Unfortunately chose the Dawn...be warned!

[Demonyte]

We are booked on Dawn 11/2014 and cannot wait! I love to travel with an open mind! :D

 

Me too! We had an excellent reposition cruise on Dawn's sister ship Star last year and I'm eagerly waiting to get to experience the same on Dawn and possible embarkation issues apart, I'm sure that it'll be great. :D

[lanceholt]

We were on the Dawn repo from Boston to Tampa Nov 1 to 15 of this year and had a really wonderful relaxing time. We were impressed by the level of service when many many of the crew had family in the Philippines who were missing or suffering, they were so professional.

 

Did you speak directly with the Hotel Director? He was highly visible all through the ship throughout the entire 2 weeks, so you would not have had a problem contacting him. If your problems were this severe, that was the route to go.

 

Complaining about cancelled shore excursions is just complaining to complain. Gimme a break. During our cruise someone was throwing sanitary napkins down their toilet despite the sign directly above it. That resulted in 50 cabins having no toilet service for a good part of the day in question. Nothing NCL could do about that and they fixed as soon as they could, but it did require taking apart the main sewer line etc. etc. We had an Officers Dinner with the Chief Environmental Officer who said it is often a problem, again nothing NCL can do about it but work as quickly as possible.

 

We ate at La Cucina one evening, service was impeccable. I just can't understand how dinner service in the main dining room could have taken 3 hours, that is sort of not to be believed.

 

We all get it, so don't cruise NCL again, go on a vacation that makes you happier. BUT they are not going to refund your money or any part of it at this point.

[Twelvevman]

What shore excursions did you do? I've been looking at some choices, but haven't picked anything yet, although I'm REALLY leaning to contacting Victor Bodden tours for Roatan. And the Tropicale or whatever it is on Costa Maya, although I've been reading more and more good things about a different resort, I can't remember the name of it...something with an M...

 

 

We did the Dawn western run last year and used Victor Bodden. It was a great experiance. We had a private van for the 5 of us. Did an island sightseeing tour that included stops at a couple of roadside overlooks...of course they all had small straw markets set up :rolleyes:. We then went to the monkey petting area that was amazing. The next stop was the butterfly gardens...not worth the stop in my opinion. We then went to a small open air restaurant in town for a native type lunch...not a tourist spot. Food was very good. Our last stop wa sthe cameo factory which had some really nice items for sale. Our guide was very friendly and we truly enjoyed the tour.

 

The resort you are thinking of in Costa Maya is Maya Chan. We went there as well and I would go back again in a heartbeat. Great location, the owners are extremely friendly and go the extra mile to make sure you have a great day. The lunch was delicious and the drinks flowed freely. :D

[iceman2a]

Embarkation issues aside, there seems to be an “uptick” in negative opinions about the Dawn. Figuring out if those opinions are being skewed because of the embarkation issues is a tough thing to do. I have sailed on the Dawn and had a great cruise. Negative reviews usually do not deter me, however I am seriously considering looking at the Breakaway for a Bermuda cruise this spring or fall. There is more at stake than just my cruise experience, I will be traveling with 2 other couples who have never cruised before. The ease of cruising from our home port vs. the extra travel and cost of going out of NYC made the Dawn a “no brainer” choice. Now I am having second thoughts. Not just on the OP’s comments but comments in total recently!

[Gymrat64]

I'm sorry this particular time on the Dawn wasn't a nice experience for you and your family. I was also on that Thanksgiving cruise and really liked it. My DH and 14 DD were with me, our first time cruising and despite the long wait in Tampa we all had a ball! We booked all private excursions: Little French Key in Roatan (daughter's favorite), cavetubing and ziplining with Vitalino Reyes in Belize (husband loved it!), and Maya Chan in Costa Maya (paradise). We thoroughly enjoyed these excursions and would highly recommend them to everyone. We picked this trip for the itinerary and it was great. Some fellow cruisers we spoke with that were on Carnival during this same week at the hotel in Tampa said that some of their stops were canceled. That would have really bothered me if that had been the case with the Dawn. We ate one night at Le Bistro and loved it! The cream brulee was to die for. I liked the fact that the hostess at Aqua would give everyone a coupon for a free drink as she handed out the pagers on the nights that were really busy. Also the staff were so friendly. In Cozumel the Dawn was docked next to the Pearl and the staff from each ship had a dance off party. It was great. Yes everything wasn't perfect but I overlooked the small things. I will definately cruise again with them.;)

[BlueJai]

To the OP, I am sorry that you had these experiences. I would imagine having a large group makes things that much harder if everyone is experiences 'less than stellar' service and responses to issues.

