Dream review /Eastern Caribbean / May 19-26,2012

[waykaylincruz]

Here is my review of our cruise last week on the Dream. It seems kinda long but I wanted to add as many details as I could. Let me know if you have any questions as I will try to answer them.

 

Carnival Dream May 19-26, 2012

 

Eastern Caribbean: Nassau, St. Thomas, St. Maarten

 

Our traveling party: My husband (45), myself (40), our two daughters (10/12), my father (78) and my mother-in-law (66).

 

Our past cruising history: Carnival (2), Royal Caribbean (3), NCL (1), Disney (2)

 

Pre-Cruise: We drove down Friday afternoon from our home in Chattanooga (Ooltewah) Tennessee. We had made reservations in Orlando at the Springhill Suites-Orlando Airport. We really didn’t want to drive all the way to the coast that night so opted for the airport area that is located right on the bee-line expressway. Wonderful nice, new and clean hotel. We did not eat at the breakfast buffet that morning that was provided. We opted to eat at Perkins Restaurant for breakfast which is a favorite of ours that we don’t have at home.

 

Embarkation: This was by far the best embarkation we have ever experienced!! We arrived at Port Canaveral around 10:30am. We dropped off our luggage with the porters and then proceeded to the parking garage to park our van for the week. The bill at the end of the week was $120.00. We walked up to the terminal, the security lady checked our passports along with boarding passes and we proceeded through the security checkpoint. We then went upstairs to check in and were directed right to an open attendant at the check-in counter. Our credit cards were checked and so were our passports & boarding passes again. We received our S&S cards and were directed to the hallway that takes us to the ship. All 6 of us walked up to have our pictures taken and there were no waiting there either. Carnival has 6 to 8 picture kiosks for your S&S cards and that really makes a difference. After our pictures were matched up with our cards and the obligatory Welcome Aboard photo, we were sent to the gangway and walked right on the ship. NOT ONE POINT DID WE EVER HAVE TO WAIT……..UNBELIEVEABLE!!! Port Canaveral rocks!!! We were onboard by 11:00am.

 

Muster Drill: Our muster station was the Crimson Dining Room and the drill occurred right on time. This was such a nice change from the days of having the drill on the decks out in the heat and sun. As usual, no lifejackets were needed. The entire process took about 20 minutes.

 

Stateroom: We had 3 staterooms: cove balcony (2231)(starboard) as well as 2 interiors (2323 & 2327) directly across the hall from our cove. Absolutely loved the cove balcony and that will be our first room choice in the future on ships with these type staterooms. We loved being close to the water and it is a great location for people watching. We were lucky in that our side of the ship was always the side docked at the pier in all 3 of our ports! If you are doing the eastern itinerary, starboard side is where you want to be. We had a wonderful room steward who was very nice and friendly. He kept our rooms in top shape and we never had to ask for anything!! Loved the towel animals each night!! One problem we had was with our toilets. On the first day all 3 of our cabins had plumbing issues with the toilet backing up and not flushing. We never had a flood but it was such an inconvenience to have to go up to the 3rd floor just to use the restroom. We called maintenance and the problem was resolved a couple hours later. The very same problem came up 2-3 more days that week. Again, maintenance took care of the problem but it seems like that floor/side of the ship was having problems most of the cruise. I would think that a relatively newer ship wouldn’t have that kind of plumbing problems but I assume it could just have been an off week. Now, the next issue is the SMELL…..yes, it was there. On the first 2 days, you couldn’t go out on the balcony without smelling sewage odors. Occasionally we’d get a whiff of it when we would come into the room, but nothing major. After that second day, we never noticed it again. We just figured that it had something to do with the 2nd floor plumbing issues. As a note, we never did really smell it any other place on the ship. Also, we were surprised to find that we heard lots of noise from our room. Sometimes we thought the noises were coming from the water and hull of the ship and other times we thought the noise was coming from above us. It never bothered us or kept us up but if you worry about every little strange noise on a cruise ship…DO NOT book this room. Actually one night our neighbor stopped us on our way out of our room to tell us we needed to be quieter that our kids were jumping around too much and was causing all kinds of noise in his cabin. I nicely told him that only one of my daughters was staying in the room with us and that she was past the jumping around stage. We told him we had noises in our room too but I don’t know if he believed us or not. We never heard anything else from him again.

