Norwegian Dawn Photo Review: A Caribbean Christmas

A little bit of background... I start most of my reviews with this disclaimer: I told my husband that if I ever start acting like a spoilt brat on a cruise, we should stop cruising for a while. I am working on never becoming one, because I love cruising too much. :D So, this review is from a ‘glass-half-full’ perspective. I hope you enjoy it and find some helpful tips.

If you would like to see pictures of the ship itself, click on this link:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1536934

If you would like to see the Freestyle Dailies from our cruise, click on this link:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1536111&highlight=dawn+dailies

Following will be several posts with pictures, since there is a limit per post :)

As a quick summary, I will mention that my favorite things on the ship were the hot tub at the T-rex pool (often deserted on port days), Lucky Duo (musicians in the atrium), the question and answer session with some officers (the captain, hotel director, and chief engineer), dinner with our new CC friends, the Dawn Crew show, and the special Christmas show. We were also treated to a special performance by “Cat’s Pajamas”, which was a lot of fun and quite amazing 'a cappella' talent! The crew of the Dawn is truly friendly. I only encountered one person not smiling back and he was working at Sprinkles... can you blame the poor guy?

On the down side, entertainment was not well balanced in public areas. There was a lot of piano entertainment (3 pianist/singers). Although the piano entertainment in the Venetian was supposed to create a relaxing atmosphere, it just caused the volume to rise so that we had a hard time hearing our table mates.

TIP: If you want a more quiet area in the Venetian where you can hear your table mates better, ask to be seated in the side sections. We discovered this the last night of the cruise.

I know I am quite in the minority in this, but I do not care for suggestive dancing during shows, so I did not enjoy the Band on the Run. The acrobatics are quite spectacular though. Just a personal opinion.

I will attempt to turn this into an interesting picture review with tips from here on... I hope it works. :D

We arrived at the port around 11:15 a.m. We parked in parking garage C. Directions to the port:

http://www.ncl.com/csimages/153/470/Port%20Directions_Miami.pdf

TIP: On NCL it states that they only take cash at this parking garage. However, that info is outdated. They now have self-pay machines by the elevators where you can use your credit card. Maybe NCL will see this review and update it :)

We did not know that we were assigned “VIP”, and were taken through the regular check in process. However, when we got to the front of the line, we were escorted to the VIP ‘lounge’ and were on the ship by 11:45 a.m.

Once on the ship, we went to the Venetian for a relaxed lunch. We loved their Philly Cheesesteak, Angus Burger, and Shrimp Caesar salads at lunch. We ate at the Venetian most of the time, especially for breakfast and dinner. We prefer the more relaxed atmosphere over the rat race in the Garden Cafe. The Garden Cafe was our favorite choice for lunch on port days. We also enjoyed the Blue Lagoon, especially for an evening snack while listening to “Lucky Duo”. Here they are:

A great tip we picked up from here on CC: Popcorn is available in the Pearly Kings Pub whenever they are open:

The ship was decorated beautifully for Christmas. Not too much, just enough to enjoy the season. Here are the the Java Cafe decorations...

TIP: Note the table with the blue table cloth to the right in the picture. You can get free, great coffee here. It is self-serve in paper cups, but the best free coffee on the ship.

A few of my favorite shows on the ship: The crew show with “Fountains”

I really liked our cruise director Johnny Sanchez. He is young and started out as a pool attendant. I especially appreciated that he did not try to be someone else. Here he is in the middle of the ‘fountain’:

The Christmas show was another highlight of the cruise. It ended with a couple of caroling songs.

Loving this!!!! Keep it coming.....

Another highlight on our cruise occurred on day 10 in the Java Cafe. It is called “Officers Profile” and started at 10:15. Here are the hotel director, Calvin Lodge; the captain, Karl Staffan Bengtsson, and the chief engineer, Patrik Olofsson. On the right is Johnny, of course.

We learned so many interesting facts at this meeting.

DID YOU KNOW? In most cases, Norwegian Dawn will wait up to 10 minutes for passengers at a port. It costs the ship too much money to wait longer. The ship uses 1 gallon of gas per second at full speed. Johnny noted that if you are late, you get a really good picture from the port of the ship is pulling out. :D

DID YOU KNOW? Norwegian Dawn produces 700,000 gallons of water from sea water per day.

There were many more interesting facts, but I could not type the numbers fast enough on my iPad.

Everyone always enjoys a chocolate buffet, right? Well, this was the mother of all rat races. I just got a few samples, left the Garden Cafe behind, took my chocolate to the Blue Lagoon, ordered coffee, and enjoyed... you guessed it... Lucky Duo.

I have not mentioned them before, but New Season was pretty entertaining at the pool. The lead singer always succeeded in engaging passengers. In this picture, he even drew a large crowd from P&O Azura. Some of them got in on the YMCA fun! The first level of passengers you see in this picture are from Dawn. The other 3 levels are from Azura! It almost felt like they were part of our cruise... maybe they wished they were :D

Loving this!!!! Keep it coming.....

Ditto !! http://boards.cruisecritic.com/data:image/png;base64' date='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[/img']

Our favorite towel animals:

Self disembarkation was MUCH better than in 2009. We were off the ship and through customs within 20 minutes.

