Dream 11/26-12/3 review

[mitchpam]

OUR STORY:

Let me start by introducing myself... I am Pam of mitchpam. This was our 25th wedding anniversary cruise, and our first time cruising without family, it was just the 2 of us. We booked last April and I went directly to the boards and signed up for our roll call. We had so much fun getting ready for this cruise (well, I did anyway, Mitch just mostly enjoyed me enjoying it). We had a very active roll call with all kinds of different types of people. It was so much fun to chat with them all and then finally get to meet them and run into them throughout the week... although after the first meeting there were some people we never saw again! The Dream is a VERY big ship! :)

 

We splurged on our cabin and got a Spa Suite (11205). We absolutely loved the room and the proximity to the spa. Would I pay that much for a room again?? MAYBE. I will say that the "bennefits" that are touted for the spa are really not much. The only REAL extra that you get is the use of the Thasso pool because anyone can use all the other parts of the spa. Oh, and the toiletries... meh, nothing special to me... WAIT, we had GREAT robes and lovely brown beach towels There were lots of questions and jokes going around about our brown beach towels, but you probably had to be there to totally understand what I mean. As per the bennefits of a suite? Well, they kinda bafooned our "VIP" arrival and ended up putting us in section 3 or 4, so that was a non bennefit. We really didn't mind *that* much, but if you pay for, and expect something and then do not get it... well, let's just say it was a ding against 'em... BUT the room was GREAT... very big, very easy to get around, lots of closet and drawer space. The tub was used a lot. Loved the shower doors instead of the attacking curtain. The dressing mirror was nice to have. Our balcony was a bigger than normal and had 2 chairs and a chaise... but it was kind of a windy, cool cruise so I was bummed not to have my morning coffee out there. :(

 

We flew down on Friday morning, stayed the night at a hotel near the Orlando airport and had VIP shuttle service pick us up and drive us to the ship. All pretty simple and straight forward. The driver was very accomodating and actually came early to get us because we had gotten ready and didn't want to just sit around the hotel. So pre-cruise was pretty much no surprises or mis-haps... well, except that we missed seeing the Mars rover being launched. We missed it by 10 minutes!! We had heard that they were launching that morning, but thought we would be able to see it from the cruise terminal. Had we only known to stay outside 10 more minutes... but we were SOOOOO excited to be entering the cruise terminal!!! Funny that we didn't even hear it. Oh well.

 

Hope to do more of this later.. but off to the real world again. I will see if I can post pictures, not sure if I can make them look like other peoples photos do... I am a novice with that kind of thing, and do not have a viable tech rep. at home anymore :(

[tweety33]

Thanks for the review, I look forward to reading it. We will be leaving Maine in March on the Dream.

 

To funny our tech. reps. are no longer are home, so I know what you mean.

[mitchpam]

Thanks for the review, I look forward to reading it. We will be leaving Maine in March on the Dream.

 

To funny our tech. reps. are no longer are home, so I know what you mean.

 

Technically I still have 1 tech rep at home, but she proclaims not do photo stuff I guess... SOMEDAY I hope to figure it out. I think I tried to upload bigger pictures a few different times but it was very frustrating and I do not *really* remember how to at this point. :)

 

You will have to let me know how it goes in March... I think I prefer the weather then...

[mitchpam]

So, we are from Maine, and getting to go to ANY place that has more sunlight than we do was certainly a great blessing!! I do have to say that the first 2 cruises we took were in March, and I think I like the weather was better during that time of year. We had a lot of wind and fairly moderate temperatures (mid 70's to maybe mid 80's). It was warm enough for shorts, t-shirts and sandals, but not really warm enough for good beach days or sunbathing. We never did the slide or went in a pool on the ship (other than the Thasso. pool in the spa) because it just was not warm enough. I was glad to be in the sun and warmth, I just wanted MORE and it is def. warmer in March.

