meltingmoments

These were some of our treats on the Escape 🙂 

This was the Viva Vino list from our Dawn cruise in April.

As the previous poster said, you usually find a table set up in the atrium on the first day selling this.

Have done this itinerary but on the Jade. It was our favourite cruise ever! Loved it. Very relaxing. I'd just had a rather nasty fall not long before we went and was unable to walk too far. This cruise enabled us to enjoy the ports but also to relax, which was much needed! 

We also sailed the Dawn just this past end of April.

You should have no worries about the state of her, she is a beautiful ship and in great shape.

Hope that helps. 

Well now, I'm not a  coffee drinker so didn't really pay an awful lot of attention! 

But I just went and checked my photos from our Dawn trip at the end of April.

There was no coffee maker in or balcony cabin!! 😮

22 minutes ago, finny2 said:

https://www.ncl.com/prohibited-items

read #21. You may have been able to take it. But it is prohibited. 

Well as a previous poster suggested, I think you would have a ship full of angry women if they were prohibited! 😀😀

But thankfully it's never been an issue. 

I just found this.....

https://www.ncl.com/uk/en/faq/guest-conduct-policy

16 hours ago, finny2 said:

Since they contain a heating element, no.

 

This is not actually correct!

I have taken my straighteners on all 7 cruises with NCL and never had an issue.

The hair dryers in the cabins are all good ones, although I have short hair so not so much of an issue for me. 

I agree with Keith, I've seen various Viva Vino menus over the years.

Neither of those pictured above is the same as the one on our April cruise on the Dawn, although the newest one is the closest with only a few minor differences.

We've sailed the Epic twice, both times the Western Med itinerary and found that lots of people dressed up for dinner. Not ballgowns and a tux, but certainly more than resort casual.

I'm a casual kind of girl myself, but I enjoy looking nice for dinner and agree with Two Wheels Only who suggested dress up regardless.....it's Freestyle after all!  🙂 

7 hours ago, mking8288 said:

Go find & enjoy what I called the "not-so-secret" hideaway quiet (somewhat) lounge on Deck 9 mid-ship, above the atrium & up the stairs from O'Sheehan's.  It's where our "gang" meet pre-dinner sometimes, nice place indoor to read, relax, sit-back & enjoy music from below.  

Oh definitely this! 

Our cabin was on Deck 9 and we literally stumbled on the doorway leading to this area. So lovely! 

Loved the Dawn, great staff, easy to navigate. Enjoyed both main dining rooms for atmosphere and service. 

Favourite bar was O'Sheehans but also enjoyed Gatsby's for the music. 

Can't think of anything we disliked! 

Hi there, we visited Harvest Caye in April and whilst the water wasn't murky, what we DID notice was it was very difficult to walk into the sea. The sand is extremely hard and uncomfortable on bare feet. It is also very uneven and even right at the shore's edge, goes up and down badly. Then again, I have joint issues, so feel things more easily, but no, don't recall the water being murky. Enjoy your trip! 🙂 

We are huge fans of the Viva Vino package as I only drink wine. DH will drink beer as well, but prefers wine, so this suits us well. 

We recently sailed on the Dawn after a 3 year hiatus from cruising.

This is the only time in 7 NCL cruises that we encountered any problems with the package.

As was usual, we headed to O'Sheehans on our first evening and handed in 2 slips, 1 for a bottle of red and one for a bottle of white...DH and I drink different colours!  🙂 

The barman looked at the slips and promptly gave us one back, saying he had the white, but not the red!

He took the white from the fridge and brought over 2 glasses, and that was that! 

DH gave him a moment and when he was free, DH quietly explained he doesn't drink white and please could he have his bottle of red? Again, he was told * we don't have it*.....nothing more! DH then asked what then was the solution and was met with a shrug of the shoulders. At that point, I suppose we could have left and gone to another bar, but we were a little confused! Had things changed so much in 3 years? Did the bar staff not go and get your wine for you any more? 

As we were discussing this, the same barman came back to us, and said if we gave him a while, he *supposed* he could go and get the red wine. DH thanked him and waited. After about 15 minutes, the barman went off, but not before I had heard him cursing and muttering under his breath to his colleague!

He came back very quickly with the red wine and literally plonked it in front of us! Not a good start!

