DREAMing of my Honeymoon - review and pictures!

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, here begins my review of the CARNIVAL DREAM! I am fortunate to have just come back from the 12/24 sailing (plus a few days after in NOLA) and I'd love to share the experience with you. I appreciate all the great reviews and advice I've seen on these boards so I'd like to give back a little. It was for sure a DREAM honeymoon.

This will probably be a long review and take many days, but here's a good teaser image:

Before I begin, should I also prepare my images from NOLA, or should I keep it Dream Specific?

Will be following.

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Following. Sailing on Dream in 67 days!!!

Looking forward to it

Looking forward to reading your review! Carnival Dreaming on April 8th!

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Please include NOLA! This Jersey girl has never been there before and I personally would love to see pics and read about it before I head there in April! [emoji847]

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Can't wait!

OK, so let’s get the “clerical” info out of the way, ‘cause everyone asks:

I am a professional nerd (IT) and my wife works in education. My wife has done a few cruises over the years, but this is only my second. She’s done a few different lines. I have only done one Celebrity and one Carnival. I avoided cruising my whole life because I’ve worked on ships and thought it would be too much like work. After the first cruise last year, I’m completely hooked. Cruising a great way to relax and also see the world.

This was our honeymoon, but 2.5 years late. It’s taken this long for us to get to a point where we could actually have a vacation together. Hey, it happens. It was my first real vacation in over a decade! Yes, we went to Alaska last year, but it was a family trip for her family (her parents VERY VERY generously paid our way) and well, a trip with your inlaws isn’t exactly a vacation, ya know? Either way, very much time for us to get away.

DW chose to leave out of NOLA specifically because she loves NOLA and had not been back in a while. She wanted to tour a little after the cruise and I’m glad we did!

Things I can say I know something about:

SCUBA – I am an instructor. I have been diving since I was 14, and I’ve helped train fire, police and military divers. I did all my training in the Northeast US. I’m a native New Yorker.

Boats/ships – Worked on science research vessels in the US and abroad, dive boats, etc. My schooling is actually in Marine Bio/Geo Chemistry, not IT. Go figure. My career has been an interesting journey that’s included journalism, teaching, marketing and nerding.

Food – I’ve worked for one of the largest wine producers/importers/exporters in the world, high end/professional food retail, catering, and I also own a small business (very small) that sells a gourmet food product.

Star Wars and Star Trek – I’m a professional nerd. It’s kind of required.

Things I know nothing about:

Matching clothes – I’m color blind and my wife constantly makes fun of me for my fashion choices

Bartending – neither of us drink much. I probably had a grand total of 4 drinks the entire cruise.

Gambling – I like my money too much to lose it

Dental Surgery – I went to school for marine science. Not tooth science.

I like my photos like I like my fish… RAW. So it’ll take me a while to get them all off my camera and processed for viewing, so please be patient. I used the following picture taking devices this trip:

1)Moto X4 cell phone

2)DBPWER N6 (cheap gopro clone)

3)Sony RX100V

I usually shoot Canon DSLR, but for this trip I actually wanted to try and pack and shoot as light as possible. I rented the Sony and let me tell you, ZERO regrets!!!! That is one beast of a pocket camera. It takes incredibly sharp, accurate and wonderful photos in all conditions. If the camera wasn’t the same price as my vacation, I’d consider buying it outright. The action cam did a great job, especially for its price and the cell phone was great for just snapping some shots around the ship. No complaints.

So, let’s start with getting to the ship, shall we? We live in Chicago, so we flew down to NOLA the night before. Considering we just missed a snowstorm by doing that, very good choice in deed. Otherwise, we’d have missed the ship. We actually spoke to a group that had relatives in Chicago that missed the ship for that very reason. Folks, do not ruin your family reunions! Especially if you live in a place that gets real winter! Fly in the night before!

I’d never been to New Orleans before, but my wife went to school there and has been back several times for work. I told her I trusted her and she made us a hotel arrangement in Metairie. Now, let me say this. For the few hours (I think like 9 in total), we ended up being there and for the price, it was fine. But it was 2 stars at best. Room had a weird odor, but no bed bugs thankfully. I’m very glad we’re not the fancy and demanding type.

