scuba_ninja

I didn't have the breakfast burritos the day I took these pics, but I'll admit they looked decent, and the tortilla machine was fun to watch.

The Arepas looked kinda old and sad and soggy.

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So, in all seriousness this made me a little annoyed. This dudebro from the spa wearing a muscle shirt was pushing these into people's hands on deck, but only to people well... who might have needed a little metabolism boost. Good marketing? Maye..... But I thought it was crass. I'm thick skinned (literally and figuratively) I'm over it, but I feel like they'd have gotten more business if they were a little less rude about it. I was more annoyed by just how pushy he wa about it.

Anyway, back to FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD. HOT KIELBASA AND... Salmon Benedict?

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Omlet man.

This is Tom, Tom and Tom.

Dick, Harry and Ben

Betty and Wilma

In the past, a lot of specialty spots I hear were closed port days. On our sailing, most things were open port and sea days.

Anything on the ship made from puff pastry was good. But here's also an exameple of a spot that the crew should have tiddyed up a little. Sometiems attention to detail is lacking. Sure, the buffet is visited by a heard of wild elephants every day, but still.

I regret not eating more mortadella.

Or if I'm feeling generous for some reason, the second most boring.

Actually, I have to say, the decks were weirdly empty for a lot of the sea days. It would get crowded at random times, then boom, empty.

I did go in a few hot tubs, but I never set foot in any pools. Especially the aft one. I used to be a lifeguard, so I feel like I've bathed in enough kids pee in my lifetime already. I'm good.

The ship's sushi bar seemed like it had way more crew eating there than passengers. The tables are all high stools and looked uncomfortable. We never ate there, but judging by the number of crew that did, it must actually be decent. Honestly, I don't have a good reason for not eating there. Mostly that every time we passed it we weren't hungry. Weird considering my wife's favorite food is sushi.

She was on our hallway. I named her Cecilia.

Now that you all hate me, back to happy happy joy joy time. Here's a picture of a completely unrelated cute puppy from the internet to lighten the mood.

next up.... TWO SEA DAYS! Ending a cruise with 2 sea days is fantastic. It's the best way to unwind before real life hits again. I thought I'd hate sea days, nope. Love 'm.

before I give you more pretty pictures, let's talk about the internet access on the ship. OK, as an IT guy, I gotta say, ***? I didn't pay for internet. I'm glad I did not. I was on vacation. Also, there's lot of dead zones.

Also, here's something funny. So I left my wifi on because I had the Carnival messaging through the hub app (which mostly worked very well). Every so often, my wife and I would both randomly get real text messages, emails and FB notifications. At first, of course I had 6.3 panics attacks thinking I was running up the cellular at sea bill. Nope. Checked all settings, no mobile data being used (verified after the trip too). To me, this means that their firewall has issues. Without getting to technical, I'll say that if you're doing any kind of banking or trying to do anything confidential onboard through the wifi. DON'T. I'm not complaining, I got some messages for free, which was great cause I get to see pics from my pet sitter, but, yeah. don't trust their network for anything sensitive.

Also, and this is just a super nerdy complaint, I like location stamping my photos on my phone. If you have wifi on, and you're too far inside the ship to reach a GPS signal, your photos will end up location stamped in NOLA at the cruise port. Totes first world problem.

On to pictures. I decided to wander the ship and take pictures of stuff for you folks. I'm sorry that some are blurry. Even though I was clearly NOT in line for food, some people decided it was fine to shove me out of the way anyhow. Whatever.

Sometimes people ask "What does it look like on a sea day". I usually tell them that on sea days they close the steel shutters so you can't see the ocean.

Or I show them the most boring photo I have.

Sorry again guys for my sporadic posts. Right now it's "mail out tax form" season at work, and it's been a nightmare. I work in IT. I still had a woman calling me screaming at me to give her back her tax money because she doesn't pay taxes. This is real. First I started to explain that we are required by law to withhold taxes. When that didn't work I tried to explain that I work in IT and have no control over her taxes. When that didn't work I finally gave her a random IRS 800 number I found and told her to call our special tax hotline. There are times in my life I regret not being a drinker.

Sorry, I know, off topic, but too good a story not to share.

Last we left our heroes, we were finishing up dinner.

We went to one of the comedy shows, but I didn't really take any picture there, sorry. I will say though that some of the acts were better family friendly than adults only. Some of the adult shows relied too much on foul language to be funny, and it fell a little flat. Even the "make it a double" (in the comedy club you can make your drink a double for $3 more) didn't help. Over all, I did enjoy the shows and I'm glad we went to so many. We caught about 6 of them over the course of the week.

