review of Dawn repo cruise 10/28-11/11

[erpa]

This was our fourth cruise, 3rd with NCL. We basically love NCL because of freestyle and they have the best cruiseship casinos. Overall, we had a wonderful trip, with a few bumps. Here's my review.

 

Embarkation - we tried early check-in instead of Latitudes waiting. Got on the ship before most latitudes passengers. The process went smoothly, although for the priviledge of getting on very early, we waited in the terminal for 2 hours with good books. Luckily we had chairs, but many non-latitudes passengers did not, and had to stand for at least an hour. On ship at approx noon.

 

Disembarkation - signed up for express disembarkation as we had a noon flight from Ft. Lauderdale. Contrary to many previous posts about this being very disorganized, we thought it was fantastic. We were off the ship by 8:15am (docked at 7am). We were picked up by a previously-arranged car service and in Ft. Lauderdale by 9:15 am.

 

Ship: We have been on the Sun and Spirit on previous cruises and much prefer both those ships over the Dawn. Don't get me wrong, the Dawn is very pretty and we found it to be very clean and well-maintained. But what we missed very much was the open-air eating deck outside the buffet for breakfast (or any other meal). You can eat outside near the pool on the Dawn, but it is enclosed and you basically have to look at the pool area or through a window, and you don't get that open air experience that you do on the Spirit or the Sun. We also liked the smaller size of the Spirit and the Sun - there was way too much walking on the Dawn. We also felt the pool was pretty small for the number of people on the ship (the ship was full or near-full). Our balcony cabin was essentially the same size as on the other ships, but the layout was slightly different, and had an annoying table in front of the balcony door that couldn't be rearranged anywhere sensible. We did love the spa pool area - very serene and comfortable and worth the extra charge to get away from the hub-bub of the rest of the ship.

 

Food: NCL has taken on GI bugs seriously and requires everyone to sanitize their hands before entering any restaurant. I appreciated this very much and did not get sick. We found the reservation process easy - almost always got in where we wanted to at roughly the times we wanted. You can reserve for the current and following evening only. There were two of us, but we made friends and got in several places with 8 people several times.

Buffet - OK. Not as good as on previous cruises, but always found something appealing. No self-service at all (to prevent spread of viruses), even for juice, coffee, ice tea, bread, butter, or salad bar. They have removed all salt and pepper shakers and are using small paper packets of s&p.

Cagney's: Fantastic, ate there 3 times. Wonderful Filet Mignon and Creme Brulee. Would go back in a heartbeat.

Teppanyaki: Pretty good - cooking show entertaining.

Le Bistro: Pretty good, escargot excellent, but overall didn't like as much as Cagney's.

Impressions of Italy: Food very good, but service really poor. Maybe our waiter was having an off night.

Salsa: Food mediocre, ambience wonderful with good 3-piece band playing in the background.

Aqua: Ate there twice, good food and service but a bit claustrophobic.

Venitian: Ate there once, good service, food OK, nice view.

Blue Lagoon: greasy. Sweet, but spaced-out servers. Not as good as Spirit's.

We didn't eat anywhere else.

 

Service:

Reception: excellent, accomodating, had answers to all our questions.

Shore excursions desk: Hard sell, not particularly personable.

Room stewards: wonderful, sweet, hard-working, did a great job.

Casino staff: with the exception of two managers, they were sweet, competant, funny and very personable. One of the managers was surly, grumpy and ignored his dealers basic requests for more chips, assistance, etc. Another of the managers was pretty nasty at times, although she became nicer as the cruise progressed.

 

One of the reasons we love cruising is meeting the interesting, hard-working staff, and with the exception of a very few, the staff on the Dawn were wonderful and the ship ran very well.

 

Shore Excursions: We only signed up for two through the ship. The first was the Coki Beach Snorkel on St. Thomas. I was very tired that day, so I didn't go, but my husband did and sorely regretted it. He travelled for 40 minutes to get to the snorkel site, snorkeled for 30 minutes on a reef with unhealthy coral and few fish, travelled back to the dock for another 40 minutes and waited on line at the dock to get a tender for 1 hour. He was pretty hot and bothered by the time he got back to the ship. As we had signed up for another snorkel trip on Cozumel, we went to the shore excursions desk to talk about this and try to ascertain if it was going to be a repeat performance. They assured us the Cozumel trip would be better.

The second trip in Cozumel was better - deluxe snorkel and beach break on Palancar reef. We travelled for approx one hour by dive boat to the reef - visibility was about 80 feet, crystal clear. Reef healthy with lots of fish, snorkeled for about an hour. Then were brought to an all-inclusive resort where we had a buffet mexican lunch, which was mediocre. There was a pool, open bar and the the usuall water toys. The best thing about this resort were the canopied, on-the-beach massages. I got a fabulous 15-minute upper body massage for $20. Very nice.

 

We did other privately-arranged shore trips on St. Kitts, Barbados, Curacao, Aruba and Grand Cayman, which I will write about seperately in the ports section.