 

Last year we were in a 5 star hotel and three times in a 12 hour period had toilet overflowing issues. The first time we were fine with (understanding problems happen) the situation and were happy when maintenance showed up. The 2nd time - an hour or two later we were still ok - it was late afternoon and we weren't too inconvenienced. But when it happened the 3rd time at 5:30 am on the day we were leaving to embark, and we had no response from 4 calls to customer care/front desk etc. I was pretty livid. Sorry to go on and on, but I think the OP has a definite concern here and for 6 days is ridiculous. (and I am the biggest NCL Cheerleader)

 

I know in the past when I have written to NCL, I have always received a response - so hang tight, hopefully the response will be forthcoming.

 

Again, I am sorry for some of the issues you experienced, and hope you may try NCL another time to see why so many enjoy it.

 

Jai

[jackparts]

Ok I get it. The Darn Dawn had a lot of fantastic cruises. Been there and done that.Almost every post echoes that. But how many posters that were on the cruises that were affected that had all the problems posted positive comments? Were there many positive comments? How can you all post how bloody great your cruise was before previously when you didn't have to wait and wait without any reliable info to embark? Did you get to stand outside the terminal in line even though you got there after noon? Did you have to wait in line 3+ hours to get off? Did you miss the Viaport shuttle to the airport because you were too late, and not get a refund? I can usually forgive anything that happens on the cruise, but find it hard to understand why this happened and NOT A DAMN COMMENT other than a small blurb from NCL. I understand that the next few cruises will be ok, and I hope that the problems are fixed by the Jan 12 cruise, but if not, will all you cheerleaders still not be upset especially if you are booked on those cruises? If the problems are not fixed, how understanding can anyone be with a cruise line that doesn't care except for the mighty bucks? And yes, I have cruised with NCL before and probably will again.

[GORDONCHICK]

My family (17 total) and I sailed on the Dawn for the Thanksgiving cruise this year. It was our first cruise with Norwegian, and based on this experience, will be our last. It was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.

 

Things got off to a bad start due to the utter failure that occurred during embarkation. I understand this topic has been discussed in other threads, so I won't expound on the subject, but the cruise terminal personnel and the cruise ship personnel continually told different stories of what went wrong. It would have been different if they had been honest, or possibly had even made some sort of "complimentary drink" available, but no....just the lies.

 

From there , things only got worse. The toilet in our stateroom didn't flush properly for six of the seven days. It was reported to guest services a minimum of three times a day. No apology. No offer to move us to a different cabin. Just a comment that they would get the information to the appropriate department.

 

We made the mistake of paying to go to the La Cuccina restaurant for the Jazz Brunch. The food, when it finally arrived after roughly 40 minutes, was cold. When it was brought to the server's attention, the response was "What do you want me to do about it".

 

Breakfast at the Garden Cafe was also poor. It was impossible to find a working coffee machine. The buffet was very poorly maintained. (If you wanted bacon, you had better hope you liked crumbs instead of strips)

 

Then there's the Venetian main dining room. The hostess was just flat out rude (Didn't have the temperment for the job). Service was bad. It was nearly impossible to even get a refill on a glass of water. We would e seated around 5:30PM and the service was so slow, we had to scramble to make 8:30PM shows.

 

During the comedian's performance, the people in the tech booth were having an extremely loud, disruptive conversation. Several people tried, unsuccessfully to get them to be quiet (they were wearing headphones).

 

During the shows, which were excellent, the sound mix was horrible. I have mixed sound for everything from live bands to orchestras to choral concerts and I know it isn't that difficult to get it right. I observed people actually plugging their ears or getting up and leaving because it was so poorly engineered.

 

Three of the four shore excursions we booked were cancelled due to weather. While I realize this isn't the ship's fault, when you ad it on top of the other issues, it magnifies.

 

This ship has a "Smoking Lounge" or "Cigar Lounge" if you prefer. On three different evenings, the smoke detector went off....for over an hour. The response from ship's personnel was "Stop smoking". Seriously? In the smoking lounge?

 

All of this was laid out to guest services prior to debarkation, which was another disaster. No apology was offered. This information has also been presented to Norwegian, both in the "post cruise survey" and in an email to corporate. I haven't heard a word from them.

 

We have sailed Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and family members have sailed on Disney. We have NEVER had this kind of experience on any other ship.

 

We all work hard for our money, and have a choice where to spend our vacation dollars. I would advise thinking very seriously about choosing to spend your money somewhere other than with Norwegian!

 

I am not going to debate/argue the validity of any of your claims but I do have one question. I see that you did actually get on your roll call once a few months before your cruise - did you go to the Meet & Greet? I'm going to guess that you didn't. Going is what could have made a huge difference in you & your group's experience. Because there, you would have received a card with the phone numbers of all the higher ups - the HD, F&BD, Director of Housekeeping, etc. Fortunately, I've never needed their numbers - but I always have them in case of any of the experiences you had, I would not only know who to contact but how.

