Dawn to Bermuda Review. A tale of two cruises

[megansdad1]

Good afternoon everyone. I just returned from a week on the newly redone Norwegian Dawn. It will probably take me a few days to complete this review. I will include many pictures. I will post a more simple text version later on.

 

Background

 

This is my first time on Norwegian. I have previously sailed on Carnival and Disney. My reason for choosing this cruise (June 24-July 1) was 3 fold.

 

#1 We wanted not to fly to the cruise port, which left Boston, NYC and Baltimore as our preferred options.

#2 I really wanted to go to Bermuda. The objective of this trip was to relax. I didn’t want the hustle and bustle of going island to island.

#3 We needed to find a cruise that fix into our schedules. Work demands left us with a limited window to travel this summer.

 

Based on the 1st two criteria, that left the Breakaway out of NY and the Dawn out of Boston. The Friday to Friday schedule was more convenient vs the sun to sun on the Breakaway. So we choose the Dawn. Also Boston is closer than NY for us. We choose the Ultimate Beverage Package and 4 days of Specialty Dining as our two perks

 

About us. This was our 1st major vacation without our children. This was Kristen’s 3 time on NCL and 5th cruise overall. This was my 1st time on NCL and my 4th cruise overall. We both have been working very hard to get into a healthier lifestyle. Over the last 12 months, we have lost 125 lbs combined; 65 and 60 respectively.

But with that being said, I was going to enjoy myself. Which meant that I was going to drink and eat as I pleased and relax. I will find out how much weight I gained tomorrow, but the early guess is 8 lbs.

[megansdad1]

Day 1 Embark

 

My brother was kind enough to take us to the Cruiseport. We only live 45 miles south of Boston, so it was a quick drive. If we had chosen to drive, parking would have been 20.00 per 24 hours.

 

 

We arrived at the pier a little bit after 10. We quickly checked our bags with the porters and headed over to the line. I believe that we had a 10am check in time. We got stuck in line for about 35 minutes or so. Apparently the computer systems were down. I kept staring at the escalator, thinking that the dawn was at my fingertips.

 

 

Once out IDs were checked, we were allowed to proceed upstairs. The check in process was super quick. Within 10 minutes, we had our cards in hand and we were in boarding group 6. After about another 10 minutes, we were on our way into the Dawn!

 

 

We headed to deck 12 to the Garden Villa to grab a quick bite

 

 

I will give an overview of our impressions of the Garden Villa. I liked the seating and chairs. The food was decent to good. We had breakfast there each morning and I was pleased each time. Even at busy times, we could find seating for the two of us after a minute or so. I was very glad that they had attendants at the doors at all times. They always gave us hand sanitizer and said “washy washy”. ***tip*** There is a small, no seat bar in the garden villa. It serves beer and wine only. It is a great place if you only want beer or wine and don't want to wait during the busy times at the poolside bar :)

[megansdad1]

We headed to deck 8 to try to see if the room was ready yet. It was not, so we went to O’Sheehan’s for a drink.

 

 

For my 1st drink, I decided to go with Johnnie Walker Blue. They charge 19 for the drink and with the 15 off with the UBP, it only cost 4 plus the additional tip and port tax while we were in boston.

[megansdad1]

Here is the standard drink menu for all the bars

 

 

 

 

 

[megansdad1]

We headed up to deck 12 to explore the pool area. I grabbed my 2nd drink, Pina Colada

 

We spent some time on deck and went to check out the room about 2pm.

 

 

I loved the little thing that you could change your cabin status to. It was a lot easier then hanging a do not disturb sign on your door.

 

 

Room,

 

We booked this cruise on Halloween last year. Originally, we wanted a balcony room. But when we went to book, they were all gone. This was partially due to NCL having to cancel earlier Dawn cruises with the delay in dry dock. So I did a little research on the OV cabins that were available. We were looking for a room that was around mid ship and not close to anything that would cause too much noise. So we chose cabin 8582, which is a side cabin, obstructed view, mid shift on deck 8. Deck 8 can be noisy, especially on the AFT side which is above Bliss. But we didn’t run into any major noises, except for the occasional noisy hallway traveler and an incident on night 6 (more to come on that). Because it is hard to take pictures and get a true feel of the side cabin lay out, I took a quick video.

 

 

Here are my thoughts on the room. When they say obstructed view, they mean it. That life boat was dead center on the window. But it was better than being in an inside room. The room was a little smaller than what I am used to, but just fine for two people. It would be way to cozy if there were 4 to that room. The bathroom was good, but also a little tight. I am 6’6” and the toilet area was a little tight. But the bathroom was OK, when it was working (more on that later).

[megansdad1]

Here are day 1 freestyles

 

 

 

 

[megansdad1]

We dropped off our carry ons and did a little exploring of the ship. After a little exploring, we headed back to the room to get ready for dinner. With the SDP, I chose to book nights 1,2,6 and 7. We didn’t want to have a reservation while we were in port. This way we didn’t have to rush back to the ship if we didn’t want to. Since the Cantina was not due to open until July 1st, our schedule was Cagney’s Teppanyaki, La Cucina and Cagney’s again. Cagney was nice a quiet at 6pm. I forgot to take a picture of the menu. I ordered the Mexican Ceasar Salad and the Filet Mignon with mushrooms and truffle fries.