 

Dining Room: We had early seating in the Crimson Dining Room. We were assigned to a table for just our family and it worked out well. We felt like the service and food was lacking this cruise as compared to others we have been on. The wait staff was friendly enough but it seemed to take forever to get our food each night. Sometimes we had to wait 30 minutes from the time appetizer plates were picked up and our entrees were delivered. We tried to make the 7:30 family comedy show each night but we never made it due to dinner running so late. I know food quality is highly opinionated and we have always thought the food was wonderful. We are not picky eaters, nor do we have high expectations. Still, we thought the food was somewhat bland and just not as good as it used to be. I will tell you that I had the warm chocolate melting cake each night and it was wonderful!!

 

The Gathering / Lido Buffet: We actually enjoyed the meals we had in here. The breakfast was the usual standard fare and always seemed pretty good, with the exception of the scrambled eggs……soft, mushy and lacking in taste. We opted to have dinner one night in the buffet and it was good. It was the same food that was on the menu in the main dining room…..with the exception of the warm chocolate melting cake. We liked it because it was informal and we could get our food immediately with no wait. I wish we had discovered this earlier in the week. The lines at breakfast and lunch were long most of the week, but sometimes they were short and quick. It just depends of what time of day you go.

 

Pasta Bar: We loved the Pasta Bar and usually had something from there each day for lunch. However, the lines were long all week and it was never any less than 30 minutes wait to get our food. However, we did go between 12:30 & 1:30 so that could be the reason. On the last sea day, there were people lined up on the stairs waiting to place their order. The tables for so full and the orders were so far behind, they quit taking orders for a bit so they could catch up. Everyone raves about the lasagna but my family did not care for it. The sauce and noodles were good. However, it has a thick spinach layer and the meat was more like coarsely chopped roast beef which we didn’t quite care for.

 

Mongolian Grill: Again, this was a popular option for our family but again, wait times were most often in excess of 30 minutes. I wish Carnival would see the popularity of these optional food venues and make them larger so they can be more productive by serving more people quicker.

 

Shows: We saw “Dancing in the Street” and thought it was awesome!! “8 More Seconds” was good but not our favorite. We did not go to the Legends show or the variety/magician show.

 

Punchliner Comedy: We attended a few family friendly comedy shows that week as well as an adult comedy show. We enjoyed them all and wish we had made time to get to more of the shows. However, the host, Jeff the Fun Dude, kind of hit a nerve with me early on & I never cared for him that much. One night we walked up to the lounge about 15 minutes into the show and he came out to greet us and wouldn’t let us in. After a bit of a protest from me, he said we could come in but finding a seat would be difficult and it might be better if we waited for the next show so we would enjoy a full show. I understand that coming in late could be distracting to the comedian and to the other guests. However, his tone was a bit condescending and bothered me but I did understand where he was coming from. We left and came back for the next show.

 

Bottomless Bubbles: We purchased this for several in our party this cruise and used it a lot. I can’t remember the cost and wish I had remembered so I could include it here. They have coke, diet coke, coke zero and sprite as options. You can get juices from the bars with the sticker but we never did. Most of the times, the bar attendant would glance at our card and pour our soda. However, a few of the bars/attendants would take our card and scan it to make sure the right person was obtaining the soda. They pour your soda from a can which is warm into a glass full of ice. You end up getting less than a can and after a few minutes, your ice has watered your soda down so much the soda didn’t taste good anymore. I learned to ask for little ice and it seemed to be more to my liking. I sure wish Carnival would go to fountain drinks. Its mind boggling to think about how many cans of soda they must go through on a week’s cruise.

 

Photos: We did not purchase many photos on this cruise as in the past. However, we loved the picture they took of our family in the dining room on formal night. They were able to take the picture, remove the border they had printed on it and make Christmas cards for me. Yay…I already have my Christmas cards done!! I think we paid $17.99 for 30 cards, without envelopes. Another note, they take WAY TOO MANY pictures!! Carnival doesn’t let any opportunity pass by without wanting to take a picture of you. Towards the end of the week, we politely told them no and they moved on. We were walking through the photo gallery on the last evening and couldn’t believe the boxes of photos that were not purchased and were going to be thrown away the next day. Such a waste of resources!!