The following day, for his own understanding, DH decided to go to Guest Relations and ask what the protocol was with the Viva Vino package. He was assured that you can get your wine from any bar or restaurant on the ship and that it was indeed the staff's job to go and retrieve it. He was also told that you may also leave any unfinished wine in any bar or restaurant for the next time.....the barman in O'Sheehan's disagreed with that also! 

Fortunately for us, the rest of the staff in O'Sheehans were not having as bad a day as that original barman, and we had no further problems. 

1 hour ago, halegliss said:

Thanks for the review we will be in some of those ports soon!

 

 We enjoyed both Costa Maya and Harvest Caye. Hope you do too! Happy sailing! 

2 hours ago, Smq123 said:

Glad you had the lovely cruise! Welcome back to cruising. I love the Dawn. I'm a BIG Richard Matic fan who has been/is the CD on the Dawn. He was on the Jade in November 2018 when I went on the Dawn & his leadership was so impressive & all his staff clearly loved him. When I was on the Dawn in February it was Richard as CD & Luz as Asst Luz. Both were lovely & everywhere. They made the cruise more fun. A lot of people complained about the service in O'Sheehans. It was extremely slow & seemed that the staff was irritated because they were either short staffed or there were problems in the kitchen. Orders were placed & 30 minutes would go by without a drink or food. People complained & just got up & left. After two experiences like that we avoided O'Sheehans for the rest of the cruise which is unfortunate because we are gamblers & tend to skip dinner if we are on a winning streak leaving us unfed until breakfast. 

Thank you, we had a great cruise! 

I totally agree with you about Richard Matic, such a lovely man and very visible around the ship.

As for O'Sheehans, again, I agree, the service was slow. 

We only ate there on our last night and whilst we were in no rush, we definitely waited a while for our food. So much so, that the Manager noticed and chased it up! After that everything came at once....starter to share and both main dishes. Again, not a problem, we were hungry!  🙂 We didn't have to wait for drinks though, we had our own wine!  😉

1 hour ago, bam1957 said:

Love your review. Nicely written. Happy that you had a nice cruise.

Thank you! We most certainly did have a great cruise! 

3 hours ago, newmexicoNita said:

very brief but complete review: the type I like to read. It sounds like you know how to make the best of things and didn't let one rude, so and so ruin your cruise Lets hope he was just having a bad day. We too enjoy the Dawn. Hopefully next time you can take a 7 day or longer cruise on her We think, overall the service on the Dawn is as good as it gets 

Glad you enjoyed my review, thank you.  🙂 

We do indeed like to make the best of things and what we encountered by no means impacted on our enjoyment.

Every other member of staff we came into contact with was extremely professional and I would agree with you that the service on the Dawn was very, very good. 

3 hours ago, Love my butler said:

 

And that is exactly why crew like that barman continue to be rude and unhelpful to guests.  People don't want them to 'get in trouble'.  Trouble?  That barman should have been relieved of duty and probably sent home at the next port.  Think how many other guests will have to suffer from his poor attitude because you didn't want 'to get him in trouble'.

Just to clarify......DH approached Guest Services the morning after ONE incident to clarify for himself that our request was a reasonable request. The GS Manager assured him his request was not only reasonable, but it was staff's job to get our wine. 

Whilst this encounter with this particular staff member was not pleasant, it had been ONE incident. We are not the kind of people to complain at the drop of a hat and indeed, did not complain. We gave the member of staff the benefit of the doubt. They all work very hard. I guess anyone can have a bad day, no? To suggest he should have * been relieved of his duty and probably sent home at the next port* is a little harsh in my opinion! And to suggest that others will *have to suffer from his poor attitude* because of ME is, quite frankly, rude! 

6 hours ago, bonvoyagie said:

Loved your review. We were on the Dawn in 16 right after her big drydock. Never had a problem with the bar staff. We had the UBP at the time so we did everything by the glass. We like to mix beer wine and cocktails so that works the best for us. I also do not like to complain and get someone in trouble. I am not sure if you had the same person and he gave you the same attitude throughout the cruise, or if it was a one time thing. I will give a person the benefit of the doubt once, maybe twice but if it persisted I would not hesitate to report him to the beverage manager, or hotel manager - you usually see these folks at the CC M&G. As far as your understanding of our humor, I bet I would have equal problems with your British humor.

Glad you enjoyed my review, thank you! 

We too have never had a problem with bar staff on any other cruise before. 

On reflection, we thought that because almost all the people on board had the UBP that any other request seemed to throw the staff.They were VERY busy and seemed to be constantly making cocktails that often got left on the bar. Having said that, that really wasn't our problem and we just wanted a quiet drink without any hassle.

