MooseyMoo

I get seriously annoyed when I see teens running amok in the buffet area, making a crazy mess out of the food. This makes me eye roll all over the place.

So imagine the look of horror on my face when my DS tells us one night about the milkshakes he and a few other kids had been making in the buffet!

They would fill a mug with hot chocolate and fill a regular cup with the soft serve ice cream. Once at their table, they would pour the hot chocolate over the soft serve and eat this cute little creation of theirs.

Sigh. He promised they didn't make a mess at either station.

My DD had the puppy dog eyes going so DH and I decided one night that she could try it.

She skipped, she literally skipped.

So my heart is singing with happiness, and I'm trying really hard not to be obnoxious and messy, but soft serve and hot chocolate is GOOD...real good!

Dang teenagers...

Thank you for continuing your review.

Of course! I will just keep plugging away!

Enjoying your review and anxiously awaiting for more!

Susan

Thanks for joining me! I slowed down a bit but hope to get moving a little faster again. :)

Let’s start with the room.

We were booked in an inside spa cabin for 4, 11223.

Basically, this room with the two upper pull down beds on either side of the room.

We used every inch of space in our room. haha.

Was it tight? Absolutely!

Did we know it going in? Yep!

Have it done it before? Of course!

Not a big deal…yet, I think we are due for another balcony on the next cruise…haha.

I was surprised when greeted by our stateroom host and asked if we wanted morning servicing or nighttime servicing. Bummer! I loved both! But we decided on morning and this worked out just fine. Our stateroom host was amazing and very hard working.

But in a little tiny room, it makes a difference to get the two ceiling beds put away during the day. Knowing this ahead of time, I would have really thought hard about upgrading to a balcony.

Storage space worked fine for us. We put our dirty laundry bags next to the king bed, under the “come out of the ceiling” beds.

I love the spa robes and did use mine quite a few times. They are super big but I didn’t mind wrapping up in it.

I loved the yellow beach towels, I actually bought some to bring home.

The bathroom is small, we knew that, but only the kids showered in there so no problem!

Being so close to the spa and using the back entrance, it was super easy to just pop up into the spa area to use their shower. (I’ll talk about the spa in a different post).

I brought a little mini backpack for my shower bag usually, that worked well for me.

I never had to wait for a shower, no one was ever showering in the second shower stall the same time as me, and no one was ever waiting when I got out. So I never had a problem getting into the shower when I wanted to. AND it was so much roomier!!!

Overall: I liked the room. We weren’t in there very much and if we were, we were getting ready for something, sleeping or a couple times we rested for a bit so even the small space was fine for us. We made it work! Location was perfect, I loved the close proximity to Serenity and the Cloud 9 Spa.

Really enjoying your review so far and your sense of humor. I am anxiously awaiting more. I also like your writing style. I'm going with my family next year. We did a cruise out of NOLO a year or so before hurricane Katrina. I am curious to see if it has changed at all.

Thank you!

On the ride out to the swamp tour it was heartbreaking to see some of the areas that are still absolutely devastated. Eye opening for sure.

Enjoying your review.

Thanks for sharing your photos.

Thanks! There are a zillion things I now wish I had taken a picture of to help illustrate the stories! Sigh, I guess I need to go back. ;)

fun review! When we cruised from NO, we stayed at the Lamothe House. It had a courthouse and living quarters. We stayed in the main house. And I thing a ghost was holding my bathroom door shut. I was in the shower, when i got out, I couldn't get that door open. Then it suddenly went click click and opened. My bf was across the room sitting in a chair when a bed between us. He didn't do it :rolleyes: Would this be the place where you stopped?

I seriously would have wet my pants!

I don't mind being scared, I get the nervous giggles, but something about New Orleans was a little too real, haha.

We didn't stop at the Lamothe House. One of the places we stopped by and heard stories about was the Hotel Monteleone.

