DREAMing of my Honeymoon - review and pictures!

[scuba_ninja]

Back on board we decided a snack was necessary, so pizza ahoy!

 

It's kinda neat watching them make the pies. I've never seen a technique quite like theirs. They take the dough balls, stack them, then flatten out a bunch at once. I do believe that the flour they are using makes a difference in final taste. It's A good quality Italian flour. One criticism of pizza... Don't carry them back from the oven stacked!! Too often the cheese/toppings from the pizza under the pile gets knocked off, and also, it makes the crust of the pizza on top soggy.

 

 

 

 

Dinner that night in the MDR was decent. I like the port of call based menus, I think it's a nice touch.

 

 

 

 

The fry jacks were pretty good actually, Kinda fun to eat. As the kids these day would say "Dat Ox Tongue 'doh". It was fantstically tender. Tongue could very well be up there in terms of favorite cuts of meat to eat. It's easily in the top 3 and this did not dissapoint. Tender, with good flavor. I regret only ordering 3.

 

 

The procuitto was good too. I love swordfish, but after not being in love with the fish I'd had on board, I decided to try to ribs. Meh. They were OK. I hadn't had the Guy's BBQ yet, but I was hoping it would be better. One of our table mates had the linguini and said it was excellent. She said the sauce tasted like it was made on board. We never tried the pasta place on Lido either, but heard good things. Apparently anyone who ordered the tofu steak was immediately asked to walk the plank. I applaud that decision.

 

The cherry pie was awful. Like, how can you serve this with a straight face bad. The crust? was gross, soggy and tasted like you mixed grahm cracker dust with oil. The filling tasted like dollar store canned filling. Fruit and cheese plate to the rescue! My wife had one of those every night, and the cheese was always good. I was a big fan of the blue cheese.

[scuba_ninja]

After dinner we went to the newlyweds show. It was EXCELLENT! Over all, I wasn't a huge fan of the cruise director, but this was one of his better moments. Hilarious.

 

 

Back at our rooms, we were greeted by a creature clearly forged in the depth of hell, or some space prison. Or something equally awful.

 

 

 

 

My wife looked at it and said "It's a love bird?" I said "It's an evil chicken!" Then she pointed out the love card. So I corrected myself "It's an evil love turkey!!". Other explanations have included peacock that lost its tail in an unfortunately accident on the Lido buffet and space creature. If anyone can help settle this argument, I would appreciate it. We still argue about it. It still fills my nightmares.

 

 

The card was a nice gesture of sorts. It was a "gift" from the cabin steward for our honeymoon. A $50 spa gift card that had more rules than you can imagine and a $12 credit from the photo lab on board that was similarly restricted. I appreciate that we got something though, especially since our room was never decorated.... like we paid for....

 

My wife ended up using the gift card for a pedicure and we somehow sold the photo gift card to someone for $12 in cash. She tried to use it to buy a scrapbook kit thing, but they said it could only be used on photos. So the guy in line behind her gave her $12. While I certainly appreciate that, I'm still not sure how it helped him, but hey, he seemed super happy. The spa on the ship is such a scam. My wife came back and said "that was really a $12 pedicure, glad I had a gift card". They really shoot themselves in the foot too, they wouldn't let us use it with our spa room discount, and we tried to book a massage with it, but they said no. Whatever. Their loss, I was prepared to spend a lot more money on the spa.

 

Here's another picture of the demon turkey, just to help make your Monday a little worse.

 

[scuba_ninja]

After surviving the night while our Belizean devil bird watched us sleep, we arrived in Roatan!!!!!!

 

ROATAN IS AWESOME! I want my next vacation to just be a week in Roatan. Seriously. We booked directly through Daniel Johnson's on FB. Great decision. For $45 a person we did the Sloths and snorkeling. Worth every penny.

 

 

The port still had some holiday decorations up.

 

 

Leaving the ship we did have to walk a decent ways to get to the pickup point, but that's not their fault. It looked like even the Carnival excursions had to make a similar trek. You have to leave port, walk up a giant hill, then back down it to a dirt lot where there's tons of tours waiting with signs. Not hard to find, but a pain in the butt when it's raining out like it was for us. Also, after eating as much as we had for the last few days, going up that hill with the stairs felt like torture.

 

 

 

 

As part of our package we had a private driver for the day. HE WAS AWESOME!!! Super nice. PERFECT english (apparently English is the main language there). Knowledgeable, friendly, great all around. From the moment we stepped into his spotless car, we knew it was going to be a good day.

 

After a short drive we arrived at the hangout. Look, repeat after me. THIS IS NOT A ZOO. THIS IS NOT A ZOO. Let's get that part out of the way. It's a rescue that funds itself through tourism. They take in unwanted/abused "pets' that have been cast aside. I've never been in a place quite like this. It's small, but really well run.

 

The cages are completely spotless. The staff here very very clearly loves and cares for the animals like they were their own. They know the animals well and they respect the animals. Parrot didn't want to come play? Sure, stay up in the rafters. Sloth is tired? It goes up to a tree to sleep. At no point was any animal pressured into doing anything. They all looked very healthy, well fed and well cared for.