 

 

 

I enjoyed the filet better then stakes I have had at Ruth Chris or The Capital Grill. And our server was excellent. I had no problems getting refills on glasses of wine during dinner. The truffle fries we OK. I have had much better and much worse. For dessert, I ordered the brownie, which was ok

 

 

She ordered the oreo cheesecake, which was really good. Luckily for me, the cheesecake was a large portion, so we just shared that.

 

After dinner we took a brief walk to help fight the food coma which was setting upon us. My body was not used to eating that much, calorie rich food. We walked around that walking track on deck 7.

 

 

 

 

We attended the 9pm welcome aboard show. Overall, we didn’t have any issues finding seating in the Stardust Theater. This show was ok, if you are going to miss any one of them, this is the one to miss. It is like a preview of the shows to come.

 

So after the show, we had a night cap and decided to retire the room early. I had trouble sleep the night before, so I was exhausted.

I will post more tomorrow. It has been a long day and I have spent too much time on this already. I need to finish all my laundry, lol.

[cruizinwithkids]

Thank you. I'm enjoying this review with pictures.

 

Just as a small point, the Garden Villa are those H-U-G-E suites. I think the buffet is called the Garden Cafe.

[megansdad1]

Thank you. I'm enjoying this review with pictures.

 

Just as a small point, the Garden Villa are those H-U-G-E suites. I think the buffet is called the Garden Cafe.

Thanks for the correction. My mind hasn't rebooted yet. [emoji1]

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[megansdad1]

Day 2 At Sea

 

Here is a copy of the day 2 Daily’s

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of notes before I get into Day 2 activities. We asked the room steward for an extra blanket. Since this an unfamiliar bed, there was going to be some tossing and turning, and I know that I will lose the battle for the blankets. They brought a large blue fleece like blanket. It did the job well. The bed was new. Super firm, very little give to it. I am not used to such a hard surface, but I adjusted fairly quickly.

[megansdad1]

For day two, we had reservations for hibachi and Kristen wanted to visit the port shopping presentation. Other than that, we was going to be a relaxing day. The day was mostly overcast. We were starting to get concerned that the sun was not going to show up. Even with the cloudiness, the pool was fairly steady with people. I enjoyed the pool a lot. Even though it was the only pool onboard (minus the kids water area), it is a decent size. One thing that I found interesting is the depth of the pool. The depth ranges from 5’5” to 6’0”. For myself, this is not an issue being 6’6”. I am not sure if this causes it to be used less often, especially by the kids. I found myself quite often being able to swim from one end to the other without obstruction, which I have not experienced on other cruises that I have been on.

 

One thing that I like about older ships is a large atrium. I love the feeling of walking onto a main deck and just looking up and appreciating the beauty and size of these awesome vessels. The dawns atrium is OK. It seems somehow unattached from the deck 7 main area.

 

 

 

The glass elevators were nice. We didn’t experience any major delays when trying to catch them. No random kids riding or playing in them. I did like the screens in the elevators, but I kinda wish they had the voices that announce the deck that we were stopping on. It was no big deal, but I always enjoyed hearing that nice voice say “lido deck” lol.

 

 

 

[Shih-tzu]

Enjoying.....looking at this cruise maybe next year - unless I get really lucky and can do the repositioning cruise in the fall when Dawn goes back to NOLA

[megansdad1]

We went to the port shopping talk. Kristen was in the market for some earrings. It was the standard talk. They make it sound like NCL is doing you this huge favor by pointing you to the awesome savings. But just like anything a cruise line does, it is about what benefits NCL. But she got the information that she wanted. I found it amusing that they used one of mitsugirlys’ photos in the presentation. I enjoyed reading her view to get myself in that cruise spirit

 

 

After the shopping talk, we spent some more time on deck. There were repairs still being done to the ship. A lot of the flooring on the stairs leading up to the Bemini Bar were being replaced. Floors were being sanded. No big deal. But this is where the plumbing issues started to effect the cruise. Especially with the women's room. Bathrooms were constantly out of order in the public areas. She ran into flooding in multiple bathrooms. This happened to the point where on day 3, she just stopped going to public area bathrooms and went to the room when nature called.

 

One thing I enjoy while traveling is talking to other people. While out and about on day 2, I talked to a few people, especially on deck 12, that had toilets in there stateroom that were broken. Here is my personal opinion. Based on pre dry dock reviews of the dawn, this problem occurs more often than it should. I suspect that the dry dock did not fix the overall plumbing issues that are present. So I expect these issues to continue to happen as the dawn sails going forward. I hope that I am wrong on this one, but I have a bad feeling that I am not.

 

Another thing that I noticed, but wasn’t a major inconvenience, was the lack of drink servers in the pool area. I am not sure if this was just a general cut back or a result of a lot of passengers having the UBP. But I am pretty sure if we were paying for the drinks outright, there would be more people pushing drinks. So this just resulted in more trips to the bar.