 

I also do not know if I would ever book a cruise between 2 major holidays again. We chose the timeframe because we wanted to DO something for our anniversary, but it is in Sept and I could not get away then. Both of our birthdays are in November so we decided to pig tail the Thanksgiving break into an extra week off and made it work... We actually sailed on Mitch's birthday. It took heroic efforts to be able to *get* the time off from our jobs, then we hurried our way through Thansgiving in order to leave... and now BOOM... come home to not just real life... but BUSY season holiday life too. Not much time for savoring... and as I sit here and type this review I am thinking "I need to get the tree up and finish the Christmas cards"... but I just *really* want to relive a little of the DREAM... If only the spa were just a few steps away...

[mitchpam]

When we arrived onboard it was about 11:15 or so. After admiring the beautiful lobby and getting our bearings we went right up to the pasta bar. There were only 2 other people up there! After filling in our order on the card, the waiter took it from us, and we found a comfy seat by the windows. Next thing you know there is a gal coming up to ask us if we want to sign up for the wine package. We had already passed up 2 other attempts on our way up there, but this gal looked familiar. We looked at her name tag and it was "Lady"... our assistant waitress on our last cruise!! She was wonderful then, and just as wonderful now. Because we had been on the fence with the 1st 2 attempts, and now here was our lovely Lady, we ended up buying the wine package. Not a bad deal really, but it was too much wine for just the 2 of us so we shared at our table.

 

Just as our food was coming I heard a mom mention her son's names... gage and Chance. When I heard that I knew that I must be sitting right next to "alliegirl78"! Our meet and greet would not be for another few hours, but how funny to "know" someone before you've ever met them. The meet and greet started early!! :) Just as I was saying Hi to her, 2 more folks walked up and it turned our to be "wierdsnow", another CCer whom we actually had plans with in Roatan with Victor Boddens tour service. It was so neat to meet them so quickly and feel so at ease right away. The fun had begun. I had warned Mitch that he would be meeting lots of people that I had been talking with for months, and he kinda understood, but we had not even gone to the meet and greet yet! :)

 

Once we were done eating we went up to see if our room was ready, it was probably about 12:30 almost 1. It was done!! We dropped our bags checked our our suite, hung out on the balcony, and called our kids before turning the cell phones OFF for a week!!

 

Here are a few pictures of the room

[sonicbuffalo]

oh...I can't wait to read more Pam...sounds so fun!:D

[mitchpam]

After spending a few minutes absorbing the fact that we had "arrived" we started thinking about "what's next". OH, YEAH... the meet and greet. It had been a good thing I ran into alliegirl because the time for the meet and greet had changed from its original 3:00 to a 2:00 at the aft pool bar. We are at the front of the ship so we decided to meander and make our way back there. As we were walking I was telling Mitch about the behind the scenes fun tour and how nice it would be to do, but that it was $95 p.p... he said he wanted to do it anyway. So we stopped by the tour desk and signed up! It would not be until the last sea day, but I was so excited that he wanted to go on this tour!!

 

Now it was time for the meet and greet. It was kind of a blurr. So many people all at once. I brought the name tags, and they helped quite a bit, but I either missed a lot of people or they did not all come. Actually I know they didn't all come because it was a list of about 60-70 people and there were not *that* many people there. Some of the people I met I never saw again. MANY of them I did. We had a great time running into these folks and chatting with them through out the week. We also got to meet our table mates at the meet and greet. Karen had linked our reservations to hers and it made for a table of 6, there was supposed to be another couple but they ended up making other plans for dinner once they got on the ship. We had the most *wonderful* time with them and they became fast friends of ours. We took a few pictures at the meet and greet and then said "see ya round". I must say, I was really bad with photos on this trip. I think not having my kids with me just made me too lazy.

 

Now, I had been obsessivly checklisting and organizing for the past few weeks trying to get all our ducks in a row before we left, so when I finally realized that we were on vacation I almost could not slow myself down and tried to RACE back to the room to get to the next thing... the steak house!! It was a surprise I had been holding on to for months!!

