NCL Dawn - Likes and Dislikes - Go!

[don't-use-real-name]

2 hours ago, vamom76 said:

We are going on the Dawn in 2 weeks and bought some Cruise Approved chargers/USB adapters to give us more options, especially for our teenager. The older boats have limited outlets, specifically by the bed area.

Make sure that you have a way to charge MORE THAN ONE device at a time:

Suggestion a three prong plug or power strip (WITH NO SURGE)

[CruisinPandora]

Just did a B2B on Dawn. Cruised her 3x when she first came to NYC, got off today. Huge delay in ship clearance this morning but we finally got through.

 

Likes

• Beautiful ship and friendly and work hard to please service crew. Hey Cheng! Thank you!
• Dawn's secret atrium third deck (we call the crow's nest, officially The Lounge, deck 9)
• Agree: "not too big and manageable."
• Best handmade ice cream/sorbet/sherbet for dessert in Cagney's, O'Sheehans, etc.
• Pulse Fitness Gym
• La Cucina: Great pizza and you can order out (as told by wait staff).
• Bliss Ultra Lounge so much great entertainment and fun games.
• Food and bar at O'Sheehans was great, staff super friendly, ate lunch there most days.
• Agree: "dont go without trying O'Sheehans Brownie Smores Cheesecake" (hubby had it everyday, one of the reasons we went to the gym, lol)
• Agree: "NCL Dawn the almost perfect ship without the floating amusement park stuff."
• Agree: "did the Gem last year and loved it - perfect size and just right combo of activities for us." (8x for us. We miss her in NYC, saw she's making a brief comeback though)
• Entertainers "Jose and Patti" were always great with lots of variety and knew how to draw a crowd.
• Elements production show was amazing!
• Cruiser "Sarah" among others made karaoke on the Canada/New England cruise worth waiting for.
• Jason (comedian) and Po (magician) were great.

Dislikes

• No Spinnakers
•  Agree: "the strong smell of smoke from adjacent Cigar Bar and Casino."
• Agree: "the wine bar was a waste on the Dawn"
• Agree: "We're not huge fans of Moderno"
• Agree: "miss having two methods to get out of the back end of the Garden Cafe"
• JMHO: We did not enjoy the inside buffet at all. Ate there once, didn't enjoy it at all.
• Not enough loungers on deck 7 to just sit, watch the sea go by, read, etc.
• Agree: "the ship takes some getting used to its layout, especially deck 8. It can be like a maze."
• No official announcement of Latitudes Loyalty party. (Most NCL ships now) If you don't visit Cruise Next Desk when you board you won't be informed.
• Platinum members now get 16 oz. instead of 2 liter bottles of water even though the water comes from NCL's own taps.
• I may write a review on other changes that have been increasingly noticeable with NCL. Been cruising with them since 2007 and some changes seem small and unnecessary. Writing my PVP today.

With all that said, a cruise is always what you make it and we always do it the way we want.

 

Happy cruising all!

 

[trex-de]

We just finished the Bahamas cruise today. 

 

I fully agree with the previous post. Dawn is my favorite ship. This is my fourth time on her.  I can add:

 

LOVE Los Lobos. As a suggestion, A la cart is very reasonable there. DW and I had dinner for $27 total before tip.  Chips & salsa, table made guacamole and an entree for each.  Laronz (or Lawrence) May be the best server we have ever had. 

 

Our commedian was Jim Colliton. He was great. 

 

Not enough loungers around the pool.   The staff starts to put chairs down at 8.  If you are not there, you will not get a seat by the pool. I have a hilarious photo of people standing on the spot where the chairs will be placed. For the record, we deferred to an elderly woman from Scranton who was very aggressive (and rude). 

 

Hate the layout of the buffet. Only had one breakfast there. 

 

Hope to sail Dawn again someday. Bye for now. 

[goldy24]

1 hour ago, CruisinPandora said:

Just did a B2B on Dawn. Cruised her 3x when she first came to NYC, got off today. Huge delay in ship clearance this morning but we finally got through.

 

Likes

• Beautiful ship and friendly and work hard to please service crew. Hey Cheng! Thank you!
• Dawn's secret atrium third deck (we call the crow's nest, officially The Lounge, deck 9)
• Agree: "not too big and manageable."
• Best handmade ice cream/sorbet/sherbet for dessert in Cagney's, O'Sheehans, etc.
• Pulse Fitness Gym
• La Cucina: Great pizza and you can order out (as told by wait staff).
• Bliss Ultra Lounge so much great entertainment and fun games.
• Food and bar at O'Sheehans was great, staff super friendly, ate lunch there most days.
• Agree: "dont go without trying O'Sheehans Brownie Smores Cheesecake" (hubby had it everyday, one of the reasons we went to the gym, lol)
• Agree: "NCL Dawn the almost perfect ship without the floating amusement park stuff."
• Agree: "did the Gem last year and loved it - perfect size and just right combo of activities for us." (8x for us. We miss her in NYC, saw she's making a brief comeback though)
• Entertainers "Jose and Patti" were always great with lots of variety and knew how to draw a crowd.
• Elements production show was amazing!
• Cruiser "Sarah" among others made karaoke on the Canada/New England cruise worth waiting for.
• Jason (comedian) and Po (magician) were great.