After comedy was sleeping time. I'd love to share a towel animal picture, BUT THERE WAS NONE!!!!! :mad:

As was mentioned a long time ago in a post far, far away, the cabin service has gotten a little sloppy and stewards are getting forgetful. I'm not knocking them for this so much as the amount of work they have to do. It's just not fair to them.

Let's take this opportunity to make some blood boil. Let's talk inspections. OOoo, did I see you getting mad yet?

Ok, Let's get a few things out of the way real quick. Yes, I've heard about all the failures of other Carnival ships in the news. Yes, I get it, stuff that might never impact a guest can cause a failure. Yes, both expensive and cheap lines have had failures and success. I get all that. But let's look at some things that I'll call yellow flags.

1) The Dream was only inspected once in 2017, instead of the twice it should have been. Weird. Maybe they had a second inspection, but the report is very late?

2) You can't deny even on the Dream that there's a bit of a downward trend here:

There's a lot of places that could clearly use better cleaning on the ship. I've talked about it in previous posts. Bathrooms, food prep areas, you name it.

Do I think Carnival is unsafe? NO. Do I think they should to better. YES. Carnival is cutting back. It's just a fact. Sometimes those impacts are felt by guets, sometimes not. It's just a fact of life. All lines are probably cutting back, but where Carnival is cutting down on cleaning, Celebrity might be cutting down on performer pay. I'm inclined to blame corporate way more than I am any individual staffer for the inspection issues. Poop rolls down hill, ya know?

Inspections are not the be all end all, but they are important. And they do tell a tale.

I am about halfway your review so far. I had to pause. You are TOO funny. When is your next cruise? I want to be on the lookout for the review.

THANK YOU!!!!

My nex cruise is whenever you want to pay for me to go on one? ;p

I was talking to my wife about that last night actually. Her dream is Mediterranean cruise, but I think those cruises, especially when you factor in airfare cost more than I make in a year. She pointed out that I only need one kidney. I pointed out that she doesn't need 8 pairs of uggs. It's cold sleeping on my couch in the winter.

I'm partly tempted to book the dream again for the same cruise next year. No joke.

Love the review.I'm going in April.. I can't way.

Glad you are enjoying the review! You'll enjoy the ship more!

Enjoying reading your trip report. I have been to Cozumel lots of times and I do not remember seeing the pole with the men on ropes. The whole area you were walking in seemed like a different part of Cozumel than I have been in. I am going to have to research that. Do you remember the name of the restaurant you ate at there? Looked yummy!

 

I agree with you about Roatan! We loved it there. We were supposed to go to Belize on our New Years cruise in 2016-2017--but due to weather in Galveston, we were late in leaving port, so we missed Belize but went to Costa Maya--which we LOVED. After looking at your photos of Belize, I'm glad we missed it.

 

We went on our first Carnival cruise about a year ago--after sailing on many other ships. It is always good to read other people's perspectives on different cruise lines. I do think they are all cutting lots of different corners!

 

Keep writing...

You're in luck!!!! I found a picture I had taken of the bill! I forgot all about it, but a few of you asked, so I went digging.

I couldn't believe how cheap it was, so I took a shot. The cab driver who took us there did tell us that the place was BRAND new. And even on google maps, you can see that there's still the name of an old torn down coffee shop there.

That pin is basically exactly where it is, right on that corner.

As far the the plaza with the acrobats, sorry, I'm not sure. It was a few blocks north of the restaurant.

Thanks for checking out the review! Glad you are enjoying!

Great review!! Loving your writing style- extremely engaging!! Took our girls on the Dream for their 1st cruise in 2011. Actually was our 25th anniversary; had separate cabins so best of both worlds. Enjoyed the ship but seems long ago, so enjoying the memories and your pics.

 

 

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Thank you! If you have not been back since, consider going again. The ship was recently spruced up, I hear it's much better now. We certainly enjoyed it.

I have tried escargot once it tasted great, however I had a hard time eating the one I had because of what it was, "a snail". I do not believe I would do it again.

That's fine, more for me!! Hey, I get it, snails are not part of our daily menu here in the US. Don't forget, there are people who think we're just as weird for eating beef!

Same. Would like to do monkeys, sloths and best zip line. Does Daniels do this?

Yes, The monkeys and sloths is at the same place. The zipline they have another facility they take you to, all included in the same price. Contact them directly through FB. Great operation. There's a reason they have such great reviews on every site.

DINNER TIME!

And for those of you curious about the dinner lines:

That's waiting to get into MDR

ESCARGOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

OK, so I've compared Carnival to Celebrity a few times. One thing Celebrity has going for it is that while Carnival has shrimp cocktail on the menu every night, Celebrity has escargot, and it is GOOD. I friggin love escargot. If you've never had it, DO IT. But make sure they come from a good place.