 

Nassau: We purchased the Discover Atlantis excursion through Carnival. Our tour met out on the pier at 10:30 and we headed off to Atlantis. There is a lot of walking on this tour and really isn’t doable in the short time in port. Not sure why the tour started so late since we had arrived in Nassau at 8:30. We walked down the pier, through the cruise shopping area, and down the water front to the ferry that took us to Paradise Island. Once at the island, you still have to walk about a half mile or more to get to Atlantis. We didn’t start our tour until 11:25 (so it took 55 minutes to get there from the ship) and the last ferry back to the ship was 12:30. We only got to see half the tour before we had to leave on our own (we left some of our group on the tour and they continued on) to head back in time to catch the last ferry. I wondered how the others got back to the ship because I know there was so many from our ship still left there touring. Other than the lack of time, we really enjoyed the tour.

 

St. Thomas: We purchased the Trunk Bay Snorkeling tour through Carnival for this port. Our tour met on the pier and we walked over to board our ferry. The seas were not calm that day and it was such a rough 30 minute ride over to St. John. However, Trunk Bay is so beautiful it was worth the hairy ride it took to get there. An open air taxi met us at the St. John pier and drove us to Trunk Bay. Once there we had about 3 hours to swim and snorkel. The snorkel course was an easy swim and there were lots of sea life to see. Even when we weren’t on the course and just swimming around, all kinds of fish would swim past us….so cool! We loved this tour and it was the highlight of our cruise!!

 

St. Maarten: We booked a tour on our own with Bernard. Our group went in an air conditioned small bus which was a nice change. Our first stop was at an area to see the iguanas and from there we went to the French side to tour around. From there we went to Orient Beach and spent 2 hours. From there we went to Marigot for some shopping. I wish we had less time at Orient Beach and more time here. After we left Marigot, we went to Sunset Beach for an hour stop. Yes, we got to see planes coming in and it was awesome!! We went to the sunset beach bar right at the beach and had lunch. Food was good and the prices weren’t that bad. Next on the itinerary was s souvenir shop (can’t remember the name) and we told Sexy our driver that we all just wanted to go back to the ship. However, he stopped there anyway and said it would just be a quick stop. When he got out to come and open the door for us to exit the bus, we told him we weren’t getting off. He said ok and got back in and we left to return to the ship. The shop owner was mad that we didn’t come in because I think I heard someone say he came out yelling at the bus. After returning to the port, we spent some time shopping at the pier shopping area which is quite nice. We really enjoyed our tour with Bernard’s and can definitely recommend him to everyone.

 

Random Thoughts:

 

The pools were usually crowded since there are only 2 pools for such a large ship.

 

We loved Deck 5 where it was always quiet and there were always plenty of chairs!!

 

The common areas on the ship were definitely crowded, especially on sea days when everyone had nowhere else to be.

 

We enjoyed sitting in the atrium listening to our favorite duo, “Summer Breeze”.

 

Our daughters had no interest in Camp Carnival so I can’t give any information on that department.

 

We would have enjoyed the seaside theater more often but they never played a movie in the evenings that interested us. They didn’t show recent movies as I thought I had read somewhere.

 

Our sailing was the one that had the medical emergency and airlift off the ship. Carnival did an amazing job at keeping everyone informed of what was going on and they handled the situation very well.

 

Yes, it’s true; we did see bathrobes in the lido buffet. I just don’t understand how people can justify wearing that to breakfast. I mean you wouldn’t wear your bathrobe to I-Hop or similar place so why would you do that on a cruise ship?? It is just plain tacky!!

 

Lastly, yes, the ship has lots of motion. We felt more movement than we usually do but it didn’t cause any problems with anyone getting seasick in our group. Sometimes I thought that maybe the Dream is so high and perhaps they should have built the ship wider so there wouldn’t be as much side to side motion. We felt the motion down in our 2nd floor cabin all the way up to the Lido deck. I can’t say any one area was worse than the other though.

 

Summary: We had an amazing vacation aboard the Dream and wouldn’t hesitate to book that ship again. I do agree with others who say it is crowded. However, I expected that going into it so it didn’t let it ruin my cruise. We had great weather and great ports of call. The islands are beautiful and we can’t wait to return to the Eastern Caribbean!! We did have a few hiccups along our week but we are not ones to let small things keep us from enjoying our vacation. I am not sure why people expect everything to be so perfect on cruise ships but they don’t ever think to set the bar that high on land vacations!! I love to cruise and love being out on the open ocean and touring beautiful islands!!

[gbphatcat]

I wondered how the others got back to the ship because I know there was so many from our ship still left there touring. Other than the lack of time, we really enjoyed the tour.