 

After the meet and greet I told Mitch of my secret plan to take him to the Steakhouse for his birthday dinner. I had been waiting to tell him until we arrived and was having a hard time believing all this was really happening. He was excited, but did not *really* even understand what the steakhouse was. I guess because I roam the CC boards so much I figured he knew as much as I did. He is such a good guy and just goes with it... esp. if it means he gets spoiled!! :)

 

So now I realize that we have several hours before that dinner, and we have to go do the lifeboat drill so we meander back towards our room, but in a way that allows for maximum looking around and minimum thinking!! We were DREAMIN'. :)

[mitchpam]

This is a picture of Lady... she was so sweet and came to find us in the dining room a few times. We also got to see her a breakfast too. Sometimes I read other peoples reviews and they talk about the staff not being very friendly and I wonder "how can that be"? I can honestly say that my experience has been that even if they are not terribly personable they are at least all very friendly. Truthfully, I am amazed at the level of friendliness. So anyways... she is special to us and deserves to have her picture up in my review...

[mitchpam]

oh...I can't wait to read more Pam...sounds so fun!:D

 

Thanks, it really was wonderful :)

[mitchpam]

So we made it back to our room and made it to the muster drill. I think they did a pretty good job with it, but the guy on stage was a little lackluster in his enthusiasm and it took him a few minutes to get the crowd even remotoely interested in anything he had to say. It is at least better than actually going out to the decks with our life jackets on. I mean, we all knew we were in that room to hear all the "stuff" that we had to hear... most of us knowing that if a REAL emergency hapened, not too many of them would really remember what the heck they are supposed to do. I mean really... if the ship is sinking... and I am on the aft pool deck... will I really be able to get all the way to the top bow of the ship to get my lifejacket before she goes down?? OK, I guess I must have been paying attention to the guys some because at least I know that I have to go back to my room to get my life jacket... let's hope I don't need the elevator!! :) I am kidding (mostly) on this one, but it does seem a bit silly everytime I see these "safety breifings" to think that the majority of the passengers are *really* going to know what to do. BUT... the drill is over fairly quickly and painlessly...

 

Back to the room we go and at this point we are getting ready for sail away. We made a makeshift "GOOD BYE MAINE" sign to wave off of our balcony for our kids to see. I had given them the website for the Port Canaveral webcam, and our youngest daughter had watched me watching the Dream leave port the week before our cruise so I showed her how they zoom in on people and showed her just where to look for our room when we leave next week. She thought I was NUTS!! (but in a good way) I called her up and she said she had the site up, but they were not showing our ship yet. I called her back as the Dream slowly pulled past FishLips... and she said NOPE they are not zooming in on folks. After one more attempt, we gave in...Oh well. We tried.

 

Time to head off and explore a little more... and have another drink of the day. I will come to regret this... very much!!

 

More about that in a bit, off to real life again...

Here are some pictures of the balcony and how it looks to the starboard wing of the bridge and down the rest of the L-O-N-G ship!!

[Avril]

Thanks so much for the review, I'm really enjoying it!! :D I'm sailing on a B2B on the Dream and am leaving in just over 2 weeks, it's my 1st B2B so I'm super excited!!!! :D :D I've been reading everything and anything I can about the ship and/or the ports (and looking at as many pics as possible)!! :D What itinerary did you do (sorry if you've said and I somehow missed it)?

[mitchpam]

Thanks so much for the review, I'm really enjoying it!! :D I'm sailing on a B2B on the Dream and am leaving in just over 2 weeks, it's my 1st B2B so I'm super excited!!!! :D :D I've been reading everything and anything I can about the ship and/or the ports (and looking at as many pics as possible)!! :D What itinerary did you do (sorry if you've said and I somehow missed it)?

 

OOPS! I left the itinerary part out! We did Exotice Western: Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, Costa Maya. Only having 2 sea days was kind of a bummer for us... just not quite enough rest time when you have to get up and go so many of the days...

 

A back to back?!? lucky you!! maybe someday....

