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Norwegian
Dawn
Bahamas

Aine Waldron

Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Number of Cruises: 4
Sailing Date: September 4th, 2005

This was our 4th cruise, 2nd NCL cruise and 1st out of New York. Except for the hassle of embarkation and disembarkation, which was not NCL's fault, it was phenomenal.

We discovered NCL Free Style Cruising last year on a cruise through the Baltics and would never go any other way again. The Norwegian Dawn is a spectacular ship and we signed up while still on board for a cruise next year on her sister ship, the Norwegian Star. I think that NCL's real forte, however, is her personnel. We were thrilled to see a young woman as assistant maitre'd of the specialty restaurant, Le Bistro, who we had known as a senior waitperson last year on the Dream.

Going in and out of NY is amazing. We lived in NY for many years and just thrilled to the sights as we went past the skyline, Statute of Liberty and harbor. We returned to NY at 10am on 9/11/05 and passed by the site of the WTC just as the ceremonies were taking place. We could watch it on TV in our cabin and hear the bells ringing from our balcony.

We always took an outside, middle deck cabin but this was the first time we ever had a balcony and will probably always go for it in the future. We have absolutely stunning pictures of sunrises and sunsets taken right from our cabin.

The itinerary for this cruise was not especially appealing. We chose it because we had already done the Eastern and Western Caribbean and wanted a short (7-day) cruise close to the US shore as it was in the middle of hurricane season. We got caught, anyway!

ON the way back from Nassau, the Captain told us he would be navigating between two hurricanes, Ophelia off the Carolina coast and Nate near Bermuda. It was fairly rough at times but not really a problem. We don't get even the slightest but queasy, but I do get a little nervous if the ship is really crashing about. This ship, however, seemed to take it quite in stride.

The food was wonderful; we sampled each of the 12 restaurants. The service was magnificent and we especially thank Geanina Cuela, the assistant maitre'd at Le Bistro and her staff for making our anniversary dinner special.

The entertainment could have been a little better. The Broadway type show the first night was great but nothing after that lived up to expectations.

We thoroughly enjoyed the small groups and singers in the various lounges but found that even though the music was conducive to dancing, most of the lounges did not provide any space for dancing, which was a big disappointment to us.

All in all, however, we would surely recommend NCL and the Dawn to everyone.

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