NCL Dawn report from a 3x DCL Wonder family

[cmph]

We are freshly back from our 10nt Baltic cruise on NCL Dawn, so I figured I would add to the growing number of comparison posts. The Dawn is pretty close in size and age to the Disney Wonder, which we have been on 3 times (most recently in March), so it should be a pretty like-to-like comparison, I think. We chose this cruise b/c of the itinerary, which was port-intensive (literally a new port each day) and an assembly of ports not found elsewhere. I’ll add food commentary right after this first post, separately, b/c I got a little overly wordy on that topic.

Rooms
We had connecting deck 5 oceanview rooms. They start the deck count-up from the very bottom crew areas, so deck 5 on the Dawn = deck 2 on the Wonder. All 3 of our Wonder cruises were in deck 2 oceanviews. The Dawn rooms aren't as big, of course, but two of them cost about as much as 1 DCL room.

Pros:

• Tons of storage
• Decent sized shower with a sliding door
• Comfy beds that could be split (the connector didn't bother DH and me, and DD18 and DS14 both had regular beds, which would never happen on DCL and is a real issue for my very tall family)
• Room layout - it was so nice to be cozy in bed, pillows propped against the windowsill, staring out at the sea when it was still light out at 11pm.
• Great soundproofing between the connection - literally could not hear anything in the other room unless you opened both doors. Far far better than the Wonder, where we could hear entire conversations from our neighbors in March.

Cons:

• Annoyingly located outlets, other side of room from the bed/s (unless you like getting out of bed to see what time it is)
• Pointless see-through door to the toilet portion of the bathroom, whose frame limited entry space for tall people, and was definitely not as useful as DCL's split bathroom setup.

Ship - navigation/logistics/entertainment
The Dawn has none of the newer ships’ bells and whistles, but we knew that going in and didn’t care so much on a port-intensive itinerary. We also didn’t care about once-a-day room cleaning, and actually told our attendant to skip the kids’ room a couple days (teens nap a lot).

Pros:

• Great promenade deck for walking, appreciated that it’s separated from the running track (which is on top above the pool deck). DH and I spent time every evening after dinner walking around the deck, which we preferred to the offered entertainment.
• Never felt overly crowded, even got tables in the buffet without the back-and-forth wandering. - Caveat: there were 30min waits in the MDRs at times. We had dinner reservations for all but one night and consequently avoided that.
• Elevators were consistently available, aside from the usual embarkation/disembarkation anomalies.
• Smoothest disembarkation ever – we walked down the hall from our rooms, down one flight, and off the ship. From the time we heard our color called until all our luggage was in our possession – maybe 4min? (I’m sure credit is partially due to the Copenhagen port staff.)

Cons:

• Strange layout at times. Depending on where you started, you might have to go higher than you wanted, over, and back down.
• Slow embarkation - took nearly 2h to get onboard (unsure if this was the port staff's or NCL staff's fault), and then we had to wander more to find the dining team, due to repeated incorrect guidance.
• Production shows - there were 2 in the 10 nights. Soul Rockin’ Nights seemed very dated to us, with some odd set choices, such as “motorcycles” - the dancers looked like they were pushing those walker things that little kids use when they are learning how to skate. I liked Elements, but it wasn't anything approaching DCL production level. DH wasn’t a fan of either and questioned the talent of the performers. I would agree they aren't Disney caliber, but not as egregious a difference as the sets and overall shows. We did, however, really enjoy the aerialists, who had their own show another night.
• More in-your-face sales - jewelry on the walkway in the main atrium, spa guy shoving flyers in your hands when you boarded on port days, loud "cruise next" presentations in the atrium, etc. The issue was that they planted these things in places it was impossible to avoid unless you went on deck, and it felt like you were walking in the middle of an outdated mall with annoying kiosk salespeople.
• Freestyle (like Navigators), app, and paperwork were, at times, unreliable/conflicting (and full of eye-twitching grammar/spelling errors). Some examples: 1) We couldn’t for the life of us figure out why only some ports required passports; there was no rhyme or reason, and we gave up trying when the stated rules were different for the 2 ports in Germany. 2) One paper said luggage had to be out by 11pm the night before disembarkation, and another said midnight. 3) It always listed O’Sheehan’s (the pub) as being open at 11am for lunch, but they turn over from breakfast to lunch from 11-11:30 and will seat you but not even give you a menu until after 11:30.
• Food. Just bad. Total opposite from others' reported NCL experiences. Will add lots of detail in posts after the first one, for those interested.