[mitchpam]

So we get back to our room to get ready for the steakhouse and the ship is pitching a bit. The seas and wind were high so we were just a rockin'. You need to know that I had consumed 3 drinks of the day, no big deal to most people, but I do not drink that much or very often. On top of that I was on prednisone and antibiotics and had stayed away from alcohol altogether. So, travel weary, alcohol based, medications, change of foods or just ship a rockin' I was not doing well. I had been so excited for the steakhouse and I knew that Mitch was too but my appetite and equillibrium was suddenly being challenged. I tried to lay down in hopes of things settling, but I ended up making a run for the bathroom. I have not thrown up in a very long time, and it is one of my LEAST favorite things... I will avoid it at any cost, so this caught by by complete surprise. UGH!! I freshened up hoping that what had just occured would solve the issue and we got ready. I thought to myself "I'll be fine". We head down to dinner and get to the main lobby for a quick second to check on a reservation and BOOM... I am struck again. Thank God for public restrooms, but those doors!! They are soooo heavy!! I made it and then went to break the news to Mitch that I did not think the steak house was gonna happen. We went out to the promenade so I could get fresh air and to go up to tell the steak house we would not be coming. As I walked outside in the fresh air I felt a little better, so I said maybe we should try it. They seated us and within seconds the smell, which normally is heavenly, was nausiating... I knew this was a BAD idea. I asked where the ladies room was and... well, you know. UGH! The lady in the steakhouse, Anna, was wonderful, helpful and kind. She went to get me some green apples... which are supposed to settle your stomach (NOPE). She also sent some crackers and Mitch said he would be back to reschedule. He took me back to the room and the rest of my night was spent between the bed and the bathroom... he went to spend his birthday in the piano bar singing with Dave. He had fun... me? not so much... those DOD's are really only good the 1st time!!

[jetsfan]

We have all been there at some point. Sorry you missed the Steakhouse that night.

 

My DH and I are cruising the dream in 22 days. I can't wait for the rest of your review.

[mitchpam]

Hope that was not too much info, but I try to tell things as they happen, so forgive me if that was too much!

 

Mitch had a great time at the piano bar, and they sang HaPpY BiRtHdAy to him at the end of the night! He spent a lot of time there throughout the week, I joined him a few times. There were lots of people just having fun, singing songs with Dave or singing a solo at the mike with Dave's piano accompaniment... some were good singers. Dave is really good at chatting with the folks and getting them all involved and he truly gave anyone a chance. He has small percussion instruments to join in with for the non-singers so that they can participate. My problem is that I have the inability to just relax and be "in the moment" when notes are being sung wrong or the words to a familiar tune get messed up... or there is that uncomfortable feeling of "I wish that person would be done singing now" comes over me. I know that Mitch had a better time down there when I was not there.

 

The next morning I woke up and was MUCH better. Still kinda felt like someone had wrung out my stomach like a wet towel, but other than that all was good. I am glad it was a sea day and we could just wake up whenever and do whatever. Funny thing about this vacation is that there was very lilttle sleeping in. We saw more sunrises than sunsets on this cruise. We missed most of the sunsets because we did early dining.

 

Our dining room table mates were (are) wonderful!! We had been on the fence about what to do about dinner on the ship. Our previous 2 cruises had been with family so we have always had that part covered as to who we would sit with. This time it was just the two of us. Now, Mitch and I love each other dearly (hence the 25 years) but we also know that if we tried to eat alone with just the two of us at a 2 top ALL week that we would be tired of it. So we decided that we should just let the ship put us wherever... but.... after chatting with others on our roll call kparker (Karen) decided that anyone who wanted to link reservations should send her their info. and we could all be seated in the same area. She lilnked us to their table and the rest is fast friendship history. :)

 

The first sea day is formal night. Now, remember lastnight I said that Mitch had re-scheduled our steak dinner reservations?? Well, he set it up for the next night... he had no way of knowing it was formal night because I do all the planning and he just goes along with it! :) There was no way I wanted to miss formal night and meeting our table mates, so now we had to go back and re-schedule... again! Anna was very gracious and helpful. When we tried to find a time that worked with our port schedules we ran into a little difficulty. We left there without a reservation and she said we could call anytime to find a time that would work.