 

Now, I do wish none of those things had happened to you. But I also know that things can go wrong, and unfortunately, when you have a string of them they do really add up and taint the experience from what it could have been.

 

I do hope you'll try Norwegian again, but I can certainly understand why it might be a while before you're willing to do that. I embark Sunday for my 4th Norwegian cruise and simply cannot wait! We've had nothing but absolutely wonderful experiences with them, and you can see in my signature that we've cruise most major lines. Right now, they are our #1 choice.

[triptolemus]

I wonder if the waiter in La Cucina just meant sincerely, "what would you like me to do?" For example, "would you like me to have them remake your food, or would you like to speak to a manager?" Situations like this might just be a case of language barriers and misunderstood inflection.

 

Oh, sure! There you go being calm and considerate and thinking it through when utter annoyance, entitlement, and irrationality would suffice.

 

I wonder if the toilet was malfunctioning because they had 17 people in their stateroom?

[Demonyte]

Ok I get it. The Darn Dawn had a lot of fantastic cruises. Been there and done that.Almost every post echoes that. But how many posters that were on the cruises that were affected that had all the problems posted positive comments? Were there many positive comments? How can you all post how bloody great your cruise was before previously when you didn't have to wait and wait without any reliable info to embark? Did you get to stand outside the terminal in line even though you got there after noon? Did you have to wait in line 3+ hours to get off?

 

First of all, even if everything is a-ok, there is only a handful of positive reviews anyway - negative reviews are always much more common because people feel the need to vent and unload their dissatisfaction.

 

Secondly, absolutely nobody is underminding the disembarkation issue that has drastic effects to the embarkation that follows it. It is very unfortunate situation and I'm really hoping that the issue can be fixed before the passengers from Cozumel stop because this is really sad to see for both other passengers and also NCL reputation.

 

Only thing I'm disagreeing with is the fact that people let their whole cruise be ruined because of less than 2% of the total time, because that's what we're seeing here. NCL is aware of the problem, they supposedly sent an higher-up to the port to observe the problem and I have full confidence that they are doing something about it with CBP.

[triptolemus]

Much of it could be aleviated if the cruise line just handled it better.

 

Much of it could be aleviated if the passenger just handled it better.

[che5904]

OP what I do find a little odd. You were on these boards expressing your dislike for this cruise back on Dec. 1st.

 

Why wait until the waters have now calmed and reports from the Dawn now are coming back positive from cruisers who went last week. To decided to come here to reopen an old can of worms with these "warnings" now?

 

As an upcoming cruiser on this ship, I'm not really sure what I'm suppose to be warned about. Obviously since the new posts coming out from cruisers just off of her, are not plagued with problems, then the issues you experienced IMO must be resolved.

[esp13]

I think the OP's issues are perfectly valid and I'm sure there is value to being aware of the issues he dealt with and in less than positive reviews in general.

 

However, I always keep in mind that on these ships there are what 2500 passengers (and up to 4000 for the larger ships). Even if only 1% of the passengers had "bad" experiences, that's 25-40 people. And if the ship has a 95% success rate, that's still 125-200 people with "bad" experiences.

 

Simply put, it's entirely possible for one person - or many persons - to have a bad experience for one reason or another (faulty facilities, unhelpful staff encounters, unsatisfactory meals, and yes, even simply unreasonable expectations) while 95% of the passengers on the same cruise had a marvelous time. Sometimes it can be as simple as the fact that what bothers one person (lines, slower food service, a crowded buffet) doesn't bother another.

 

So, the OP has a perfectly valid opinion about how things happened on his cruise. And everybody else has perfectly valid opinions about how things happened on theirs. I guess what I am trying to say is that, in most cases, the cruise experience is a personal experience, not a group one (at least in terms of the entire passenger manifest as one group). And somebody's bad experience doesn't invalidate your good experience any more than your good experience makes another's bad experience just a figment of his imagination.

 

I've been on 4 cruises with NCL and have another scheduled. I have never had a bad experience. That doesn't mean I've never encountered lines, crowds, food I didn't love, or shows that didn't thrill me. It just means that those things have never impacted my enjoyment of the cruise. But that's just me. To each their own and the best we can do is try to take the potentially helpful information from any review - good or bad -- and factor that into our cruising decisions.

[matj2000]

Much of it could be aleviated if the passenger just handled it better.

 

The passenger has some valid point in their complaint.

Are they not legit because you like NCL?

[Guns-N-Gars]

To address a couple of the posts.....