Staff
Unlike some of the other reports here, we liked our room attendant and saw him multiple times a day. He introduced himself immediately and already had extra towels in our room. He always came by in the evening to hand-deliver our Freestyle, and he did funny little extra things like arrange our bed pillows in new orientations everyday, just to mix it up lol. Not sure if we got lucky, or the Dawn just has better management in this respect, but we had zero complaints.

Most dining staff were pleasant and efficient. Most of the time, water was refilled quickly and consistently, and food was appropriately hot on delivery (also quite a change from most of the reports here). The majority of the minor service missteps we experienced were, for whatever reason, in Venetian, which is the supposedly nicer venue of the 2 MDRs (honestly saw no difference between the 2, but this is the one that was supposed to require pants and collars… except it didn’t). We had one oddball in the pub who repeatedly walked off after taking orders from part of the table only (like – took my drink order once and then just walked off without asking the other 3, with DH calling out “wait wait” after him lol).

The only people who put real effort into service were the head waiters, who you’d see filling in as needed (bussing, refilling water, anything) and were the ones who handled allergy pre-ordering. They definitely looked busier than DCL head waiters. Our usual one had our room number memorized and always remembered to come by, trying to make that as easy as he could. Otherwise, dining staff were not DCL-level. They didn’t care if you hadn’t eaten your food, didn’t make suggestions, never explained anything. They were there to take your order and deliver it, period. I wouldn’t say that this tanked our experience, but it was definitely noticeable, even to my kids.

Other staff were polite but not necessarily effusively friendly (exceptions being the washy-washy/happy-happy and singing coffee refill ladies in the buffet). We did not interact much with guest services folks and had no real problems to resolve. We declined the drinks package and consequently interacted very little with bar staff.

Itinerary and excursions
We absolutely loved this itinerary, even the odd ports making up for the lack of St. Petersburg. We had 0 sea days. We did a mix of OYO and NCL excursions, as 3rd party options were either unavailable in some cases or were not better-priced, considering we had 2x$50 off for the deal we booked. Somewhat surprisingly for cruiseline excursions, our NCL excursions were, across the board, fantastic. I would recommend any of them, as the guides all truly added to the experience by sharing local history, perspectives, insider info, etc. All buses were nice, no logistical hiccups. Honestly, zero complaints. We chose OYO where it was super-easy to do so without diminishing the port experience.

Stockholm (embarkation point) – OYO, couple days pre-stay.
Helsinki – HOHO (free for two of us due to the $50 off per room deal).
Kotka (really Hamina), Finland – NCL’s Kotka and Hamina Highlights, great local guide, quiet and pretty little Finnish towns. NCL offered a free shuttle to Hamina, as this was an industrial port and passengers were not allowed to leave the ship unless on an NCL excursion or shuttle. (Not sure why this stop is marketed as Kotka.)
Visby, Sweden – OYO
Tallinn, Estonia – OYO
Riga, Latvia – OYO
Klaipeda, Lithuania – NCL’s Soviet Nuclear Weapons Site, fantastic and funny local guide (unless you are Russian, b/c Lithuanians in this area are not fans of Russians).
Gdynia, Poland – Historic Gdansk and Oliwa, guide was a PhD specializing in dying traditions, supremely knowledgeable about local history.
Berlin (really Warnemunde) – Schwerin and its Fairytale Castle, guide was perfectly fine with the on-site parts but excelled on the bus rides (seriously), telling stories about growing up as a child in East Germany (she is in her early 40s), and what it was like for her grandparents and parents living in this part of Germany throughout the 20th century. We also wandered OYO in Warnemunde.
Hamburg (really Kiel) – OYO
Copenhagen (disembarkation point) – unfortunately had to head straight to the airport, but the drive between the port and airport actually goes past a lot of the sites, at least.

Final thoughts
This didn’t turn DH and me into NCL fans, but we won’t avoid NCL (as a couple) in the future either. Our shipboard experience was fine. DH and DS ate safely, if not well. We have definitely shifted toward cruising for the itinerary, and this itinerary was really fabulous. We’ll consider any line that offers an interesting assembly of ports (preferably port-intensive) and safe dining, and we had such great luck with our NCL excursions, to boot.

As a family, I’m not sure we could convince the kids to go on NCL again. The dining awkwardness (described in the following post) is going to sit with DS for a while. DD thinks she might be done with cruises and prefer land-based, single-site vacations where she can wander at her leisure and eat in local cafes; NCL’s dining didn’t really dissuade her much from that vision.