 

So, Sunday is football day... A subject discussed on our roll call. We are from Maine and so therefore are Pats fans... and then there was Mark, the Eagles fan. Guess who was plating that day?? You guessed it Pats/Eagles. The game was suppposed to be played out by the pool on the big screen... but NOPE. We had to go down and watch it on the multi-screen in the "sports bar". Now this is one thing I do not get on this ship. The Sports bar is more like a divider, not in its own room, and surrounded by the noises of the slot machines. They only had the game on one screen and all the other screens were playing the Dallas game. We made enough noise (there were about 8 of us) that they switched the screens on the right side of the bar to the Pats game, but the sound was pretty much non-existant. We managed to displace a few disgruntled Dallas fans (oops our bad I'm sure). We had to get ready for formal night though and could not stay to watch the whole game... but we had a good time! Mark was sad that his Eagles lost, but hApPy because he had some Pats players on his fantasy team! Nothing like spreading our your chances :)

 

I will move onto formal night later... gotta go do some Christmas stuff. Heading to my dad's to set up his tree with him and have dinner and games with the family...

 

here are a few more photo's...

[steff613]

Im waiting oh so patiently for the rest of the review my friend, you know im living vicariously through you until our legend sailing in Sept!

[mitchpam]

Im waiting oh so patiently for the rest of the review my friend, you know im living vicariously through you until our legend sailing in Sept!

 

LOL Steph... hard to believe this is the way I am giving you my review! I will get back to it this week (I hope)... Christmas at the farm today...

[mitchpam]

 

Trying to figure this stuff out, bear with me, be back with more soon. This is the make up area just outside of the bathroom. .

[mitchpam]

So here I am, it is 2012, and it has been 3 weeks since my last post. I will see about making the photo's easier to see and the font easier to read. I *finnaly* got my youngest daughter to help me out, so I hope to have a nicer looking review for you all. :) I will re post my photo's from the previous posts.

 

Mitch and Pam

[mitchpam]

OUR ROOM 11205

 

The captain is on the TV

 

 

The captain on TV, and Mitch flossing his teeth

 

 

such a great room!

 

[mitchpam]

OK, here goes a little more...

 

The bathroom was *wonderful*

 

 

 

 

Looking out towards the make up area

[mitchpam]

And more big pictures :)

 

Our new friends, Chrystal and Chris... wierdsnow

 

MORE new friends... the incredible Miss Dell and some of her posse, Andrew, Molly, Michelle... oh what fun!

 

EVEN MORE new friends...Mark, Rod, Scott

 

Corvette (Greg's) wife Joanne

 

What a great group of people!!

 

 

[mitchpam]

This is a picture of Lady... she was so sweet and came to find us in the dining room a few times. We also got to see her a breakfast too. Sometimes I read other peoples reviews and they talk about the staff not being very friendly and I wonder "how can that be"? I can honestly say that my experience has been that even if they are not terribly personable they are at least all very friendly. Truthfully, I am amazed at the level of friendliness. So anyways... she is special to us and deserves to have her picture up in my review...

 

A better way to see the picture:

[mitchpam]

So we made it back to our room and made it to the muster drill. I think they did a pretty good job with it, but the guy on stage was a little lackluster in his enthusiasm and it took him a few minutes to get the crowd even remotoely interested in anything he had to say. It is at least better than actually going out to the decks with our life jackets on. I mean, we all knew we were in that room to hear all the "stuff" that we had to hear... most of us knowing that if a REAL emergency hapened, not too many of them would really remember what the heck they are supposed to do. I mean really... if the ship is sinking... and I am on the aft pool deck... will I really be able to get all the way to the top bow of the ship to get my lifejacket before she goes down?? OK, I guess I must have been paying attention to the guys some because at least I know that I have to go back to my room to get my life jacket... let's hope I don't need the elevator!! :) I am kidding (mostly) on this one, but it does seem a bit silly everytime I see these "safety breifings" to think that the majority of the passengers are *really* going to know what to do. BUT... the drill is over fairly quickly and painlessly...

