffee dispensers at both sides of the buffet.

 

[Stinger-pr]

We didn’t do much more than lounge around all morning in the room and on the balcony. We walked a bit around the ship to show DW all the places I had been earlier but other than that, all we did was relax. It would be the only day we’d have for doing that since we had full schedules planned for the rest of the islands.

 

Around 1pm we decided to grab some lunch and made our way to O’ Sheehan’s and this time it was definitely more crowded than yesterday.  This time I took some pics of the menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We asked for some nachos and an order of buffalo sauce wings as appetizers and two burgers as mains. The burger's a somewhat hard to find at first on the menu since they’re not labeled as “burgers” or anything like it and are placed just under the sandwiches and fajitas. Go figure…

 

We both had burgers, Plain for DW, a Classic Cheese for me with added bacon, which is not listed anywhere on the menu but we had no problem ordering anyway. The food came out flying again. Only this time, we got our apps along with our mains. Although everything was hot, it made us eat a bit faster so we could enjoy everything while still hot.

 

 

 

The wings were excellent but the nachos were a dud. No much flavor at all, even from the just slightly hot jalapeños. The burger and fries were both tasty and flavorful.

 

After lunch we headed back to the room, changed into our bathing suits and headed for the pool area for some sun. We made it to the pool around 2:30pm and while there were a lot of people around, it didn’t seem crowded at all. Of course, there wasn’t a lounger poolside that wasn’t occupied by a person or a towel but there were more than enough loungers available on the “stadium” area which was ok by us.

 

 

 

There were about a dozen people inside the pool along with a few other that just wanted to get their butt and feet wet on the side. All four hot tubs were very crowded all the time. And at various points we saw kids unattended inside the hot tubs without anyone saying anything. It didn’t cause us any stress but if you’re the kind of person that tends to stay away from that type of situation, be warned that no one, not even the lifeguard (who had to just blow his whistle to ANYONE that made even the slightest taunt of doing anything wrong.

 

 

One thing we noticed was that there were NO drink servers around. We were poolside for around 2 hours and we didn’t see one server around, ever. Whenever we wanted a drink, I made my way to Bimini Bar to get them. I don't know if it has to do with the area being understaffed or what but their absence was notable. I should have more pics of this day and the bar but I lost them. How did I lose them? You’ll have to wait a little bit longer for that explanation.😉

 

[dltvermont]

11 hours ago, Stinger-pr said:

The Fascination was almost our choice but we think we had a better value on NCL with the offer we got and the OBC. Carnival seems shy with OBC on their offers. If we decide to go with the kids (all young adults now) We might do Carnival just because NCL doesn't have summer sailings out of PR. The Freedom of the Seas is usually much more expensive than Carnival during the summer, which is the only time of year for now that we can all take time off at the same time.

 

Was talking to my wife about doing this itinerary in 2020 (already have vacation planned for spring 2019). Looking at NCL's page it looks like the Dawn will be replaced by the Epic. May still do it for the itinerary but we arent big fans of the larger ships. Still in the thinking stages.

[missinver]

We are on the Dawn in 2 weeks time for 11 day Southern Caribean cruise, so we are thoroughly enjoying your review!

 

[Stinger-pr]

14 hours ago, dltvermont said:

 

Was talking to my wife about doing this itinerary in 2020 (already have vacation planned for spring 2019). Looking at NCL's page it looks like the Dawn will be replaced by the Epic. May still do it for the itinerary but we arent big fans of the larger ships. Still in the thinking stages.

Yes, as far as I know the Epic will do two winter seasons out of San Juan after the Dawn moves on. We actually have the Epic booked for the March 1st, 2020 sailing but it got me nervous because there are sooo many conflicting reviews of the Epic and they are leaning towards the "not-so-good" majority. So we have until Oct. 2019 (final payment date) to decide whether we'll sail on her anyway, hoping that in roughly over a year, they can iron out some more of the kinks, especially on the service side.