cpd249

Thank you everyone for your replies!

My DW and I will be celebrating 25 years of marriage in March. To celebrate we will be doing an Alaska cruise and have splurged for an aft Neptune Suite on Westerdam in July.  This will be our first HAL cruise and will be a southbound cruise out of Seward.  My job has caused me to miss many family events and my DW has taken a backseat over the years.  I'm not a romantic guy, but I am looking for any words of wisdom on things I can do to make this a very special trip and any special things to ask for or expect with a Neptune Suite.  My DW deserves it.  We are both introverts that have jobs that require us to be extroverts so we are just looking to chill and relax.  Thanks in advance!

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.

30 minutes ago, seadog67 said:

Thank you! Glad it is enjoyable. Have a blast in 3 weeks cpd!

We will be on Deck 12 starboard side so we should have a good view of Lady Liberty.

Thanks for the posts.  We are sailing on the Dawn in 3 weeks.  I'm watching your sail away on harbor webcams.  Have a great trip!