The little courtyard place looked like the Lamothe, but no cute little pool, instead it was a little overgrown, leaves on the ground, super dark and a huge tall brick wall in the back. Everyone on the tour kept competitively stepping forward to avoid being the one closest to the wall (with our backs to it I might add). haha.

Day 4: Finally onboard the Dream

Woke up, got ready, packed and didn’t rush out the door, which was really nice. We walked down to the Café Beignet again on Royal Street and loaded up on beignets.

We stopped in maybe one or two more shops and then meandered back to the hotel, grabbed our luggage and had them grab us a taxi.

Everything from here was super smooth, taxi right outside the door of the Sheraton. Drove with no traffic or issues to the port. Easy port! Security, luggage drop off, everything was easy.

And yay! We had FTTF! This was partially why I wasn’t in a hurry to get to the port.

In August, we traveled with my husband’s family of 15 on a cruise to Alaska with NCL. We had just done Alaska the year before so knew Port of Seattle and what we were getting in to. We arrived early to get the early boarding number and sat around a long time. Great, we were one of the first groups on the ship, but we did quite a bit of sitting. Although I don’t really mind that.

So I think we arrived about 10:45am and it took us awhile to get ourselves into the main terminal but once there we found the FTTF line, had very little wait and were getting our key cards in no time. The rest is a blur, we just followed the FTTF signs and soon enough we were on the gangway heading to the ship. There was no sitting down and waiting and I loved that. Yep, worth it for me.

Our first cruise was the Disney Fantasy, there is the cute fanfare with welcoming you into the ship over the loudspeaker and you are greeted like celebrities by cruise staff and it really starts your vacation off with something special.

The next two cruises were the NCL Jewel and the Pearl. Both ships you enter to, “ok, you are on a ship”. Not exciting, but you are on.a.ship so not really a big deal.

But the Dream…that atrium is really something. It makes a statement!

This picture does NOT do the atrium justice. I love me some glitter, sparkle and glitz!

We headed to our room first and used our FTTF perk to drop off our carry on stuff. I do remember signs about rooms not being ready but I think it said something about FTTF on it or something. I remember because my DH was nervous to open the doors and break rules, but I was feeling confident that my FTTF perk included getting into the room early. In either case, I opened the door and confidently walked myself to my room. Exchanged welcomes with housekeeping staff and then quickly left just in case we were being a bother by being in there too early. Haha.

Our room was ready to go, so I felt fine about it. We knew we were having lunch in Pasta Bella from CC and other Dream reviewers (Mitsugirly is one of favorites, I just followed her suggestions for my entire trip, haha, actually you can stop reading now and just go read hers, she has better pictures!).

Pasta Bella was good. DH and the kids really enjoyed it.

Next we needed to explore and get to know our surroundings a bit better.

It's December...I live in Washington, Yes, THIS! All of this!

Waterslides! Yay! I didn't touch them once in 2 weeks, but just the fact that they were there, and I COULD use them if I wanted to. haha.

Once we got acquainted with the ship a bit, we headed to our room to unpack. Yay, everything was there and we spent a bit of time getting organized for the next two weeks!

Ok, now I think I am going to go rogue and not review things necessarily in order. I’ll stop the play by play of the daily events and instead give you my thoughts on different aspects of the ship, the staff, the Spa and of course I will do each of our 6 excursions and the B2B process.

We would get one more day in New Orleans, at the end of the trip, but I’ll sum it up here.

We love this city! There is so much that we didn’t see, so many restaurants we didn’t make it to, and so many cool things left undiscovered.

Great people, great food, great fun! Absolutely no complaints. There was nothing my kids shouldn’t have seen. Maybe because it was December, I don’t know, but even staying right on Bourbon with kids, there was never an uncomfortable moment with them anywhere in the French Quarter. Although my DD did comment on some of the “window decorations”. I think at one point I heard her mumble, “please remind me to NOT look at the windows while walking on this street” and also “I will never do THAT to my nipples!” DS was pointedly interested in watching the walking map on his phone’s GPS. So I guess there was that! Hahaha. But we did fine and I wouldn't hesitate to take them again.

Up next: Finally it’s December 20th and we board the Dream!

After lunch we had the following agenda:

(Again I forgot I owned a camera so this evening is lame picture-wise.)

1. Explore the city a bit more

2. Dinner at The Old Coffee Pot

3. A Haunted History Tour!

We loved The Old Coffee Pot! DS and DH shared the chicken Fleur de Lis and it was magic. This is worth a visit for sure!

With full tummies, we set off for the meeting spot for the Haunted History Tour. We choose the 5 in 1 tour. It’s a little bit of everything: ghosts, vampires, witches, voodoo and unexplained mysteries. Our tour guide was super amazing! She was a great storyteller, had a great voice and did a really good job with the tour. We did the 7:30pm tour and the eventual darkness added to the creepiness. The history buffs in the family loved all the history. And she really did have us spooked! There was a part of the tour that was in a little courtyard in living quarters and many of us were super shifty eyed as we jumped at every little noise in there. We would do this tour again. It was a great time.

As this was the last night in New Orleans, I knew I wanted to take DH out to see Bourbon Street in all its glory. We dropped the kids off at the hotel RIGHT AFTER the Haunted History tour ended. Their mouths literally hit the floor when they realized they were staying there alone…with ghosts, witches, vampires and unexplained mysteries lurking in every.single.corner.of.the.city! Oops! That was maybe bad planning on my part. Oh well, you have iPhones, call us if you see a vampire…Byeeeee!

Really we just wandered Bourbon Street, got beignets at the Café Beignet located on Bourbon in the Musical Legends Park where we listened to some music and ate our sugary amazingness.

We weren’t out too long and headed back to the hotel to sleep. The only sleep DH has had in 24 hours was on a plane and on a bus. He was ready to snooze! And we had a ship to be on the next day! EEEEEEE!

Oh man my feelings were hurt when I got to the last page and tried to click next. I absolutely love your writing style and I can't wait for more. I'm going on the dream in August and it's my first time in New Orleans so I'm super excited to read your take on it.

Hahaha. I feel the same way with reviews so I'm trying to get moving on it! You are going to have a fabulous time!

Thanks for the review, you have a beautiful family.

Thank you and thanks for joining me! :)

Day 3! New Orleans

We were up and out of bed and super excited for DH to come hang out with us! He taxied to the hotel, changed out of his coaching clothes and we left for the day (poor guy, he was such a trooper).

We talked about it the night before and the kids were really bummed that DH missed out on a lot of the fun we had the day before, so deja’ vu, we did a lot of it all over again! The kids knew we had to take him to Surrey’s, we loved it that much.

So off to the Garden District we went, got off at the RIGHT stop (I let DS manage the navigating) and had an awesome breakfast. We wandered through the Garden District a bit to show some of our favorite houses to DH and walked through the Lafayette Cemetery and the kids got to tell all the cool stories.

We jumped on the streetcar and made our way back to the French Quarter. We had a Swamp Tour booked!

We booked with Cajun Encounters Tour Co. We did the swamp tour with pick up. Easy Peasy! We booked online, they picked us up in the French Quarter and away we went. Great bus driver, we learned a lot about New Orleans and Louisiana in general. Once there we went inside the office and paid for the tour. Next event was picking out a life jacket and sitting down to wait.

Why do I mention the life jacket? Well, we picked ours out and they aren’t super awesome life jackets, but my kids were fine with it. Until the family next to us did NOT pick out life jackets and sat down to wait with a brief mention of “knowing how to swim”. Suddenly my kids were as sullen as they come, well DS age 14, more than DD.

Conversation we had with only our eyes ensued…

DS: I know how to swim! We have a pool in the backyard! Why do I have to wear the stupid jacket?

Me: Everyone has to wear the stupid jacket.

DS: I’ve taught little kids HOW to swim! I am not wearing the stupid life jacket. THEY aren’t wearing the stupid life jacket.

Me: You are wearing the stupid jacket.

DS: Ugh ugh ugh!

Me: I know! You are a state level competitive swimmer, and not in sprints, in LONG distance swimming! I know you know how to swim! I’m sure you could kick the bum of the kids next to us in all things swim! I know! BUT YOU ARE WEARING THE STUPID LIFE JACKET! Everyone has to wear one.

Well, that’s how the conversation went in my head anyway.

Thankfully the staff came out soon after this heated eye conversation and insisted the no life jacket family go back inside and grab their life jackets. The best part? Only the ugliest life jackets were left. Heehee.

Here are the kids looking stupid in the stupid life jackets. Hahaha.

And then we were off to get into our boat and search for alligators! Unfortunately it was December and the alligator part of the tour was kind of lame, because…December. Sigh.

Oh, but we weren’t done! (which was good because at first I was all judgey and thinking, seriously? Lamest alligator ever AND stupid life jackets?) And actually, I liked these little guys better than alligators!

The tricks we will do for sugar!

I hate when they eat my cat food, but I love them in the bayou!

We also got to play with pigs! Hogs? Wild hogs?! They were super fun!

Marshmallows! Who knew!

It was a fun tour. I liked being on the boat, but wish I had brought one more layer and a better system for all my hair, but I still really enjoyed it.

My husband slept the entire ride back into New Orleans so that was good!

We got dropped off and my DS wanted a repeat performance of The Royal House so we headed there for a late lunch. Again, I hated DH to miss anything, so I didn’t feel bad about going to same place even though the city has millions of amazing restaurants to explore, haha.

Day 2: Part 2

As we were walking back to the streetcar, we stopped in the Lafayette Cemetery. It was pretty cool on its own, but we decided to join a gentleman giving “tours” and it made the experience even better. I don’t know much about this but he had some type of pass around his neck so we decided (me , 14 year old and an 11 year old) that he was legit and waited around a few minutes until another family joined our tour. I’m so glad we did the tour with him. We learned a lot and left with lots of stories. DH teaches APUSH and AP World History, my DS couldn’t wait to tell him all about the cemetery stories.

If you don't know where the saying, "I wouldn't touch (it, you, that) with a 10 foot pole!" comes from...it's here in the cemeteries!

Great little tour, I think I spent $20 total for the 3 of us with tip. It wasn't very long but packed with history, information and a great ghost story.

We headed back towards Canal Street and decided to do some shopping on the way back to the hotel. We actually killed enough time that we got back, unloaded our new voodoo doll collection (seriously, whoever makes this stuff has my daughter’s number…) and it was time to grab dinner. These dolls are all the French Quarter and my daughter fell in love with them. We bought way too many…

We ate at The Royal House and everyone gave it a bunch of thumbs up! We ate upstairs and I loved that location for our family.

DS had the Alligator Po’Boy.

DD had the Crab Claws.

Both were amazing.

After dinner, we walked up and down Royal Street, shopped a bit more and took our time returning to the hotel.

It doesn't seem here like we did a lot, but I remember being absolutely undone at the end of this day. Haha. I'm thankful for my husband, I don't think I travel well with the kids by myself.

At about this time, we were done for the night and ready to head back to the hotel. Meanwhile, back in Washington, my poor DH finished coaching a high school Friday night girls basketball game, grabbed his luggage and a ride and took off for Sea-Tac airport. His flight would leave at midnight and I had a pretty full day planned for us in New Orleans!

Up next: Day 3 DH arrives and New Orleans again

P.S. I spelled Anne Rice's name wrong. I am a serious dork.

Subscribed!! This is great so far!!

 

 

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Thank you much! :)

Following, brilliant start, really like your style of writing.

Subscribed!! Thanks for the review!

Thanks for stopping by and saying Hi! I was starting to feel lonely in here! :)

Day 2: Exploring New Orleans Part 1

We had four things on the agenda.

1. Eat a beignet

2. Shop

3. Find the restaurant “Surrey’s” in the Garden District

4. Stalk Ann Rice

We stopped by the concierge and armed my son with a map of the streetcar into the Garden District and headed out.

It’s a given that the beignets are amazing. We had our first at Café Beignet. The wait wasn’t terrible and we loved them.

Next we decided to walk to Canal Street from Bourbon instead of Royal. It felt better to show them Bourbon during the morning hours. My kids did learn quickly that they needed to be careful where they walked and not all puddles were water.

We had a pretty easy time getting to the streetcar and we even had the correct change! That is so something I would forget to look into and make a mess of things.

Unfortunately, I am not great with directions and tend to like my directions in “turn at the big tree”, “look for the white house”, or “get off at the first cemetery”. My son is much better at reading maps, so I’m not sure why I argued with him about where we were supposed to get off to find our way to Surrey’s. So we ended up a MILE past where we should have gotten off. Oops! We decided we could walk it and walk we did. It was kind of fun though. There were a few private schools in the area getting out for the Holiday break and my DD got a kick out of all the uniforms. (We don’t have a ton of private schools in our area).

By the time we got to Magazine Street and we found Surrey’s, we were pretty hungry.

This place is ridiculous. Seriously amazing food.

We loved the fresh juice. My DD loved the Crab Meat Omelet. My DS loved the Bananas Foster French Toast. We also had grits and I ate off their plates and continually kicked myself for not getting my own.

Yummmm, crab meat omelet... Notice the two forks, haha.

It was so worth the walk!

Next we decided to walk to wherever the nearest Starbucks was…I collect the city mugs and decided to just find one and get that over with. It worked out because after looking up Ann Rice’s address, it wasn’t too far to go from Surrey’s to Starbucks to Ann’s house. (It might have been super out of the way, but we didn’t mind the walk, I LOVE those Garden District houses!)

I started reading Ann Rice in high school. I didn’t make it to the Garden District during my first trip to NO so I knew I had to see her house this trip. So she doesn’t live there anymore, I was ok with that! It was still the Ann Rice House! EEEE!

My kids were completely unimpressed, but thought it was a cool house.

We really did enjoy all the houses...

Up next: Finish up day 2 in New Orleans.

Ok, ok, so we finally arrive in New Orleans and we are STARVING.

Sidenote: 14 year old DS loves good food. He loves cooking and baking. He loves watching cooking shows. When we arrived in Las Vegas and saw all the celebrity billboards announcing concerts and everything, his 11 year old self yelled out, ”Look it’s Bobby Flay!” So we needed serious Nawlins food.

We headed out into the quarter and I got us all turned around so we didn’t end up where we were trying to go, and we were all pretty crabby after a long day of travel so we found a spot and stopped.

We ended up at The Gumbo Shop. I was too tired to remember I even had a camera. But we enjoyed some Gumbo and Jambalaya.

Day one...done.

Next up: Day 2 in New Orleans :)

Apology first: I really did take pictures on this trip! The beginning was a slow start though so I will fill in with google images when I need to...haha.

Hotel, hotel, hotel

Finding a hotel in New Orleans really stressed me out.

I read reviews, I looked at travel booking websites, I read the New Orleans boards. But the hotel was freaking me out.

Did we want to be near the river? Did we want to be within walking distance of the French Quarter? How close should I be to Bourbon Street with my young impressionable children? What was I willing to spend?

After months of avoiding it, one random night I decided I needed to just book the dang thing. So I picked a hotel on the corner of Toulouse, in the French Quarter and called it good. I figured I was within walking distance to almost everything and just did it. I used a travel website that you pay in advance. After booking, I decided to read the reviews. Oops! It was located on the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon with the entrance on Bourbon and many reviews complained of a drunk homeless man you needed to step over to get into the lobby. So now I freaked out again. Couldn't cancel without a stiff penalty so I spent the next 6 months worrying about it. Lol.

My last trip to New Orleans was in 1999 during Southern Decadence. It was 21 year old heaven, total debauchery. This is how I envision Bourbon Street is all the time. And with our hotel now right in the heart of it, I was worried about things older people worry about…like sleep.

We stayed at the Four Points Sheraton French Quarter.

I took this picture from their website.

This is a gorgeous picture, but December was a bit drearier. Lol.

Thoughts on the hotel:

I did end up liking the location. It was a quick cross of Bourbon from Toulouse coming back from Royal Street. The staff was awesome and super helpful. There was a security guard stationed right inside the door to the lobby (never stepped over any drunk people) and you had to show your hotel key to get inside the hotel. It was relatively quiet. Just Thursday night the room full of single guys across the hall brought back a bunch of newly acquired lady friends. :)

Would I book it again? Just an adult trip, yes. With my kids, probably not. I would rather stay on Royal if I needed to be in the Quarter.

Side note: My husband and I work at the same high school. Our plan was to fly into New Orleans a couple days early and explore the city a little bit. Like I said, we booked the cruise way in advance. The summer of 2014, my husband was asked to apply for the varsity basketball job at our school (he had been a head coach for 8 years, 8 years ago). He took the job, but as we got closer to purchasing airfare, we realized we just couldn’t make it work for him to be able to come into New Orleans as early as the kids and I could. Our trip was in the middle of the season of his second year coaching again. We decided the kids I would head in first and he would follow a couple days later.

So early on Thursday morning December 17th, my husband dropped the kids and I off at Sea-Tac airport to venture to New Orleans on our own.

And this is the first picture of our fabulous 17 day Holiday Expensive super family trip!

Mm...Hm.

I knew it was going to be a long day of traveling and we had left the house at 4:30am or some other ridiculous hour to beat traffic into Seattle and I didn’t pack us any food. We arrived with plenty of time and breezed through security so we stopped at one of the little airport restaurants. This was a mistake.

After eating, we headed over to charge our electronic devices and get ready to board. The kids are fully immersed in their PED’s, but they’ve called for the first class passengers so I stand up. My DS looks around confused and then looks at me and hisses, “Mom, it’s not us, it’s first class!” I smile and say, “surprise”. We never fly first class so the kids are now beaming and instead of playing it cool (you are supposed to act like you fly first class all the time right?), we grinned like idiots and proceeded to board.

And thus the mistake with the airport restaurant. Did you know they feed you still in first class? Haha, I don’t know how I missed this, of course they still serve food in first class. I am a serious dork.

We enjoyed our first class views, wipey hand towels and upgraded snacks.

But I think the best part of first class is being first off the plane!

We had a ridiculously long layover at DFW. Our plane needed a new part and we ended up with a new plane instead, so it was hours of waiting. We were supposed to arrive in New Orleans in the late afternoon, but ended up arriving just after 8pm. After our second leg in first class, we wearily grabbed our luggage, jumped in a taxi and headed towards New Orleans.

What price tracker app did you use?

 

 

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Uh oh. I don't totally remember. I was sure it was Cruise Puppy or something like that. The tagline was sniffing out deals or something close and it had a little dog. When I tried to find that app in the app store, it didn't come up.

Subscribing. The dream was my first cruise too; love her!

 

 

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Thank you! It's a great ship. :)

Some thoughts on booking and the pre-planning process:

I booked these cruises almost the day they were available to book. It was super early. And then I scoured the CC boards all the time. I have friends that discuss my trip planning awesomeness and while I smile and nod, really it is all thanks to CC and the wonderful people here.