 

Casino: Well, we are big casino-goers and we did pretty well on this trip. Came out ahead, had a great time, met new friends. The casino was comparable to those on other NCL ships. They play a $1-2 no-limit hold 'em cash game which we enjoyed, and we had several tournaments. The rake is 10%, which is rediculous, but it's their casino and you can play or not. I was disappointed that they did not play blackjack up on the pool deck as was done on other cruises, but they said they didn't have enough staff to do this. The Monopoly slot near the back is great, and we came out ahead on this. The Ultimate Hold 'Em casino table was almost always full and it's a fun game if you're on a streak. Contrary to many concerns read here pre-cruise, the casino was not any more smoke-filled than usual.

 

Shows, Bingo, Cinema - we did not attend.

 

Ports:

St. Thomas - packed with cruisers as there were 5 or 6 ships in port. Shopping is not my thing so I didn't go ashore. My husband didn't enjoy his excursion there.

St. Kitts - beautiful island, friendly people, did a private tour to Caribelle Batik. Would go back on our own.

Barbados - interesting port, interesting busy city, not particularly obsessed with tourists and for that reason we liked it alot. We went on a private excursion snorkeling with sea turtles which we loved.

Aruba - very very hot day. We rented a jeep and toured the island. The far side is beautiful - stark, arid desert landscape, many wild goats and cliffs, gorgeous beaches. The main drag is very touristy with expensive shops. The Palm beach area is one resort after another with empty (during the day) casinos.

Curacao - beautiful island, desert landscape but lusher than Aruba. Lots to see and do. We had a private all-day snorkeling tour which we loved. Snorkeling was fantastic. Would go back on our own.

Jamaica - we did not do a tour as we had read quite a bit about groups being held up at gunpoint. We were probably being overly cautious. However on the short walk from the ship's dock to the shopping malls we were aggressively approached at least 10 times to buy ganja and they didn't take your first no for an answer. It is a physically beautiful island from what we could see. The shopping malls are wholly geared to tourists and so you find the usual stuff there. Margaritaville bar was filled with very loud, drunk people and their music blared throughout the shopping area.

Grand Caymen - we have been there many times in the past scuba diving. It is so built up with high-rise hotels/resorts that it is unrecognizable since our last visit. My husband went diving, which was just OK. I did not go ashore.

Cozumel - see shore excursions above. We had a very nice day there on our excursion. Did not shop. Carlos and Charlies bar at the end of the pier was rocking with very drunk tourists, who were seen stumbling back to the Carnival ship docked opposite ours, which was fairly amusing.

 

As with any cruise, there were some obnoxious people, and some complaining, pushy people. But I just want around them, so to speak. For the most part the people we met on board were interesting, friendly, funny, and easy to cruise with. There were many people from Denmark, several of whom we spoke with at length and found to be delightful. There were very few children and/or teenagers and all that I saw were well-behaved (I felt a bit sorry for them as there were so few I thought they looked bored).

 

We had a wonderful time and are, as usual, anxious to go again.:D

[justme75]

Oh I forgot to mention in my review we did the express as well for debarkation. And I agree whole heartedly with you. We waited until they called for us, then went got our luggage and were off the ship in relatively short time. From what I saw it went very smoothly!

[Grandpaul]

I was signed up for this trip and had to cancel for a trip to Vegaas. Oh well. Sounds like you had a good trip. I really like the Dawn for a lot of reasons you pointed out. I also agree with your comments about Curacao. Beautiful place. I like how the houses by the port are painted all different colors. I like those repostioning cruises and really hated to cancel.

[snorklinbarb]

Enjoyed the review. It sounds like they did their best coping with the recent noro outbreak. It's amazing to me that some people feel an affront when asked to sanitize their hands.:eek:

 

You mention arranging a private tour in Barbados for the sea turtles. Could you tell me more about it? Was it by power boat/cat/shore? Who did you arrange it with and did it meet your expectations? Cost? Downside? Did you see a lot of turtles?:D

 

How was the entertainment? I assume "Bollywood" is still going strong on the Dawn.;)

[zqvol]

Very surprised at your husband's opinion of Coki beach. The area is normally teeming with fish. Granted there is not much reef there because it is not a reef area, you have to snorkel along the rocks, which are rocks and not reef, but the numbers of fish is incredible. Maybe you go t there on a bad day.

[erpa]

We didn't go to any shows but others on the ship said Bollywood was great, as were the other shows.

 

We arranged a private tour with **** (email me and I'll tell you so CC doesn't close my response) in Barbados. It was a VERY fast speed boat that took us and 6 others to an area where they feed the sea turtles daily (the NCL excursion went there also, but we got there first and had the place to ourselves. NCL got there as we were leaving). We saw many turtles, they come right up to you and let you pet them. They are extrodinarily beautiful. Huge tarpon also come at feeding time - they swim along the bottom for the scraps. They were easily 6-8 feet long and about 4 feet around. Really cool. They then took us to two sunken wrecks to snorkel over which were interesting, then to a beach area where we drank wonderful rum punch, got a pleasant buzz, then went back to the ship. Well worth the cost of $50/pp.

 

email: maxjones@localnet.com