We landed at midnight, so I actually took these pics the morning we left.

**note about pics, I’m using flikr. You should be able to click the images if you want to zoom in and view full size**

My wife’s favorite food in the world apparently is snowballs. She was completely heartbroken when she saw this place was closed for the season. I was less sad about not getting food poisoning on day one.

Inside, the room itself was actually pretty big. Very much ADA compliant. The bathroom was HUGE, and easily could have accomodated a wheelchair, etc. Good to know I supposed for folks on this board.

One thing that was kinda neat was that there was a fan DIRECTLY behind the toilet instead of in the ceiling. Bad toilet odors could be whisked away at the source~! ;p

Good thing they had this sign out, otherwise those grungy, slightly stained sheets might have made it home with me!

Breakfast area was reasonably clean and servicable.

Breakfast itself.... well, let's just say we were glad we were getting on the ship soon where we knew we'd be stuffing our faces. Note, this is not the bowl of sausages I took. That's just how they had them out for people to take. Maybe I'm just not used to that kind of fancy?

Enjoying this so far! How could you pass on those fancy sausages? :P

Enjoyingthis so far! How could you pass on those fancy sausages? :P

Yeah, I'm kinda glad I passed on eating anything there. Like, VERY glad.

Also, glad to see folks following along already! Woohoo!

OK, so Uber to the port was quick. We had FTTF (more on that in a bit) and our arrival time was 10am. We actually got there more like 9:30. The hotel staff told us to leave tons of time to get to the port because of "shopping traffic" that never actually happened. Oh well,it actually worked out OK in the end. We were NOT the first ones at the port either!

The moment we pulled up a porter grabbed our bags and whisked them away (yes, I gave a tip). Being early I'm sure helped with that process. I was nervous that he wasn’t actually a porter, but he had stickers for the luggage, so I assumed he was legit (he was). He didn’t directly ask for a tip, but he did say “this was the last time you’ll see me”. It could be worse.

Entering the terminal I was yelled at to stop taking pictures, but I did get this blurry one:

Now,here’s where I started to be glad I had FTTF. We walked right up to a desk, got our sail and sign cards (I was told I needed to take a new pic, because the passport photo I used didn’t have enough current facial hair) and were directed to sit in a special part of the terminal. We were also FIRST in line in the FTTF area! Good thing too, cause here was the crowd already at 10ish:

Excuse the bad pics in the terminal. They really didn’t like me taking pics in there so I was being sneaky. Or trying to be. Also, excuse weird formatting errors. I'm typing this is word and transferring it over, but sometimes it forgets to copy over spaces between words apparently.

At least we had a Christmas tree to look at:

OK, so my wife is kind of fascinated with Christmas. Growing up she had no Christian friends and never celebrated it before. Which is weird, it's not like she grew up in the middle of the rain forest or something, she's from St. Louis! Her school and especially her friend circle though apparently wasn't as diverse as mine growing up to say the least. She was pretty excited to do Christmas stuff on the ship. I had a few friends growing up who celebrated, but I was always getting in trouble for being the kid to tell everyone santa wasn't real. So my memories of the holiday are not the greatest. I'm learning to tolerate her infatuation. Still can't stand country music though (I'm hard rock and metal all the way)

I asked permission to get up and take this pic, which they said was fine, as long as I promised not to take any video.

My first look at the dream! WOOHOO!

Around 11:30 I started to get hungry, so I asked the gate agents (who were actually very friendly and easy to talk to, even when telling me to put my camera away) about boarding. Apparently, in NOLA, they don’t usually start boarding until about 1pm. Something something control the crowds blah blah blah. I get it, but still annoying. I can't stand hurry up and wait.

We were both so bored by this point that my wife noticed boot prints on the ceiling. A little hard to see in the pics. I guess they poured the beams, then lifted them in to place when building the terminal.