For those of you saying "but I don't eat weird foods". 1) Processed foods are way weirder to me than something that's from nature. 2) Great, more for me.

The ones on Carnival are decent. Mostly very good, but a few were not very flavorful, or a little chewy. If I had to guess, I'd say they were frozen not canned (the canned variety are actually better, there is such a thing as high end canning, and for some foods, like snails, it actually makes them more tender).

Dinner in general tonight wasn't fabulous. The shortribs were fine, but other things I tried were... ho-hum. Maybe the "A" Kitchen staff wasn't on duty?

The best dish in MDR that night I thought to be the Buttered Popcorn dessert. Sounded odd, so of course I had to try it. DELICIOUS. Especially if you're into sweet/salty and caramel popcorn.

Coming back on board I decided it was time for a snack. Pro tip - the lido has these oval plates that also double as trays. Or maybe they are actually trays, and we're all just so gluttonous that we use them as plates. Maybe they should come with mini snow shovels to help get the food in faster.

Anyhow, so yeah, snack tray:

Also, double check the ice cream before taking large bites. The staff often mixed up the frozen yogurt and "dairy dessert" cartons when filling machines. IMHO, the frozen yogurt was much better. But for anyone with allergy issues, etc, I can see how this could be an issue.

The showtimes on the ship are weird. Dinner and shows don't exactly line up, especially if you have late dining. You end up missing shows, or cutting out out of dinner a little early. Or missing dinner as some of our table mates did to catch good show seats.

Also, be prepared to get there very early and wait (especially when the ship is as full as it was) if you want decent seats.

My wife wanted to see the FLIK show. I wanted to sleep. Happy wife happy life?

Before the show the screen was showing this.... game? thing where you had to pick titles of movies, but they had all been changed to protect copyrights.

It was kinda boring, but whatever. My wife also insisted in sitting really really close to the stage. Again, happy wife happy life?

The show itself was visually pretty. But not my style. I didn't get the theme. I will say that the singers are incredibly talented, I was very impressed with them.

The person playing the "FLICK" character was a good dancer. He also looked a lot like the lead singer from Rammstein. If you know who Rammstein is (German heavy metal band) you'll know that the music in flick.. ummm... wasn't my style.

Also, one more from our snorkel boat ride:

In light of that recent heavy post, here's a few light hearted images to get us back in the fun ship groove:

Our guide and this bird were clearly buddies. It was really nice to see.

This is one of the most frustrating missed shots in my entire life.

I saw this happening out of the corner of my eye, and the camera focused on the wrong point. Darn. I guess I'll have to go back and stage the shot again. Thieving monkeys!

Also, do not try to pet (or spank) the monkeys. They can get a bit nippy, and their teeth are frightening. I'm glad this woman didn't get nipped hard, but I was little frightened.

This is an example of one of the neat things we passed on the road. I wish I had more time to stop and take pictures. Sadly, shooting through a car window at 40 miles an hour on cratered dirt road didn't lend itself to many clear shots. :(

Thank you so much for the review! We were on this sailing and it’s so fun to read and look at all your great pictures!

 

On a sad note, we were on the excursion where the man died. It was very intense and sad. There was a doctor, 2 firefighters and a college student who was just CPR certified, who tried to save him. They tried for about 30 minutes before the ambulance got there. The dr even performed an emergency tracheotomy with a steak knife. He was from the UK and was cruising alone.

I was very impressed with the way Carnival handled it. We had to give a statement and they offered grief counselors. Our friend was one of the firefighters, and he got a letter from the Captain thanking him. They also gave our table 2 bottles of wine and steakhouse entrees.

Friday was rough and my husband was really struggling and wanted to go home. My husband didn’t help medically but helped facilitate getting what the dr needed and the ambulance. The owner of the resort was kinda in shock and was pretty useless. He was an American and I think he was just thinking he might lose his business.

Thankfully, our kids didn’t see a thing. They were off snorkeling. Also, thanks for letting me go on about it. It helps to talk about it!

Keep up the good work on the review!

A heartfelt THANK YOU to you and your husband for stepping and up and doing your part in the situation. These things are frightening and sadly rarely play out as they do in the movies. As someone who has worked with first responders for some time, may I recommend that you and your husband seek out counseling, even for one or two sessions. These events have a way of creeping back into your mind. Most of the firefighters, police, etc I have worked with over the years actually get mandatory sessions at work because of what they see on a daily basis.

For everyone reading this, let me also recommend taking a CPR class, even a very basic "hands only" one. It's extremely valuable knowledge. I personally believe they should be part of the required school curriculum in the U.S.