 

I'm not looking for any financial compensation. No expectations there. Acknowledgement from NCL and an apology would go a long way.

 

I waited to post this because NCL, in their contact form said it would be ten days. That has come and gone.

 

I will reiterate once again, I hope this was a fluke. Perhaps I set my expectations too high.

 

For those who can't glean the "warning". It is simply that if we experienced these things, you could too. Is it a guarantee that you will? By no means.

 

I added the comment about the shore excursions simply because it magnified the rest of the disappointment. I also stated I was well aware the ship was not at fault for the weather.

 

I appreciate that some of you are diehard NCL fans. I'm happy you haven't had the same experience we had.

 

Merry Christmas and fair winds and following seas to you all!!

 

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[che5904]

I will reiterate once again, I hope this was a fluke. Perhaps I set my expectations too high.

 

For those who can't glean the "warning". It is simply that if we experienced these things, you could too. Is it a guarantee that you will? By no means.

 

 

I doubt very much whether some of what you experienced was a "fluke" but possibly just happened (like everything else in life). And as luck (or unluck as the case may be) you pulled the short straw and had a lot of issues at once.

 

Here's the problem I have with your "warning".

 

I get the port issues, it happened to everyone on those sailings for whatever the reason was that caused it. And maybe nobody was actually lying to you but gave you what they understood to be the problem, period.

 

The toilet issue that you had sucked but it could happen on any cruise on any line and probably caused by other passengers, that don't bother to pay attention to signs. So yes by all means, I felt you should have included it. And yes as one poster pointed out takes a lot of time to fix it. And unless you had experienced that on any of the other lines you mentioned, you really have no idea how long it would have taken them to fix the exactly problem either and yet I'm sure you feel quite comfortable returning to those lines.

 

Sorry but I felt the rest of your points (or at least most of them) were nit picking because of the two larger problems that you experienced. To have a couple of crew that didn't meet up to your expectations on a ship that staffs over 1100 crew. Did you really expect 1100+ crew to all be perfect? They are human you are going to have some that excel, some that suck and all the rest in between. Are you trying to tell us that out of 17 previous cruisers on Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and Disney that they have never ran into some not so great crew. I find that hard to believe.

 

I'm really sorry that your cruise did not live up to what you expected it to be. I don't have an issue with your review of your disappointing cruise, but I just have a problem with a big "warning" to future cruisers since except for the first 2 issues IMO you are making mountains out of molehills. And at least one of those issues was not on the last "Dawn" sailing and therefore now doesn't need a warning because it is fixed or not actually related to the Dawn itself. Therefore a warning for that issue is no longer valid.

Edited December 19, 2013 by che5904

[pieshops]

I love NCL, but i think the Dawn is a cursed ship.

 

We have sailed on her twice, once we were hit by a rogue wave in 2005 and then we were stranded with no power floating at sea over Thanksgiving a few years ago.

 

Both times we made the best of a bad situation and still had a great time, but I do really think the ship is cursed.

[vols_159]

i have to disagree with the OP.. I was on the DAWN march 2013.. Was a the best cruise of our life! Ship was amazing.. And We went for dinner at 530 545 we were out by 630 645.. Made the 7:00 show with alot of time to spare

 

who knows whats happening now..

[Hockeylovinmom]

We have always had exemplary cruises and experiences on the Dawn. I can't imagine how things went so terribly wrong for you.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[dons_shopper]

Oh man....we're booked on the Dawn for the last week of January. :(

We will be on the DAWN in April and have been on last year in March. I can hardly wait to get onboard. the staff was terrific and I hesitate to think it might be different this time. I am counting the days and you should just look forward to it and see HOW MANY good reviews you can find here!

[Laszlo]

I can't imagine how things went so terribly wrong for you.

 

Different crew, lack of crew. I know on our 11/17 sailing they were around 100 crew members short. Understandable due to the hurricane.

[che5904]

Different crew, lack of crew. I know on our 11/17 sailing they were around 100 crew members short. Understandable due to the hurricane.

 

Wow, that's a lot of crew to be short. No wonder there are a few more complaints than normal on crew.

[Laszlo]

Wow, that's a lot of crew to be short. No wonder there are a few more complaints than normal on crew.

 

Our room steward (who was great) was working his ass off. His "Normal" hours were 6am-2pm and then 6pm-10pm. Since he had an extra 5 cabins to do his was basically working 6am - 10pm

[Love my butler]

Where exactly is the warning? :confused:

 

Or is whining now considered a fair warning?

 

I believe he is warning people with an objective opinion. Cheerleaders don't count.

[Love my butler]

i have to disagree with the OP..

 

who knows whats happening now..

 

The OP does. He was on the ship a couple weeks ago and has FIRST HAND recent experience. You do not.