 

[cmph]

Dining with dietary restrictions (skip this if irrelevant to you)

TLDR: the gluten-free dining experience on this trip was more disappointing than expected, due to a mix of supply issues, some kitchen/restaurant staff communication issues, and a general lack of interest in the extra effort to provide anything off-menu or edited, which compounded the limited offerings.

This was a pretty big negative for our family, as DH rolls with his dietary restrictions from many years of experience, but DS14 is pretty new to celiac. It hit him a lot harder to have so many limitations, so little effort, and so few options. We had lower expectations for NCL than DCL, but NCL hit far below our lowered expectations. I honestly do not get what their special allergy prep kitchen does. Maybe they only make meals for the unique allergies. They just did not want anyone to order anything other than the few labeled gf items, period, and consequently I kept wondering why they even had to pre-order. SO many things in the MDRs could easily have been made gf if they left off a garnish, but nope. Instead, not a single appetizer or soup in the 7 nights we ate in the MDRs was ever gf, and so DH and DS literally had main dishes and maybe a salad, then fruit or a plain scoop of ice cream, and that was it. On a cruise – bonkers!

Trying to special order anything required you to be really forceful. We were told to avoid the buffet and go to the open MDR for embarkation lunch… which had no gf entrees. It had an salad and crustless quiche on the appetizer list. “There aren’t any entrees that are gluten-free on here, so what can we have?” The waiter pointed at the salad and appetizer quiche. OK, let’s try this again – “can the grilled pork chop be made gf?” We had to repeat the request multiple times before we got the waiter to go talk to the kitchen, and they eventually agreed to it. So awkward, so weird, poor DS feeling awkward as heck about the whole thing. Another ex: after days of only boring plain scoops of bad ice cream riddled with ice chunks (DCL sundaes, these are NOT!), I asked “is there any kind of crème brulee they could pre-order?” (stunned silence) “Literally any flavor?” the response was “Well, I can try. I’m not sure if that’s possible. They might say no.” To the head waiter’s credit, he did manage to get crème brulees from one of the upcharge restaurants. By that point, they were out of so many gf supplies, he had to have been feeling badly. But what was going on here? Are the wait staff afraid of the kitchen staff? Why don’t they at least coordinate to have a list of items that could potentially be special-ordered with low-effort in that special kitchen?

There were other issues with restaurant/kitchen staff communications. Ex: DS pre-ordered gf pancakes on our first night, at the suggestion of the head waiter, who was very proud of this special offering. We showed up the next morning and told them he had pre-ordered. They had no record of this and asked who exactly we had pre-ordered from. Eventually they determined the source of the problem: they were completely out of the mix they use to make gf pancakes. No one that took pre-orders knew this, and the waiters also did not know. The kitchen staff apparently just tossed requests they could not fulfill, so there was no record of the pre-order. DS got two of their frozen emergency gluten-free waffles instead, which were terrible. The head waiter was very apologetic the next time we saw him, but it was a sorry start to the first pre-order experience and only further added to the awkwardness that DS had on day 1. He gave MDR breakfast one more try, which was also slightly messed up, before he gave up and had a banana and sealed honey nut cheerios from the buffet the rest of the trip.

The MDR was only open for lunch on embarkation day and 1 additional day of the 10-day cruise. There is no pool deck food, aside from (at times), burgers and hot dogs cooked elsewhere and put out at the pool bar. So lunch is only the buffet or the pub, effectively rendering the pub as the only allergy-safe option. They could make burgers and sandwiches on gf bread, but that was it. Due to supply issues, DS ate 3 burgers on bagels on this cruise, not even bothering to complain about the weirdness at that point.

Only positive – neither of them got glutened over 10 days (although one upcharge restaurant tried to gluten DS – just made it so obvious that we could easily see, luckily).

 

[tidefan]

Will be interesting to hear. We had a great 12-night British Isles cruise on Regal Princess in May. Absolutely loved it.

And DW is GF. She usually found something pretty good to eat.

 

[cmph]

Dining – le sigh, the food

I didn’t have super high expectations, but yikes, the food was really just not good on this cruise. I was looking forward to more variety than DCL, but in reality I ended up eating the same things repeatedly from the buffet and pub b/c everything else was so disappointing or even inedible. The lofty MDR menu descriptions did not match what we were served. DD and I (no dietary restrictions) started to pre-game dinner in the buffet around day 3. I’ll mention here that there is no theming to the MDR meals, which took DD by surprise. She wasn’t expecting, like, Tiana’s, but I guess if you’re accustomed to DCL, you expect “pirate night” or “captain’s dinner” or the like.

I know they had restocking issues in Europe, so some offerings were on-the-fly subs, easily identified by mismatching fonts on the menus. I don’t know if this is an issue for all lines to the extent that it was for NCL this cruise, though. I get that chicken breasts and whatever gf flour mix they use must be easier to get in the US, but they ran out of stuff like bananas and eggs that shouldn’t be so hard to get in Europe, IMO. (Side note: their approach to the dwindling banana supply was to peel and halve them, and put them out on the buffet in large dishes like that. Not one person in that kitchen said “hey this is a bad idea for bananas.” I don’t know how long they had been out there when I saw them, but yikes.) And some of what they did have large supplies of was overly (mis)used. If you like arugula, this was the cruise for you! It was just about the only green they had the first half of the cruise, so they put it in everything (even the ham and cheese sandwiches on the buffet), becoming a running joke.

Most things were middling at best and/or misadvertised. The chicken piccata had neither lemon nor capers. The Asian-style crispy red snapper with spicy Sichuan sauce was neither crispy nor spicy nor sauced. You get the idea. Some high/lowlights follow.

Good:

• Honey crème brulee (MDR)
• Indian food in the buffet (not just lunch; one side of the buffet also had a vegetarian Indian dish and chapatis at breakfast)
• Crepes made to order (buffet)
• Scones with jam and cream in the buffet during snack hours
• Lava cake (MDR)
• Banana soufflés (MDR) – unusual soufflé flavor, but DD and I found this enjoyable, and literally the only thing I ordered that a waiter ever said “good choice” to
• Nachos and artichoke spinach dip (pub) – DD’s and my lunch staple.

Bad:

• Huevos rancheros (MDR breakfast) – made with chili as served in the pub, 3 tiny chunks of avocado instead of the advertised guacamole, and our new mainstay arugula
• Orange chocolate mousse (MDR embarkation lunch) – we expected orange zest as the orange element and almost died laughing when we saw the sole cube of orange jello hidden in the middle of the mousse. I wish I had taken a pic of DD’s face.
• The buffet’s soft serve machine only had chocolate, apparently another victim of the supply issues. It was only available some of the time (in the buffet) and didn’t always work either. One and done for our kids.

Ugly:

• Pork loin (MDR) – DH thinks this meat was off. DS never turns down meat and ate all sorts of unusual-to-Americans meats in the Scandinavian countries we were in, but he couldn’t eat more than a bite either.
• Thickly battered and fried sushi rolls (MDR) – this was marketed as a fried Japanese veggie roll or something similar? I was expecting a spring roll, must have misinterpreted the menu, but this was not good. I tried to pick off the batter, but the hot roll was very bad.
• Key lime mousse (buffet) – if there is a shortage of gelatin somewhere in Europe, it’s b/c the Dawn chefs accidentally put it all in this dish last week. This was the most off-putting texture I have ever put in my mouth, and if there was any way I could have politely spit it out, I would have. DH started to take photos, and it’s a darn shame for you all that I don’t share photos of myself here, b/c the animation of me reacting to that bite is really spectacular.
• Seafood hotpot in lemongrass broth – There is no way the seafood was cooked in anything seasoned, but it was definitely cooked to death, as you could tell from the shriveled clams and mussels. I’m still convinced they forgot the broth or sauce or whatever was meant to finish this, but I could not get the waiter to understand my concern that it was missing the component meant to provide actual flavor. He kept trying to get me to order something else as I tried to tell him that the dish was wrong, and I gave up. It was not worth eating this. I did snap a shot of the carefully arranged, extremely overcooked, very dry and bland dish. They even managed to remove all liquid from the shells, which was really quite something.

Not sure where/how to categorize: they were carving whole suckling pigs on the buffet near the end of the cruise at lunch. Not sure DD will ever recover from that one, but that sure was a surprise to see!

We had 3 dinners in the upcharge restaurants, which were mostly much better. We had a great meal in the Italian restaurant, DH and DS loved the Brazilian churrascaria, and DD and I loved the French restaurant. (We split up one night b/c DD was desperate for escargot, but the churrascaria was the far better gf option.) Our one not-great experience was the steakhouse, which had good meats but just ok desserts and sides, and pretty bad apps/salads/soups.

 

[imbelle]

Thanks for your posts. I'll be cruising NCL for the first time and this helps me temper my expectations.

 

[DCLMP]

Great review. Thank you.

 

[soniam]

Sorry about the food. Hey, maybe at least you didn’t gain a ton of weight like I usually do on a cruise. That’s a really thin silver lining though. Thanks for review. Sounds like we will stick with DCL with our son for a little longer and Celebrity when we are adult only. Sounds like a really interesting itinerary though.