 

We never had issues getting loungers, even with the chair hogs in full effect. I would usually get on deck around 9 am each morning, Kristen was there by 7am. Often saws seats with stuff on them for hours. But like I said, we always found chairs, so I was happy.

[amberjohn]

Was O’Sheehan’s open during embarkation?

I never heard of this before but I'm am hearing about people being charged

a tax on drinks when leaving from Boston. Is this true?

 

Thanks...

[megansdad1]

Was O’Sheehan’s open during embarkation?

I never heard of this before but I'm am hearing about people being charged

a tax on drinks when leaving from Boston. Is this true?

 

Thanks...

 

Yes, O'Sheenans was open during embarkation. And yes there were port taxes while in boston. I think it was less and 0.50 a drink.

[megansdad1]

After freshening up, we headed over to Teppanyaki for dinner. We are both fans of hibachi. We probably go twice a year to local restaurants. I did enjoy that the menu doubled as origami, even though I was the only one doing it. Lol

 

 

 

I had fun. The chef was entertaining, and had new jokes/moves that I have not seen before. Because I can’t eat shellfish due to my gout, I ordered the Filet. I would have loved to get scallops. I ordered the specialty drink, Wasabi Cocktail, which I enjoyed. For dessert, it was the green tea cake which I also enjoyed.

 

 

 

 

[megansdad1]

 

For the show, it was band on the run. I enjoyed each of the shows, we made it to them all. I think my favorite were the singing ones. Band on the Run was very good, even though most of the music was before I was born, hehe. I am pretty sure we made the early show and it was not busy at all

 

 

Afterwards I headed to the casino for a little while. I went about 4 times during the cruise. I will use this spot to share my general views and opinions on the dawn casino. I went a combination of quiet times and busy times. Overall, I ended up 40.00 for the whole duration of the cruise. Anytime I leave with more then what I came with, that make me very pleased. It was quick and easy to get a drink from the bar. I was hoping that they would have swapped out the machines during dry dock. Based on previous reviews, it seems like they were all the same. A mix of quick hit machines, those one with crazy lights that could induce seizers and some older machines like top banana. One thing I did notice is that the jackpots for the quick hit machines are higher then what is at a typically casino. On a max bet 1.50, 5 quick hits started at 30.00 when normally it would start at 15.00. I played those some, but could never get the quick hits to hit. So I assume they are tighter to adjust for the higher jackpots.

 

 

Another thing I noticed was that when tables were quiet, they didn’t seem to adjust the table min. There would be a $10 min craps table with one person playing. I would have joined in for $5, but that was not an option. Oh well. I am not a fan of smokey casinos, but it never felt bad in there. After the casino, I had a night cap and headed to the room. We were docking in Bermuda tomorrow.

[Framily]

Hi there,

We spoke a couple of times on the cruise and it is great to read your commentary and see your photos. I was with my 14 year old son 2 tables down from you at La Cucina! I didn't have internet and just reading your summary now! Thanks for chronicling everything!

I have already rebooked same cruise for next year!

Best wishes to you and your wife!

[Jantoo]

Wonderful info. Thanks!

[megansdad1]

Hi there,

We spoke a couple of times on the cruise and it is great to read your commentary and see your photos. I was with my 14 year old son 2 tables down from you at La Cucina! I didn't have internet and just reading your summary now! Thanks for chronicling everything!

I have already rebooked same cruise for next year!

Best wishes to you and your wife!

 

Thanks Framily. I quiet enjoyed that dinner. I am glad that you are enjoying the review so far. I am still feeling the rocking of the ship today.

[megansdad1]

Day 3 Bermuda

Here are the Daily’s from Day 3

 

 

 

[Framily]

Lol I thought I was the only one rocking today.

[mistycruiser]

Enjoying your review. Re: the Quick Hits machines, what I've noticed on NCL is that the Quick Hits are 2 cent rather than 1 cent so the payouts are doubled but the money goes faster too. LOL

[megansdad1]

We settled into a routine fairly quickly. Every morning, we ate at the garden Café. The food was always good and it made the morning easier. I was also happy that the orange juice from the machine was actually quite good. It even had a little pulp in it.

 

 

The weather today was good. Intermittent clouds as we got closer to Bermuda, but as we got really close the sun was shining. We did our usual and spent most of the morning hours by the pool.

 

We had finally arrived. We waited by the pool for an hour or so after they gave us the all clear to leave the boat. The times we left the ship, we had no waits to get on or off. We were the only main cruise ship in port on Sunday when we arrived. We decided that day one, we would just explore the shops and do whatever shopping that we needed to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I forgot my phone when we went ashore the 1st time. So I missed most of the pictures of the shops.

[megansdad1]

Enjoying your review. Re: the Quick Hits machines, what I've noticed on NCL is that the Quick Hits are 2 cent rather than 1 cent so the payouts are doubled but the money goes faster too. LOL

That's the weird thing. In one row there were 3 different machines. A 2c with a 3.00 max a 1c with a 3.00 max and a 1ç with a 1.50 max, all with the same jackpot levels

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk