Sept 14th Dream Cruise Photo Review!

Our Last Day, a day at sea, was scheduled to begin with breakfast in buffet, and then the "Behind the Fun" tour. We headed to grab a quick breakfast, and after eating, I headed up with Bryan to Camp Carnival to drop him off.

The Behind the Fun tour is a 4ish hour tour of the ship.. but not the passenger space, no, its of the crew space and all the inner workings. Kids Bryan's age (I think under 12) are not allowed, hence why I was taking him to Camp Carnival.

Here was the biggest hiccup of the entire trip... in an example of brilliantly stupid scheduling, the Behind the Fun tour started at 9am, and Camp Carnival didn't open till 10am! My wife was BEYOND upset... This day was our actual 10th anniversary and she wanted to spend all day with me. I offered to stay with the boy so she could go, and that was no acceptable.

In tears, she stormed down to the Shore Excursion desk. The apologized and began to work to solve the problem. It turns out there were 2 tours, one at 9am and one at 9:30. They offered to move us to the 9:30 as 2 people showed up early and could do the 9am. They also offered to have them come get me after I got Bryan to Camp Carnival. Both the Shore Excursion staff, and the Camp Carnival staff told us to make sure to mention this in our survey, and that it needed to be communicated somehow to the Cruise Director in order to get this fixed.. that it was an ongoing problem with Adult Only Events and closed Camp Carnival.

So, shortly before the 9:30 tour left, I went down with Bryan and got my access pass, and gathered the number to call to catch up, then went back to the cabin to wait.

At 10 am I dropped Bryan off and took the elevator down to deck 1 and called the number I was given. Shortly thereafter the tour guide appeared and took me down into the bowels of the ship to meet the group. I missed the Galley, but that was it.

In case your curious, this was the pass they gave us:

We had to give it back at the end, but we did get a drawstring bag, a ball cap, a lanyard, and a bar of soap carved by the steakhouse chef.

The tour was fantastic!! We saw the garbage disposal area, engine control room, the Galley (at least the wife did), Crew Lounge, Crew Cafeterias, the Training Center, Crew Cabins, Behind Stage in the theater, and the steakhouse kitchen. However, the highlight of the tour for me was getting to go up on the Bridge. We were escorted up there and greeted by the Captain. After some pictures were taken, he showed us around the bridge, and in particular gave us a run down of how stuff worked on the fly bridge that sticks out on the side of the ship. It was an AMAZING view ahead of us, and the equipment was very very interesting.

The end of the tour was in the Steakhouse, and we were provided complementary Champagne and a little snack, and had a chance to provide feedback. It was a great tour!

After the tour, we grabbed lunch (one last stab at the India Tandoor!) and hit he chocolate buffet. The afternoon was uneventful with time spent napping and relaxing on the ship, savoring our last minutes. One thing we did do was gather the final clues for the Murder Mystery and turned in our sheet.

Dinner time came and we headed to the dining room for our last dinner on board. I know tipping is an oft-discussed topic around here, and we handle it by not only keeping the tips added to the sign and sail, but we also give some cash to those who deserve it. We personally delivered that money to each of our 3 wait staff for their OUTSTANDING work. Jose, our head water, kept saying that the worst thing about being a waiter on the ship is that just as you get to know someone, they leave.

Bryan headed to Camp Carnival after dinner, and got signed in for the after-10 babysitting as we wanted to go to the final show and pack our bags and do some shopping.

My wife and her friend headed to the shops and I ran to start doing the initial packing, I got it about 90% done and headed down to make sure they weren't spending all our money... realized we left something in the room and ran back up to be greeted by this on the bed:

You have never seen a 35 year old man more happy about a cheap piece of plastic!! I GOT A SHIP ON A STICK!!!! And, its happily displayed on our mantle in the living room!!

The show that evening was great, we got everything packed and set out for luggage pick up. We took a few moments without the little one to honor our anniversary, and then went and picked up our little bundle from Camp Carnival.

The entire week Bryan had not slept at Camp at all. He's the kinda kid that when presented with something to do, he will go go go and not stop. Heck, even gained a reputation for helping clean up when the other kids moved on. Well, but the time we got to pick him up, it was after midnight, and he was curled up under a blanket FAST asleep. He was WORE OUT!! We turned in our phone, said bye to the staff and headed back to the room, with a last stop at the ice cream machine.

Bryan went right back to sleep, and the Wife and I sat out on the balcony and finished our icecream and enjoyed the AMAZING full moon sparkle over the water. Shortly after, we climbed in to bed and off to sleep for the last time in our little slice of heaven.

Ahhh! How sweet. Thanks for the review. Sounds like you guys had a great time. We'll be on Dream next August.

We have had shane on both of the cruises as the Matre D. He was great, I can almost quote what he says word by word.

Something along the lines of "if everyone is having a great time say HEELLLOOOOOO, This is your Matre D Shane here and trust you had a good day (at sea, in cozumel, whatever), and be glad you in (whatever) dining room because the (other dining room) sucks.

I hope he's on the dream in May, that would be fun.

Keep it coming! Getting on board three weeks from Saturday!!! Cannot WAIT!!!!

You board the day that I get off the Dream ! :) I'll do my best to leave it in good shape heheh

Glad you were able to work out the details and do the fun tour.

Enjoyed your review!

Continuing with the sad part... the end of the cruise... :(

We woke from a good nights sleep and the ship was in port. In fact, I woke up to use the restroom before sunrise and we were already in port.

We had number 2 for our debarkation number, but we were in no hurry, so we ran down to the Scarlett Diningroom for breakfast. It was a pretty quiet meal as we all turned on our phones and checked emails and such. I'll be honest, I almost didn't want to, I enjoyed being disconnected and just being present with my family!

After breakfast, we headed to the Photo Gallery to pick up our photo order. I took this opportunity to snap this pic:

There were about 8 or so of these kiosks. They let you put in your sign-and-sail card and find SOME of the pictures taken. Everything from formal nights where they scanned your card were there, but even some candids. These were not open until the 3rd day of the cruise.

We gathered our last few things from the room and headed down to debark. It was at this point that we really noted how much Bryan was loved by the camp carnival staff. Many of them were helping direct people, and EVERY one of them made a point to run over and give Bryan a big hug. He waved and said by-by to each of them. Camp Carnival was a huge hit for us, and for Bryan!

Debarkation was soooooo much smoother than embarkation. Our bags were there waiting for us by the time we got off, and the customs stuff went smoothly with no hiccups. We were off and waiting for our shuttle to Budget to get our rental car in mere minutes. Our shuttle arrived after a short wait and off we went.

After getting all packed into the van, we headed off to the Brevard Zoo to spend the afternoon as our flight wasn't until Sunday afternoon.

If your ever in the Orlando area before or after a cruise, the Brevard Zoo is a MUST VISIT place!! $15 bucks for adults gets you entrance, and a ride on the train. Its not a huge zoo, but its very interactive, and very well done! There is a splash park for kids, and lots of hands-on touching and feeding activities!

The train ride was a lot of fun. Short, but full of things to see!

After spending the morning and afternoon at the Zoo, we headed to check in at the hotel. We did make a stop at a post office for some flat rate priority mail boxes, as we KNEW we would be over weight.

We were at the same hotel as we were pre-cruise but in a different room, and it was GREAT!! It was on a corner and had a great view of both the cruise terminal, but also the ocean, and we got to watch both the Dream and the Disney Fantasy head out to sea.

Another short nap happened, and then it was time to get some food! We headed to Fishlips and settled in. I really wish we had gotten there to see the ships leave, but even with none in port, its a pretty place with really good food!! We will go back!

We headed back to to the hotel and re-packed bags and dealt with packing the boxes we were going to mail. One of our friends had a 6:30am flight, so we got to sleep pretty quickly.

The next morning, my wife took our friend to her early flight, and eventually the rest of us got up and got moving. The hotel's internet was down, so we were unable to print postage, so after check out we had to find a self-service ready post office, and breakfast!

We still had more than a case of diapers left, and had no intention of trying to fly home with them, so we were also on the lookout for a shelter or someplace to donate them. The hostess at the IHOP where we stoped for breakfast actually was a coordinator for a women's and family shelter, and she was happy to take them for us!

We paused to take one more picture of Ron Jon's for my mom who used to work there before she was a mom

Finally, we were headed to the airport. We got there without incident, we checked in without any problem, and got to the terminal to see the same family we had flown to Florida with, and they were excited to see us.

An uneventful flight back home ended with the same bad attitude from the CIRA terminal employees of Allegiant, but once past them, all we had left was a 30 minute drive back home and our vacation was over.

It was a great vacation, and I'm ready to go again! The Dream is an AMAZING ship, and easily my favorite of the 3 we have been on. And, if you've ever considered cruising with a toddler, DO IT!! It was such a rewarding experience to have him with us and see his joy and fun. Plus, we got to spend the entire cruise just being together as a family! AMAZING!

I've got some other random pics and some videos to edit and I will post them here, as well as the Fun Times and I think we still have the camp carnival schedule. We will try to scan them and post them as well!

Ask if you have questions.

I don't remember if I posted this earlier in this thread.. but one last time, here was our happy family on formal night:

Thank you for your review. You have a beautiful family.

Thanks for your fine photo review. You look very happy. :):):):)

Another Awesome review;)