At about noon, a gate agent came over and said “good thing you have FTTF! We might actually be able to get your group in a little early” The plan was that as soonas all the last passengers were officially off, first the B2B cruisers wouldget back on (lucky devils), then the platinum, suites, etc., then us FTTF.

Turnsout by 12:30 we were actually on the ship. THANK YOU FTTF~! The rest of the peons had to wait a lot longer apparently. Glad we did get on when we did, because I was about to start gnawing on that Christas tree.

Loving the review so far.

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Leaving on the Dream this Sunday! Also will be our first time to NOLA. Did you try the steakhouse and if so, did it have the new menu?

Leaving on the Dream this Sunday! Also will be our first time to NOLA. Did you try the steakhouse and if so, did it have the new menu?

Sorry, never got to the steak house. I've heard it was decent, but that the flat iron steak in the MDR was nearly on par and without any extra cost.

I'll try to get my review all done by the time you go, so you have it for reference! Enjoy the ship! Spoiler alert, over all it is a great ship with a good crew!

Enjoying the review so far.:)

More more more!

Great review so far! We've cruised from New Orleans twice and embarkation does seem to take a while in my experience.

Laughed out loud a couple times! Love your writing style! Thanks for the review. Getting married in August on the Dream, so I'm reading everything possible about her.

Yay...another Dream review. Can't wait to read the rest. We sail her on April 29.

Thanks for sharing.

Exciting, thank you. We are heading out on the Dream in February.

Following! Looking forward to the Dream in March!!

Thanks for the encouragement folks! I took several thousand pics, so I'm trying to get them sorted and stuff as soon as I can. I'll try to at least get through embarkation day before bed. I can only link so many pics at once in my posts, but once I get all the pics up I'll try to link to the whole album so you can see everything full resolution and also see some bonus pics.

This is the exact site that greeted us when we stepped on board:

A very cool thing to see! Since we were just about the first people on board, the lobby was empty and I got a great shot. The ship was clearly ready for Christmas! Props for keeping the Menorah up for the whole trip too, it was a much appreciated gesture!

other side of the lobby

Since we were hungry enough to eat the ornaments off the tree, we decided to wander up to Lido before the crowds. BTW, this was the best part of being on the ship so early! We got fed right away with no lines! woooooo!

At the entrance (exit?) to the outdoor parts of deck 10 there was a cool gingerbread house display that stayed up all week.

How early were we? We were SO early, the champagne toast wasn't even poured.

I decided my first stop needed to be the Tandoor. I'm a big fan of Indian food and heard good things. Let's get this out of the way straight out. Tandoor was easily the most flavorful food on the ship. If it really is being taken away, that's a HUGE loss. Some dishes I had, like the beef the first day was a little dry, but the sauce it was cooked in was outstanding. Had that been open for dinner every night, I'd likely have eaten there instead of the MDR every night. Yes, it's that good. The pickled veggies condiment was clearly made in house and were some of the best I've ever had. Tandoor is surprisingly great.

The food is actually made using a real tandoor. Seriously, go try it. You won't regret it. The mint paratha on the plate was made for me right in front of my eyes. The chicken was great. Like I said, the beef was a little dry.

The boss (wife) decided burgers were on the menu for her. I think as a person I'd probably like to see Guy foofoo Fairy Fieri skewered and roasted in a tandoor, but he lent his name to some legit flavor town burgers (or whatever other annoying catch phrase he'd come up with to describe them). If you like "high end" burgers like 5 Guys, Smash burger, etc. You'll love Guy's. Actually, especially smash burger. The meat texture and flavor was similar to me. The fries were also "bomb diggity money" or whatever. Oh god, typing that I can feel my hair starting to bleach itself and point upwards in annoying hedgehog spikes. But yes, those were the best fries on the ship.

If you promise not to tell my cardiologist, I might admit to having a burger and fries too. Hey, I'm glad I didn't gnaw on any christmas tree ornaments in the lobby. I'd have been pissed if I didn't save room for this stuff.

Here's another bonus picture of the Tandoor, because I miss it and could really go for some right now.