 

Back to the room we go and at this point we are getting ready for sail away. We made a makeshift "GOOD BYE MAINE" sign to wave off of our balcony for our kids to see. I had given them the website for the Port Canaveral webcam, and our youngest daughter had watched me watching the Dream leave port the week before our cruise so I showed her how they zoom in on people and showed her just where to look for our room when we leave next week. She thought I was NUTS!! (but in a good way) I called her up and she said she had the site up, but they were not showing our ship yet. I called her back as the Dream slowly pulled past FishLips... and she said NOPE they are not zooming in on folks. After one more attempt, we gave in...Oh well. We tried.

 

Time to head off and explore a little more... and have another drink of the day. I will come to regret this... very much!!

 

More about that in a bit, off to real life again...

Here are some pictures of the balcony and how it looks to the starboard wing of the bridge and down the rest of the L-O-N-G ship!!

 

 

better pictures of the deck and the views from it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mitchpam]

Hope that was not too much info, but I try to tell things as they happen, so forgive me if that was too much!

 

Mitch had a great time at the piano bar, and they sang HaPpY BiRtHdAy to him at the end of the night! He spent a lot of time there throughout the week, I joined him a few times. There were lots of people just having fun, singing songs with Dave or singing a solo at the mike with Dave's piano accompaniment... some were good singers. Dave is really good at chatting with the folks and getting them all involved and he truly gave anyone a chance. He has small percussion instruments to join in with for the non-singers so that they can participate. My problem is that I have the inability to just relax and be "in the moment" when notes are being sung wrong or the words to a familiar tune get messed up... or there is that uncomfortable feeling of "I wish that person would be done singing now" comes over me. I know that Mitch had a better time down there when I was not there.

 

The next morning I woke up and was MUCH better. Still kinda felt like someone had wrung out my stomach like a wet towel, but other than that all was good. I am glad it was a sea day and we could just wake up whenever and do whatever. Funny thing about this vacation is that there was very lilttle sleeping in. We saw more sunrises than sunsets on this cruise. We missed most of the sunsets because we did early dining.

 

Our dining room table mates were (are) wonderful!! We had been on the fence about what to do about dinner on the ship. Our previous 2 cruises had been with family so we have always had that part covered as to who we would sit with. This time it was just the two of us. Now, Mitch and I love each other dearly (hence the 25 years) but we also know that if we tried to eat alone with just the two of us at a 2 top ALL week that we would be tired of it. So we decided that we should just let the ship put us wherever... but.... after chatting with others on our roll call kparker (Karen) decided that anyone who wanted to link reservations should send her their info. and we could all be seated in the same area. She lilnked us to their table and the rest is fast friendship history. :)

 

The first sea day is formal night. Now, remember lastnight I said that Mitch had re-scheduled our steak dinner reservations?? Well, he set it up for the next night... he had no way of knowing it was formal night because I do all the planning and he just goes along with it! :) There was no way I wanted to miss formal night and meeting our table mates, so now we had to go back and re-schedule... again! Anna was very gracious and helpful. When we tried to find a time that worked with our port schedules we ran into a little difficulty. We left there without a reservation and she said we could call anytime to find a time that would work.

 

So, Sunday is football day... A subject discussed on our roll call. We are from Maine and so therefore are Pats fans... and then there was Mark, the Eagles fan. Guess who was plating that day?? You guessed it Pats/Eagles. The game was suppposed to be played out by the pool on the big screen... but NOPE. We had to go down and watch it on the multi-screen in the "sports bar". Now this is one thing I do not get on this ship. The Sports bar is more like a divider, not in its own room, and surrounded by the noises of the slot machines. They only had the game on one screen and all the other screens were playing the Dallas game. We made enough noise (there were about 8 of us) that they switched the screens on the right side of the bar to the Pats game, but the sound was pretty much non-existant. We managed to displace a few disgruntled Dallas fans (oops our bad I'm sure). We had to get ready for formal night though and could not stay to watch the whole game... but we had a good time! Mark was sad that his Eagles lost, but hApPy because he had some Pats players on his fantasy team! Nothing like spreading our your chances :)

 

I will move onto formal night later... gotta go do some Christmas stuff. Heading to my dad's to set up his tree with him and have dinner and games with the family...

 

here are a few more photo's...

 

 

 

Saying Goodbye (or trying to) via the port web cam

 

Thrusters on... looking down from our balcony