To follow, a few picture highlights of the ports... Check back later ;)

My husband and I were also on this cruise, and we appreciated all the staff with their upbeat hellos and smiles, even during the Christmas season, when they were missing their families. We LOVED Nennette in the Pearly Kings, and Patrick of the cruise staff. Johnny "Cash" Sanchez, was as nice and honest as he could be. My husband was enjoying a "gar" (cigar), at the Bimini late one nite and Johnny stopped by and just chatted with the 2 of us, like he was a fellow cruiser. Nice! We also appreciated that NCL brought a retired priest on board for one Sunday mass and Midnite mass at Christmas, as we were at sea Christmas Eve, and got off the boat to go home Christmas day. I am sure the cruise staff that got to attend appreciated it also. Great cruise, diverse passenger list, and interesting ports, and the best part is we missed a foot of snow in Denver!!! What cruising is all about.

Kathy

I will let the pictures tell most of the story for the ports. In St. Maarten, I took the Water Taxi to the shopping area (I think it was $6 Roundtrip and it takes about 10 minutes).

TIP: You can also walk to the shopping district. It is about 1.5 miles by road. However, you get beautiful views of Philipsburg from the water taxi. It was well worth it, even for the extreme budget minded traveler (like me).

TIP: Wear your swimsuit... the beaches are right next to the shopping & the water is beautiful. You can rent a chair for $10 to $25, depending on the vendor and optional perks. Of course, you could just sit on the sand...

Nice job, and I love your attitude.

Still St. Maarten...

A girl's dream:

It was a BUSY day in port, but not too busy in the shopping district.

TIP: St Martin (French side of the island) shops are closed on Sundays. Just something to keep in mind if you have an excursion planned on a Sunday. We happened to be there on a Sunday and spent the day on the Dutch side only.

I hope to go back to Antigua one day when all the renovations are done... We walked around town only - no excursion.

Dominica is one island where I will take an excursion next time. The mountains are beautiful!

DID YOU KNOW? We did not anchor in Dominica, even though we tendered. This is another interesting fact we learned at the Officers Profile. We 'hovered' (now that is my term to explain it :D ). The water is too deep to anchor, so the ship is held in place by the computers. I'm sure an engineer will cringe at this explanation, but it is my understanding of it...

I love this phone booth!

Nice job, and I love your attitude.

Thank you :)

I will be back a bit later for the other ports. Enjoy the ship for now...

Here it is in Barbados:

This one was taken in 2009 from the tender in Samana... (Pre-refurb)

We did not know that we were assigned “VIP”, and were taken through the regular check in process. However, when we got to the front of the line, we were escorted to the VIP ‘lounge’ and were on the ship by 11:45 a.m.

 

Enjoying your review and photos. Just curious, why were you VIP?

We'll be on Dawn the 15th and thank you for all the hints and pictures to get us even more in the mood! I so appreciate anyone who leaves us pictures or a review, all is so helpful. :)

Enjoying your review and photos. Just curious, why were you VIP?

I contacted NCL in Miami to set up our Cruise Critic meet and greet. They did not tell me, but apparently you become VIP when you are the contact person for the meet and greet. We tried to transfer it to another member for CC, since we could not use many of the perks, but the ship could not change it, since Miami had set it up. So, that is a tip I forgot to leave...

If you set up your cruise critic roll call's meet and greet & keep the roll call current, you will probably be assigned VIP status. :)

It is very easy to set up the meet and greet. See this link: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1300907

I took the "Barbados Highlights" excursion with NCL. The island is beautiful and the tour guide was a lovely lady. Unfortunately, the sound system on the tour bus was very poor and it was hard to hear her at times. I am glad I go to see the island, but it was a real let-down to not hear the history clearly.

TIP: We did not discover this until we visited our last port, but in the Dawn Atrium is a poster stand with information about the ports. I wish I had discovered it sooner, because it included interesting information and history about the islands.

Here are some highlights of Barbados:

Look at the curl of that wave!

Farley Hill National Park

Sugar Cane plants in Barbados

Bridgetown:

The International Cricket Stadium:

NCL brought this local steel drum band onboard. They played Christmas songs on the steel drums which was unique and beautiful. Just what we needed for our Caribbean Christmas!

In St. Kitts, I took another NCL tour. This time was much better with our guide (Mr. T) who had an excellent sound system.

Caribelle Batik & the Botanical Gardens:

Government Housing in St. Kitts.

I contacted NCL in Miami to set up our Cruise Critic meet and greet. They did not tell me, but apparently you become VIP when you are the contact person for the meet and greet. We tried to transfer it to another member for CC, since we could not use many of the perks, but the ship could not change it, since Miami had set it up. So, that is a tip I forgot to leave...

 

If you set up your cruise critic roll call's meet and greet & keep the roll call current, you will probably be assigned VIP status. :)

 

It is very easy to set up the meet and greet. See this link: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1300907

ok im on it!!!! lol most of the rollcall are new to ncl but a couple have sailed ncl befor, im not sure if I should be the one to organise it but I am certainly the most regular poster on there so why not :o what else do you get with vip status?

great pictures!!! I Love st Kitts and Barbados, Ive been to all the islands you visited and it brings back memories. Its also really nice to be on a ship any time in december when the decorations are up :) thankyou for this review its great