Dreary Weather, Dreamy Cruise

[Socref124]

We are just back from our Dream cruise and I thought I would write a small review.

Since we live an hour north of Port Canaveral, we drove to the port the morning of our cruise. We decided to use Park n Cruise, $6.99 per day, instead of parking at the port. We arrived at Park n Cruise around 10:45am checked our car in, was shuttled to the ship by 11:15 and was on the ship around 11:30. Very easy.

Once on the ship we were ready to party. At the Atrium Bar, I ordered "Two Pina Coladas, one for each hand". You know the Garth Brooks song, and we headed to the Lido Deck to get a bite to eat and enjoy music from the Impressions. This was our second time on the Dream so after dropping our bags off in our room, we went for a walk around the ship to reacquaint ourselves with this beautiful ship. We took a walk around the Promanade and stopped at the chess set on the Starboard side of the ship. We then looked up and spotted our 6th floor balcony from last year. Ahhhhh, I can still remember the people playing with the chess pieces at 2am last year.

[police46]

We will be on the Dream Feb.04 2012:) , looking foreward to the rest of your review.

 

Regards , Police46

[Pennyscandy]

Thanks for the review. We will be sailing on her next April and will be on deck 6. Hope we have not made a mistake, but there are 6 couples and we wanted to be close together and go on the cheap for a balcony.

DH is a Marine and was in Nam with 1/9 the Walking Dead.

Waiting for your next installment.

Linda

[LaFinDuMonde]

On the October 15th sailing of the Dream, did anyone ever find out why we were diverted off-course and headed towards Miami/Ft. Lauderdale for a few hours the first night? I find it odd that the cruise never really gave any information to the passengers about anything (including the weather).

[sunsailsand]

keep us informed,

[Socref124]

Don't know what happened here. Review is re-written on another thread.:eek::eek::eek:

[gelo7]

looking forward to the rest...

[B and C Blake]

don't know what happened here. Review is re-written on another thread.:eek::eek::eek:

here you go, lol

we are just back from our dream cruise and i thought i would write a review of our week.

Since we live an hour north of port canaveral, we drove to the port the morning of our cruise. We decided to use park n cruise, $6.99 per day, instead of parking at the port. We arrived at park n cruise around 10:45am checked our car in, was shuttled to the ship by 11:15 and was on the ship around 11:30. Very easy.

Once on the ship we were ready to party. We stopped at the atrium bar and ordered "two pina coladas, one for each hand," as garth brooks said. We then moved to the lido deck for a bite to eat and to listen to the sounds of impressions. After our lunch, we dropped our bags off at our cabin which was on the lido deck, cabin 10232. What a great cabin location. This cabin is port side forward and has a great view from on high. Much better than our cabin on the upper deck last year. One perk is that we were only several cabins away from the secret door which leads to the outside deck two decks above the bridge. This deck also has a stairway down to the ninth floor immediately above the bridge. It is amazing how few people know of these secret doors, but this lack of knowledge leaves us with a private secluded place on the ship.

Once we dropped off our bags we took a walk around to reacquaint ourselves with this beautiful ship. Our first stop was the promanade. We decided to go look for the chess set that was below the cabin we had last year. We found the chess set, then looked up to find our old cabin. As luck would have it, people came out of the cabin onto their balcony. We told them that last nov we were in cabin 6281 and they told us how excited they were as this was their first cruise. I did a balcony on my first cruise and got sick. The ships's doctor diagnosed me with balconyitis which forces me to have a balcony cabin or i will break out in a cold sweat and hives.;) oh well.:)

we continued to walk around the promanade and noticed some cloth chairs and ottomans on the port side of the ship. We hadn't noticed them last year and were surprised that carnival would have regular chairs on the promanade. They were even on a carpet.

We then went inside at the lanai and walked towards the ships aft, passing the specialty coffee shop, the wasabi sushi bar, caliente dance club, sams piano bar, the song lounge and the burgundy lounge where the punchliner comedy club is located. This is important for us since two of our favorite onboard happenings are the piano bar and the comedy club. We then walked toward the bow of the ship to see the ocean plaza, the sports bar, casino, the fun shops and the encore lounge. There is a piano between the 5th deck and the 4th deck in the atrium and a group, impromptwo, was there playing music for the guests at the atrium bar. It's always nice to hear music when going through the shops or sitting at the atrium bar.

Next, we went down to see our dinning room, the crimson dinning room. Last year we were in the scarlet dinning room so this was new for us. Also new for us is we are trying anytime dinning for the first time. We have been the ones that swore by traditional dinning since i was not impressed with freestyle on my first cruise aboard an ncl ship. With one exception, anytime dinning was fabulous and we have been converted. Maybe i should say anytime dinning sux so no one else will change:eek:. No, i'll be honest, it was great. The one exception, we wanted some friends to join us on thurs night. We had noticed that the dinning room was never close to being at full capacity any of the nights we were there. When we came in with our friends we asked the hostess and she told us she would have to ask the maitre d but she didn't see why he would object. We were asked to sit in the page turner library and wait for the maitre d's response. A few minutes later the hostess came in and advised us the maitre d had declined our request. She then suggested that if we wanted to dine together to ask the maitre d at the scarlet dinning room. We went to the scarlet dr and asked their maitred, elvis and he accomodated us. Needless to say, i gave elvis the envelope provided to tip the maitre d rather than our maitre d on the last night of the cruise. Folks, elvis is in the dream house.

The announcement to report for muster drill came and we went to our muster station in the encore lounge. After this briefing we went up to the lido deck for sailaway. Like i said earlier, we live an hour away from port canaveral and will drive down to watch sailaway several times a year watching from either fishlips or milikens bar. I must admit, it is a much nicer view from the lido deck looking down at these two restaurants.:d

we were supposed to meet up with people from our roll call but either we were in the wrong spot or no on one showed up except us. We met a couple from jacksonville and had a great conversation with them as we sailed down the channel. Once out in the atlantic, the ship slowed down and a pilot boat approached the dream and took someone off the ship. Rumor has it that their was an emergency but we never found out exactly what had happened.

After dinner, we decided to go to sams piano bar rather than the welcome aboard show which we have seen over and over. We were glad we did. Dave, the piano man, was having a lot of fun with those of us in the bar. He took requests and he played and sang with us and we had a ball. We met a lot of nice people here, especially a newleywed couple from clear lake, iowa. Throughout the week we continued to run into them at the pina bar and throughtout the ship and in port.

Time to go watch some football. I will try to get back to this review tomorrow.