 

I believe some of the guides are veterinary students doing internships. They were young, but clearly well trained and well versed in these animals.

 

Slots are happy and like giving hugs.

 

 

Yes, they are THAT slow. They even blink slowly. This one was trying to get away. The staffers had no trouble catching him.

 

 

He totes gave me a "don't rat me out bro!" look

 

 

 

[scuba_ninja]

After the staff plucked him from the tree, he went back to hugging.

 

[dporter]

 

 

 

 

My wife looked at it and said "It's a love bird?" I said "It's an evil chicken!" Then she pointed out the love card. So I corrected myself "It's an evil love turkey!!". Other explanations have included peacock that lost its tail in an unfortunately accident on the Lido buffet and space creature. If anyone can help settle this argument, I would appreciate it. We still argue about it. It still fills my nightmares.

 

 

Looks like a dinosaur to me, a brontosaurus.

[Princess Ariel]

I'm loving your review!

Maybe that animal is a Llama? I'd be scratching my head also.

[scuba_ninja]

Dporter and Princess, I'm combining your ideas. I'm going to say it's a Llamasaurus Lidoraptor. A small but slow moving creature. Known to consume voraciously at the buffet, only to repeat the process in the MDR minutes later.

[sandyzag]

Dporter and Princess, I'm combining your ideas. I'm going to say it's a Llamasaurus Lidoraptor. A small but slow moving creature. Known to consume voraciously at the buffet, only to repeat the process in the MDR minutes later.

 

 

Hahahahaha!!!! :'):'):'):'):')

[dporter]

Dporter and Princess, I'm combining your ideas. I'm going to say it's a Llamasaurus Lidoraptor. A small but slow moving creature. Known to consume voraciously at the buffet, only to repeat the process in the MDR minutes later.

 

lol you have perfectly described me :)

[Naomi John]

Enjoying your review. I find it funny as you were in a Spa Cabin, all the way FWD, and you were in the AFT dinning room. I commented once in one of my reviews how every time we had an AFT cabin, we were in a FWD dinning room and when we were in a FWD cabin, we had the AFT dinning room. Wish you could remember the name of the restaurant in Cozumel, always looking for a new place to eat there. I agree I would love to spend a week in Roatan, and Belize is not my favorite stop.

 

Waiting for more.

[the_lovely_voyage]

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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[OhSnap]

Thank you so much for this!!! I love reading all your posts and seeing the pictures!!! The Sloths... OMG so cute!

[mpdog42]

I'll admit, I wasn't very hungry at dinner, so I didn't eat a ton. After the club though we wanted a snack so we decided to try the Pizza. Look, I grew up in NY, so I understand that there's 2 kinds of pizza. The good kind that comes from NY, and the horrible inedible poor excuses for pizza that comes from everywhere else. It's OK, we just have better Pizza and Bagels than anyone else in the country. It's just... fact. ;p

 

My wife likes to remind me how insufferable I am about this. I can't help it. She grew up in St. Louis. What passed for pizza there is a sheet of printer paper with EZ cheese and ketchup. It's an abomination. I won't even taste a bagel outside of NY usually.

 

Now that we've established that I understand what superior pizza is... lemme tell ya. This stuff's good. Like, no joke good. I regret not eating it more often good. Seriously. It wasn't NY style, but it had a good, flavorful crust, fresh toppings and it was cooked well. I really am blown away by just how good it was. This was one line I didn't mind standing on.

 

 

 

One thing about ship's food is that it is hard to get consistency. You have crew changes during the day. You have crew changes between sailings sometimes. You have different suppliers to different ports a lot of the time too. All of these factors can add up. It means that American Table Night 1 menu on the Dream is the same on paper as on, say, Magic, but could be completely different in taste and presentation in actuality. I will say that over all, on our ship, on our sailing the food was good. After the Indian food, the pizza might have been a close second! No foolin'!

 

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

 

Mike St louis

[splash_in_the_water]

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!!

[Quilcruisers]

Sorry for being slow to post. I came back, and as is often the case walked into a flaming poop storm at work. But not just your average run of the mill poop on fire. This bag of poop was thrown at an industrial sized fan. Sadly, cruisecritic doesn't pay me for reviews, so if I ever want to cruise again, I have to make sure I'm doing the actual paid work stuffs. Also, post-cruise depression is real. I asked my wife last night "hey, remember like a week ago when you still liked me". Yeah, she didn't.

 

Also, update on the refund. Carnival basically laughed in my gifter's face, so now it's on to calling the credit card company. Glad the gifter isn't letting this one die.

