NCL Dawn Cruise to Nowhere Review - May 5, 07 trip

[travage]

newmexicoNita,

 

I agree, food is an entirely subjective matter and do believe NCL's wide array of dining options is unmatched.

[sauvichick]

Having been on the maiden voyage of the Dawn I couldn't find anything to complain about back then. Because it's a 1 niter everyone is trying to cram in the entire cruise experience and it doesn't work. Service especially will be affected. Having read the message boards in my opinion it sounds like the Dawn needs a lot of "fine tuning."

We did a 2 niter on Carnival and that was definitely more like a party experience. I assume the Dawn's 2 niter on Oct 26 will be the same. It's a completely different atmosphere on the 1, 2 niters. If you are sampling these cruises to determine if a cruise is for you, one will not get the true picture.

[PoJackson]

We sailed on the Dawn in March of 2003 when it was a new ship. It was beautiful and had great entertainment . The food was fair. However, the service in the dining rooms was awful. Waiting an hour to have your plate removed and get a cup of coffee was the norm. We thought it was because the ship was new and the staff were still in training.

[travage]

PoJackson,

I agree service in main dinning rooms takes too long and I think thats the main problem with Freestyling. Trying to serve multiple courses to 3 or 4 tables is just too much of a juggling act for most waiters-waiters which are highly trained. I don't fault them at all with the servie issues, the fault lies with the concept.

[PoJackson]

We've also been on the Norwegian Majesty which is an old ship. The food was better than the Dawn and the dining room service was very good. The staff seemed to have no problem with the freestyle concept.

My feeling is, if I don't have to shop for it, cook it and clean up afterwards, I'm happy.

[Grandpaul]

We had a great cruise on the Dawn and would do it again. We went to Le Bistro for dinner and it was excellent. I guess I did have two complaints. One was no ice in our room and the other was funny. The casino brought out a nice spread of food and after looking at the choices I picked up a couple pieces of chocolate mousse and put them on a plate. I then looked for a utensil to eat it with. I asked one of the waiters for something to use and he handed me the only one they had, chopsticks.

[onetimeposter]

On our Dawn cruise a couple of years ago we thought we had not gotten ice. We called housekeeping and they asked if we had looked in the refrigerator. Sure enough there it was. It's such a good idea to it there but we had never thought of it.