When we booked this trip, we were pretty happy with the price we paid. But even so, I looked at the Carnival website a lot, used a price tracker app, and watched CC for news. I submitted the price protection form A LOT. I was actually able to successfully call Carnival a few times and have the agent do the change for me, but after the 3rd call, they made me submit the form on my own. :rolleyes:

We had paid for the cruise fare in full way in advance so each price drop resulted in OBC. When all was said and done, we had $450 onboard credit for the first week. The second week, we didn’t see as many price drops and only ended up with $120 (only!!, haha).

We booked an inside spa cabin and there are very limited numbers of inside spa cabins that hold 4 people so when looking at price drops, it only worked when one of the other inside spa cabins for 4 were available. It took me awhile to realize this, so I thought it worth mentioning.

I kept looking at it like free money and kept saying I didn’t care what we used it on, (which would bite me in the bum later), but the reality was it was MY money that we used to purchase the trip so I should have been a little smarter with it. But we will get to that.

I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that a Spa cabin was not initially much more expensive than a regular cabin. So I knew it would be worth it to pay a little bit more up front instead of purchasing the spa pass each week.

I spent considerable time looking at the port boards for information on New Orleans. I also spent a lot of time looking at excursions and reading trip reports for excursion ideas. I didn’t do an amazing job on any of the other cruises with our excursions, so I knew I wanted to focus on the excursions and have a really good plan for each port.

To start: New Orleans

Trip Report Newbie

Why am I writing a trip report? I thought it would be fun to relive our trip!

And because I LOVE reading trip reports! I thought it would be nice to give back in a way.

I realize the trip was forever ago, but think of it like Christmas in July!

Some reasons this trip report may have something interesting to offer:

Back to back cruise

Over Christmas and New Years

Spa Cabin

First timer on Carnival

Or it could be a terrible debacle! But I do love a good train wreck!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I’ll do an introduction.

Cruisers:

DH and DD (11)

Myself and DS (14)

We have cruised just a few times before.

We have cruised Disney and NCL. I have loved cruises since the 90’s. I was able to work as a YC for NCL on a few short seasonal contracts and thought it was a great way to travel. Once DH experienced his first cruise, he loved it. The rest is history. :)

This particular cruise details:

Ship: Carnival Dream

Dates: December 20th – 27th and also December 27th – January 3rd

Both Western Caribbean out of New Orleans, although different itineraries.

Week 1:

Week 2:

I'll try to be as detailed as possible but my memory is a little fuzzy.

Also a note or maybe a disclaimer or perhaps a warning?

I may make comparisons to our other cruises throughout the review. We have thoroughly enjoyed EVERY cruise we have taken. But as we found ourselves comparing things at times, those thoughts may sneak into this review.

Tangent: Did you know that the smileys count as images? I like to speak my life in emoji's so I am a little sad. Yes, I realize I am not 6, but sometimes a 39 year old should do things that make her feel 6 again...like maybe dance or sing or color...or use emoji's. ;)

Was on the Dream December 20 - January 3, on a B2B.

We LOVED tea time.

For us, tea time was upstairs in the Scarlet Dining Room. 3pm.

We booked an excursion on our own in Grand Cayman. I was happy to be able to tender early to make sure we made the time for our excursion. Add the perks of no lines to embark, went straight to our room to drop off all our stuff, and never waiting for guest services and I was happy with the purchase.

I loved the week spa pass on the Pearl.

I would pack a backpack and head there most mornings.

Good size dry sauna in the ladies area (another great place for viewing while sailing Glacier Bay). Wet sauna and plunge pool and one person hot tub also in the ladies area.

The co-ed area had the heated tile loungers, a shower with either tropical (warm) rain or an icy (cold) rain. The thalassotherapy pool was great with a lounger with bubbles in one end, fountains with hard pressure water for your shoulders, neck and back and also a jetted area to stand in on the other end.

Citrus ice water always available too.

Never had trouble finding a spot in the pool, or a heated tile lounger or the loungers facing the front of the ship.

I showered in the spa showers all week long and loved it. I also used the lotion all week too. I love the smell!

I didn't buy any spa services but my husband and I did the Rasul and it was super amazing.

Great time!