 

Now, going back to the embarkation questions and comments. Since we had FTTF, our boarding pass said to arrive between 10 and 10:30. We arrived almost an hour early, and we were not the first ones there by any means. If I had to do it again, I'd get there at 11. They'll still put you in the FTTF section, and you'll have way less time just sitting around staring at boot prints on the ceiling. Also, I double checked my time stamp on the very first photo I took of the Lobby. It was taken at precisely 11:32, so yes, I was off by an hour in one of my earlier posts. So we ended up waiting for 2 hours in the embarkation pen. I'm glad it wasn't any longer. So to sum all that up, don't arrive too early. It's not worth it. Sure we had no food lines, but I don't know that was really crucial. We could have arrived at 11 and had the same small lines.

 

The glorious mustard and ketchup drill started somewhere around 4 if memory serves me correctly. This is only my second muster, but really, they're pretty easy. The most annoying part was that many of the elevators were still reserved for staff/luggage. Since we could, we walked down a few flights of stairs until we got to our station, which was in the theater. There were plenty of folks available to help guide us to the right place. Once we got to the theater entrance we were scanned in and pushed (yes, pushed "FILL EVERY SEAT") in to our seats. The most uncomfortable seats on the ship btw. Many of the balcony seats in the encore lounge are as uncomfortable and cramped as spirit airlines super basic economy seats. There is zero leg room. It is impossible to stretch out your legs even 2 inches. You'll have them at a 90 angle the entire time. Some seast on aisles looked a little better, but mine was not. The seat cushions are a joke. They feel like they needed to be replaced a decade ago. I have some back issues, and by the time we were done with the muster, I was ready for some advil. I've sat on more comfortable picnic benches. And rocks.

 

The drill itself really didn't take long. Thankfully we didn't have a lot of missing people, and they just kinda moved it along anyhow. I will say that they did announce that an alternative muster was availible for anyone with disabilities, etc.

 

The normal questions you see on the board:

 

1) No, we were not standing

2) We were indoors

3) We were told specifically NOT to take our life jackets

4) It was short

5) It was still boring

6) It was about at helpful as the safety demo is on an airplane.

7) Leave your kids at camp if the ship is sinking.

For those of you asking about #7, this is actually a good thing. Instead ofhaving people running around the ship looking for their kids, causing more chaos, etc, the kids all MUST wear wrist bands that have their muster stations on them (wrist bands were given out at this drill, and were re-issued when needed, I watched it happen often). It's a great idea. The camp staff will get your kids to you. Your job is to be there for them when they arrive. As someone who's been involved in disaster prep for large groups, I concur that this is a solid plan.

 

Now, as I've done before, let's compare to Celebrity. Celebrity also had us inside in the theater, but we waited MUCH longer. Also, the staff was MUCH MUCH stricter about having phones out, even when we were just waiting for things to start. They threatened to take phones on Celebrity. Carnival did not give a flying hoot. Celebrity had a long video we had to watch that made announcements in several languages. It also focused considerably more on hygiene and hand washing. Carnival didn't even mention that stuff once.

 

Once the mayo drill was over, we were free to move about the ship. And sail away had already begun I believe.

If you sail out of NOLA and you don't spend as much time as possible outside or near a window while you transit down the river, you're a very silly person.

Whe hit the oil rigs well after dark, and it's actually beautiful sight. The pic above is of cargo ships, I'll get some rig pics up later today.

 

 

 

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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[Quilcruisers]

One point regarding the "Pee smell" in the bathroom. I have noticed the same thing off and on on many of my Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruises and often times it is eminating from the toilet brush in the room. I have asked several stewards to replace them with new ones and it works like a charm.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

I must remember this! Every cruise starts out with me saying "I hate how these restrooms smell." I hate toilet brushes so much that I no longer have them in my house. I only use the Clorox bleach handle thingy for my toilets and I have one in each restroom. My husband has one that he uses that as soon as I think of it , I will throw it out too. Why wouldn't they dunk that into some pine cleaner or a bleach concentrate or something. Horrible!

 

 

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[scuba_ninja]

lol you have perfectly described me :)

 

hahahaha, doesn't that describe us all? My wife got one of the stuffed "towel animal" frame things from the photo area. He's kinda plump, so we named him Lido.

[scuba_ninja]

Enjoying your review. I find it funny as you were in a Spa Cabin, all the way FWD, and you were in the AFT dinning room. I commented once in one of my reviews how every time we had an AFT cabin, we were in a FWD dinning room and when we were in a FWD cabin, we had the AFT dinning room. Wish you could remember the name of the restaurant in Cozumel, always looking for a new place to eat there. I agree I would love to spend a week in Roatan, and Belize is not my favorite stop.

 

Waiting for more.

 

Yeah, they seem to do funny things like that on Carnival. Maybe it's so you'll walk through the whole ship and spend more money? Maybe they need to balance the ship out with all of us stuffing ourselves at the buffet? Now I'm picturing a cruise ship with all the passengers in the stern, bow of the ship sticking out of the water like a motorcycle pulling a wheelie.

[scuba_ninja]

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!

[scuba_ninja]

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.

[scuba_ninja]

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.

[scuba_ninja]

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.

[scuba_ninja]

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.

 

[scuba_ninja]

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.

[scuba_ninja]

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.