Thank you also for sharing your experience. It's good to know that what I had heard was largely accurate, I'm glad people were respectful of the situation. I'm also pleased to hear that Carnival handled things well.

By the way, that whole lunch, with drinks, tip, etc came to a grand total of $24. Unbelievable value.

We were one of the last people on board. It was VERY hard not to stay in Roatan. It was... paradise.

Sadly, we were also greeted by an ambulance in port. A passenger had passed away. From what I understand he actually choked on food and they were unable to assist him. It's a reminder that you're on a floating city, and things happen. My heart goes out to his family, and anyone who was around to witness the incident. Apparently some passengers tried to help without success.

After snorkel time our private driver took us to a great little beach resort for lunch. I asked him to take us to a place with food he'd eat, and he delivered. This place was more for tourists thank for locals, but the food and drinks were in fact FANTASTIC and fresh. The tortillas were very much made to order. Excellent meal. My wife had conch ceviche and it was flavorful, filling and incredibly fresh. My plate of mixed dishes was outstanding.

Time was a bit short, so I regret not pressing him a little more to take us to a more local place (I wanted to try iguana), but this was great.

The restroom signs there were also hilarious

I'm pretty sure this was the place - https://parrottree.com/

The beach was immaculate.

The drive there was also STUNNING. I VERY VERY much regret that time was ticking, because I wanted to stop every few feet on the drive there, and back to the ship to take pictures. Sadly, I didn't stop at all. My biggest regret the whole trip.

Here's a bonus monkey shot

This is the best shot I got underwater that day. Yes, this photo underwent some serious digital magic.

This picture is a better representation of what we saw.

Hey, I still had a ton of fun.

Since Sloths are so unbelievably awesome, here's one more shot of them.

Monkeys.... I think that in whatever language the word "monkey" comes from, it translates to "thieving (bleep)hole". These were not overly mean, but they did try to steal EVERYTHING. They warned us. Empty your pockets, take all your hair things out. etc. They meant it. They stole anything and everything they could from pockets and no hair tie or clip was safe. Little buggers.

Even if you got too close to the outside of the cage, they'd reach over and steal stuff from you.

After the monkeys it was parrot time. The birds were tired and not in a playful mood, so we didn't spend long in there. And I was OK With that, because that meant the staff respected the animals! There was one parrot in particular though who was good friends with our guide. She came down to see him and gave him nuzzles. It was cute. I also appreciated that the parrot said "OLA".

The green one they watch closely, apparently it has learned how to undo the door latch and tries to escape when the door isn't locked with a key

After monkey and bird time, it was time to snorkel. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the greatest that day, and water clarity suffered, but we still had a fantastic time. The boat ride to the snorkel spot was lovely and the boat guides were funny, friendly and all around great folks.

We passed some pretty things on our voyage to the snorkel spot.

Your thought number 7 has me cracking up laughing over here. I cannot imagine me, calmly walking to the muster station waiting for the camp staff to bring my kid. I would be like jack on the titanic, thrown in jail at the bottom of the ship. I know, it's what's best for safety but my goodness can't imagine. I enjoyed the inside muster drill but we were outside in the freedom this past summer. Last time I had inside condiment drill was on the breeze.

 

 

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Yeah, it goes against human nature. The reality of these things is that if there ever was an issue, it would be bad, very bad. The awful truth is that if Carnival can't even get us to the correct door to debark on a tender, there's no way they'd handle an emergency properly. Sad but true. We just have to be very thankful that such things are not only rare, but also preventable. And Carnival does a decent enough job preventing such things.

awesome review scuba ninja. I should be in bed right now, but i stayed up to read your review. we did this same itinerary a few years ago. Fun read, Keep it up!!

Thanks! Glad you're having fun! Sorry to keep you from sleeping. Don't worry, when I start talking about the sea days It'll get so boring, I can almost guarantee sleep.

Guess Your wife has never Reveled the Great St Louis Secret......."Imo's":D:D:D

 

Mike St louis

Oh no, she's.... exposed me to Imo's many times. I try not think about it. Imo's to me is kind of like the evil clown in the sewer, but with more sewer. NOT A FAN. Toasted Ravioli on the other hand, now that's something I can get behind. Imo's happens to make a good one actually.

My wife knows, if she wants me to go visit her family, there's going to be Pappy's/Bogarts/Sugarfire on the trip, or I'm not going.

Loving your review!! We’re doing this itinerary on the Breeze in November 2019 so it’s giving me great ideas. I love your humor and style- can’t wait for more!

 

 

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Thanks! Sorry I'm slow, but lots more coming! I promise!