Dislikes

• No Spinnakers
•  Agree: "the strong smell of smoke from adjacent Cigar Bar and Casino."
• Agree: "the wine bar was a waste on the Dawn"
• Agree: "We're not huge fans of Moderno"
• Agree: "miss having two methods to get out of the back end of the Garden Cafe"
• JMHO: We did not enjoy the inside buffet at all. Ate there once, didn't enjoy it at all.
• Not enough loungers on deck 7 to just sit, watch the sea go by, read, etc.
• Agree: "the ship takes some getting used to its layout, especially deck 8. It can be like a maze."
• No official announcement of Latitudes Loyalty party. (Most NCL ships now) If you don't visit Cruise Next Desk when you board you won't be informed.
• Platinum members now get 16 oz. instead of 2 liter bottles of water even though the water comes from NCL's own taps.
• I may write a review on other changes that have been increasingly noticeable with NCL. Been cruising with them since 2007 and some changes seem small and unnecessary. Writing my PVP today.

With all that said, a cruise is always what you make it and we always do it the way we want.

 

Happy cruising all!

 

Thank you for the great information! Very helpful!

[goldy24]

1 hour ago, trex-de said:

We just finished the Bahamas cruise today. 

 

I fully agree with the previous post. Dawn is my favorite ship. This is my fourth time on her.  I can add:

 

LOVE Los Lobos. As a suggestion, A la cart is very reasonable there. DW and I had dinner for $27 total before tip.  Chips & salsa, table made guacamole and an entree for each.  Laronz (or Lawrence) May be the best server we have ever had. 

 

Our commedian was Jim Colliton. He was great. 

 

Not enough loungers around the pool.   The staff starts to put chairs down at 8.  If you are not there, you will not get a seat by the pool. I have a hilarious photo of people standing on the spot where the chairs will be placed. For the record, we deferred to an elderly woman from Scranton who was very aggressive (and rude). 

 

Hate the layout of the buffet. Only had one breakfast there. 

 

Hope to sail Dawn again someday. Bye for now. 

This is great! Thanks for the information!

[trex-de]

A couple more things to add:

 

Bamboo restaurant was, as always, very good. Glad NCL retracted this restaurant from the pay for dining list a couple of years ago. Wish they would have the sushi bar open for lunch. 

 

As said before, the Mondavi wine area is significantly under utilized.   They may have more success there if they had some live music. 

 

Disappointed they took out the chapel.  Was on the Dawn during Christmas of 2016 and spent some time there.   Now on deck 12, they put either a suite or a conference room (can’t rememer exactly where it was).  No more chapel. 

 

Buffet has a very poor layout. Lot of traffic jams and the variety of edicate around the coffee causes big log jams to get by. 

 

The size of the ship gives a lot of options at GSC. They retrofitted the island for the big ships.  If you go to the second beach, you have shade, a bar and a nice beach.  

 

That’s all for now. 

[mking8288]

Another hideaway is the Dawn's full size library, deck 12 Fwd ... quiet and very comfortable place to sit, read, meditate or listen to music with noise-isolating headphones. It's roomier than the Breakaway or Escape, larger than the downsized Gem library (with the iCafe terminals ... ) 

[Rich Boutin]

I loved the garden cafe, and found it to be much bigger than on the pearl which is a very similar ship. Also really like the promenade. Of the 3 NCL ships I’ve been on (dawn, pearl, epic), Dawn is the favorite.

[cpd249]

My wife and I got off the Dawn on June 15.  We did the Canada/New England trip so our experience will be different than those that have done the Caribbean on Dawn.

 

A little background, this was our 5^th cruise and first on Norwegian.  This cruise was to celebrate our 24^th anniversary and was our first vacation without kids in over a decade.  We’ve never had a suite before, but we saved so that we could splurge for a suite and enjoy the benefits of it.  We both have jobs that require us to work with people on a regular basis and my job makes me a somewhat high-profile member of our community.  Because of this, we wanted to go on a trip where we could be anonymous, enjoy each other’s company and not have to socialize or dress up etc., unless we wanted to.  The cruise on Dawn fit the bill perfectly.

 

We chose cabin 12030, which is a family suite.  We chose this cabin because it has a balcony, but also because it has two floor to ceiling windows that are next to the balcony.  These windows allowed us to sit and enjoy the view without having to be on the balcony.  This was beneficial because the weather on the trip made the balcony chilly and wet for most of the trip.  The windows allowed us to enjoy the views while being inside.  There was plenty of room in the cabin for the two of us, in fact the cabin was larger than the hotel rooms we stayed in in New York before and after the cruise.  We loved the cabin!

 

We had 3 nights of specialty dining as part of the package we booked.  We chose to go to Cagney’s, Teppanyaki, and Moderno.  We enjoyed each, but my favorite was Cagney’s.  The meal was good, and the service was a little more attentive than the other places.