We DID come across the same barman throughout the cruise, and he was a little warmer towards us......we were regulars at O'Sheehans!  🙂 Fortunately the other staff were fab.

1 hour ago, sparky3w said:

Thanks for the post, the pics, and the review of the Dawn.  It's been about 3 years since our last cruise as well, but we're giving it another go again in a couple weeks!

You're very welcome! I hope you enjoy your upcoming cruise! Happy sailing!

Just now, Greenpea2 said:

What a great review. And your attitude is wonderful. It will be almost 4 years since my last cruise when I finally cruise again next February. We too enjoyed a break with land vacations. Now I am very excited for February. Thanks again for posting this.

 Thank you!  🙂 

We found we had really missed cruising and thoroughly enjoyed our trip. 

Enjoy your cruise when it comes around. 

11 minutes ago, All-ready2cruise said:

Thanks for the nice review and welcome back to cruising. Not sure about some of the bar tenders, seems really odd but I've seen some who look really surly, never had one refuse to get my bottle of wine. It's too bad you had to experience that. 

We've never experienced it before either! We found his attitude quite shocking , if I'm honest, but fortunately we didn't have to deal with him again after the first encounter and the other bar staff were lovely!  🙂 

I know when we were on board a couple of weeks ago, people were going to the actual venue to try and book. Particularly noticed that with Cagneys. 

Disembarkation the following morning was slow!! 

There were a few announcements stating that due to congestion in Customs, disembarkation was being halted! 

I believe it took us almost 2 hours to disembark! 

We took off our own suitcase and when we finally reached customs, that part was relatively quick.

So, our cruise was over. 

We enjoyed the Dawn very much.

We enjoyed the itinerary as we hadn't visited either port, but felt the trip could have done with another port stop.

We had missed cruising and are glad to have got our sea legs back!  🙂

On a side note about the experience with the unhelpful bar man....DH went to Guest Services to query what should happen with wine bought via the Viva Vino package, as we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing and not requesting something that doesn't happen. DH was reassured that we were able to both retrieve and leave our wine from all and any bar on the ship. He was told that it's the bar staff's job to retrieve and store the wine. He asked for the barmans name and said he would personally speak to him, but DH refused, not wanting to get anyone into trouble and considering that we had excellent service from the other bar staff, we didn't feel it was appropriate.

Eeek....final day on board the lovely Norwegian Dawn.

It's a sea day, so a leisurely breakfast, a trip to the photo gallery to check out our photos and a trip to Guest Services to collect some Vacation Hero cards.

Spent a few hours on deck 14 at the front of the ship, managed an afternoon snooze and then did our packing!  😞 

We had a final wander around the ship, going into cellars wine bar for a little while.

We ate in O'Sheehans this evening as just fancied something easy.

The food was fine but service was a little slow. But hey, we were in no rush so all was good.

Later we went to the late showing in the theatre with the comedian, Julie Barr again, this time the adult version! Again, very funny although some of the American references were a little over our British heads! 

Back to O'Sheehans to finish off our wine and that was it! Cruise almost over! 😞

Day 4, Costa Maya.

We had no plans other than to get off the ship and wander, so after breakfast we got ready and did just that! Thankfully it was a much less painful process today than yesterday!

It was very hot and humid today with a good few dark clouds!

Sure enough, after about an hour ashore, the tropical rain came. But not for long and there's always a bar to provide some shelter! This one even provided entertainment.......wrestling!! 

I hid behind DH.....not for me, I'm squeamish! Lol 

Back onto the Dawn for a couple of hours sunbathing on a fairly quiet ship.

Dinner tonight was at Aqua, again lovely food and great service.

Tonight's entertainment was Elements in the Stardust theatre. What an amazing show! Such talent. Really enjoyed it! 

O'Sheehans saw us again......do you see a pattern?  🙂 

The casino saw us also! And day 4 was over!

Tonight's dinner was taken in the Venetian restaurant. There are no complaints from us about the food we had anywhere on the ship, but I have to say the service here and in Aqua was exceptionally good. We were very impressed. And although we thoroughly enjoyed Cagneys, my DH said his steak in the Venetian was as good, if not better! And he likes his steak!  🙂 

Also tonight we went to the Stardust theatre to watch Julie Barr, an excellent and very funny comedian. Then back to O'Sheehans for some drinks and another day was done.