 

because if its booked through carnival the boat will not leave until the excursion gets back to the ship if it's booked independently they will leave

[vivavegas]

Thanks for taking the time to write your review! Glad you had a good cruise!:)

[PathfinderEss]

Thanks for posting your review, sounds like you had a awesome time.

[OleMissGal]

We were on the same tour bus as you in St. Maarten! :) I don't recall seeing any kids on our bus, though. Where were you sitting? Were you the foursome with the matching shirts? We were towards the front. My boyfriend was the one playing unofficial bartender with the "happy juice".

 

I agree completely that there should've been more time in Marigot. I absolutely loved Sarafina's and the scenery, and wish we had more time to spend on that part of the island.

 

I echo recommending Bernard's tour if you're in St. Maarten. Well worth the $40/pp.

[kittycrusin08]

Enjoyed reading your excellent review. We will be on the Dream in October and I try to read all reviews. Sounds like you enjoyed Bernards tour in St. Maarten. We have been twice and think it is an excelen tour to go on. You certainly get a great tour, fun beverages and the tour guide is so much fun and really knows a lot about the island. Thank you for sharing your experience. ;)

[waykaylincruz]

We were on the same tour bus as you in St. Maarten! :) I don't recall seeing any kids on our bus, though. Where were you sitting? Were you the foursome with the matching shirts? We were towards the front. My boyfriend was the one playing unofficial bartender with the "happy juice".

 

Not us. We must have been on a different bus. I think he had several going that day since there were so many on his tour. Our driver was "Sexy". Very informative and a lot of fun!!

[waykaylincruz]

because if its booked through carnival the boat will not leave until the excursion gets back to the ship if it's booked independently they will leave

 

I understand that (part of the reason we booked this through the ship) but our group (Discover Atlantis with harbor Cruise) was to take the ferry boat back to the cruise ship dock after the tour and the last one for our excursion was 12:30. Our group got scattered once at Atlantis. I wonder if the others in our group had to take taxis since they missed the last ferry going over and if they had to foot the bill.

[aaalynn]

Strange question, Im sorry, but do you remember if they have a box of tissues in the cabins?

[waykaylincruz]

Strange question, Im sorry, but do you remember if they have a box of tissues in the cabins?

 

Yes, there is a box in the tissue holder and a couple extra boxes in the vanity below the sink. I wouldn't say they were "nice ones" but they did the trick.

[OleMissGal]

Not us. We must have been on a different bus. I think he had several going that day since there were so many on his tour. Our driver was "Sexy". Very informative and a lot of fun!!

 

 

We were definitely on the same bus, as Sexy was our driver. And at the what 3rd stop - the Sea Urchin guy didn't show up? Guess your family must've been towards the back of the bus. I thought it was pretty funny how no one wanted to get off at the gift shop. Think everyone was as ready to get back to the ship as we were. :)

[GAMOM4]

Great review! We were on the other Bernard's tour bus (I can't remember the name of our driver)

 

On the day at St. Thomas we went over on the Champagne Catamaran Tour to St. John...our ride over didn't seem that bad..I know that someone said the next day in St. Maarten that we must have had a really rough ride the day before when we told them what we had done..one of the tour operators told us that Monday was a really rough day. How big was the boat that you were on?

 

We were on the 11th floor and we felt the rocking and heard the noises that you were talking about.

 

We loved the cruise and wouldn't hesitate to book it again either!

[waykaylincruz]

We were definitely on the same bus, as Sexy was our driver. And at the what 3rd stop - the Sea Urchin guy didn't show up? Guess your family must've been towards the back of the bus. I thought it was pretty funny how no one wanted to get off at the gift shop. Think everyone was as ready to get back to the ship as we were. :)

 

Yes, we were in the very back of the bus. My girls are mature and on the tall side. You might not have even noticed they were kids...LOL!!! Since you didn't know there kids on the bus must mean that mine are very well behaved and didn't cause any problems...LOL!!! I think we had a great group on that tour!

 

As far as the boat we took over to St.John. It was pretty good size but I think we went pretty fast so that made the ride over rough. Also, I think we were going over to the island into the wind which would have made a difference. The ride back to ship was much calmer!!

 

I sure wish I knew what all the noises were. Sometimes it sounded like a motor boat was riding close to our ship and I even went out to the balcony to check it out since we were at sea that day. There was nothing out there and it was as quiet as could be outside. All the noises we heard was from within the cabin itself. It seemed like the ship made all sorts of noises....the noisiest one I have ever been on. But, like you, I would book it again in a heartbeat. I want to try the western route for something different.