 

We really enjoyed O’Sheehans and ate there several times.  Once for breakfast, once for lunch and once for an afternoon snack.  We come from a place where Mexican food is really good and are pretty picky on Mexican food because of it, but the fajitas were good, if they could just come up with a good salsa.

 

We ate in The Venetian dining room for dinner twice and lunch once.  All three meals were good.  One negative of freestyle dining is that you don’t have the same servers every night in the main dining rooms.  It really is not a big deal, but on past cruises we have enjoyed having the same people take care of us every night so they learned what we like, but more importantly we loved getting to know a little bit about the people taking care of us.

 

If it were not for events that we must attend because of our jobs, my wife and I would both be homebodies.  We expected to spend our evenings in our cabin reading, enjoying each other’s company, and enjoying the views from the balcony.  We were mistaken.  I don’t know if my wife enjoyed it as much as I did, but I enjoyed Gatsby’s.  Jonathan played guitar hits several nights during the cruise and did an excellent job.  I will echo what others have said though, the smoke coming from the smoking lounge sometimes made its way into Gatsby’s.

One night we wanted to go to Bamboo for dinner.  We had not made reservations beforehand.  We called Roel, the suite concierge to see if he could get us in.  He was not able to but suggested that the butler could serve it in our cabin.  Since we had not done that, we chose to do it.  We really enjoyed that dinner in our cabin.

 

Some previous responses have mentioned the library as a good place to hang out.  The library was very close to our cabin.  Every time we walked by it was full of people.  I have not seen a library as full on our previous cruises as the library on Dawn.

 

We took some international power adapters because of what we had read about power outlets.  Our cabin had 3 110 power outlets, so we had no problem keeping things charged.  The negative was that the outlets were not near the bed, but it really was not a big deal.  We were able to keep our phones charged with no problem.

 

Since the Dawn is an older ship, I had some reservations about sailing on her.  After spending a week on her, I would book a trip on her again in a heartbeat.  She was big enough to not feel small, but big enough to have numerous dining options and things to do.

 

The folks that took care of us on the trip were excellent.  I want to give a shout out to Roel the suites concierge, Jeanric our steward and Nadie our butler.  They all did a great job taking care of us and helped make our trip very relaxing.

[myra711]

Hi!  I just got off the Dawn yesterday.  In addition to some of the other comments (I am another one who was disappointed in the buffet) I would add:

-The size of the ship made it easier to just use the stairs for almost everything.  I was on deck 9, and it was so easy to get to 6 or 7, and also to get to 12 and 13. 

-Important: if you are in the aft staircase/elevator, going to 6 will take you only to the handicapped entrance to the main dining room.  To get to the rest of 6, use other stairs or elevators.

-And if you are in one of the public ladies rooms, remember that you might have to turn the lock TWICE to unlock the door.  I had to rescue 3 different people over the course of the cruise, including one woman who seemed to be claustrophobic and almost took the whole stall out in her distress!

Enjoy your cruise!

[AnnieBabes]

17 hours ago, Rich Boutin said:

I loved the garden cafe, and found it to be much bigger than on the pearl which is a very similar ship. Also really like the promenade. Of the 3 NCL ships I’ve been on (dawn, pearl, epic), Dawn is the favorite.

 

I'm reading most people are not happy with the Garden Café, saying the layout is poor and the food is just ok. Just curious, what did you like about it?

[AnnieBabes]

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 5:42 PM, trex-de said:

We just finished the Bahamas cruise today. 

 

I fully agree with the previous post. Dawn is my favorite ship. This is my fourth time on her.  I can add:

 

LOVE Los Lobos. As a suggestion, A la cart is very reasonable there. DW and I had dinner for $27 total before tip.  Chips & salsa, table made guacamole and an entree for each.  Laronz (or Lawrence) May be the best server we have ever had. 

 

Our commedian was Jim Colliton. He was great. 

 

Not enough loungers around the pool.   The staff starts to put chairs down at 8.  If you are not there, you will not get a seat by the pool. I have a hilarious photo of people standing on the spot where the chairs will be placed. For the record, we deferred to an elderly woman from Scranton who was very aggressive (and rude). 

 

Hate the layout of the buffet. Only had one breakfast there. 

 

Hope to sail Dawn again someday. Bye for now. 

 

Where is that photo? :)

[amygutman]

On 6/20/2019 at 11:25 AM, AnnieBabes said:

Let me know when you post on youtube, I'd be interested to see and hear more of your observations!

 

My friends are booked in rooms 10595 and 10592, if you get a chance could you let us know if they have decent views? I know your room is somewhat close to theirs, so they are hoping for an amazing view like yours.

 

Haunt those Gem forums, you have done a great job in the Dawn forum!

Blush....

If you go to cruisedeckplans.com you should be able to see photos / videos of those rooms and the exact layout. 

I posted on youtube as well as in my Dawn review here on the boards...it was fun trying to organize the photos / etc and gave me a good appreciation for this ships lovely (and not so lovely) quirks. 

Thanks! Amy