Carnival Dream August 31-Sept 7 Review with Fun Times and other Pictures

I hope this is the right place for the review. I know there's the review section, which I did to, but I didn't see a place for pictures at all on there.

I'll copy and paste what I put on there, with additions of the Fun Times I scanned every day as well as a few pictures of our room and of the ship/various sights. I wasn't sure if there was an easier way to post many images since there seems to be a 6 image per post limit, so I merged them into a collage. I did reduce them down from about a hundred or so pictures to the ones I have below. I do need to add a fish picture, which I'll do later since it'll need to be cropped so you can see them well. If you see a picture below and you want the highest resolution possible, let me know and I'll post either a link or the image itself.

This was our second time to leave out of New Orleans to Roatan, Belize, and Cozumel (Well, #3 to Cozumel but that was from Mobile and only to Cozumel).

We cruised on the Dream from Port Canaveral last October to Nassau, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and Grand Turk and loved the ship. Every single cruise before that, the ships were due in dry dock within a month and they showed their age/wear.

We stayed at the Ramada Inn in Metarie which provided transport to the terminal and parking for free for the length of our cruise. They are changing names to Country Inns and Suites, so I'm not sure if they'll still be offering that cruise package anymore or not.

Getting to the port about 11:30 we whizzed through everything a lot faster than most of our other trips. I guess having the passport card VS BC/License helped on that one.

This time wasn't as enjoyable though. There were parts missing of the hand rails in the elevators, and the paint on the rails for the water slides was almost completely worn off. The Sea Side theater also was lacking. Some of the days the screen had black sections that just didn't work. Then one day I noticed the screen components actually fell out. Looking from a distance it looked like they were just out, but getting close and under it you can actually see the wires and that they were in fact on since you could see a few square modules of light pointed straight down.

The dining experience was by far the worst we have had before. We were in a group of four people, and even made a point by day 3 or so of waiting at the very front for the doors to open for dinner, and also looking at the menu to know exactly what we wanted. Even with this, people who arrived and ordered after us got their meals before us. We took notice that the wait staff directly next to us was doing an awesome job, but looking around ours were not to be seen for a lot of the time. You would think that if you were the very first people sat down in the dining room, with the wait staff seeing you and there in our section, that we would have our food first since it was just simple orders, and for the most part a single portion. By the end we got smart and ordered dessert either first to eat as an appetizer, or just ordered it with our meals so we wouldn't have to wait for the dessert menu and them to come take our order.

When we got our luggage, we find out that one of the wheels on our spinner suitcase had been ripped off as well. It made it a lot harder to get it out of the cruise terminal since it was one of the back wheels and had to be moved at an awkward angle.

Even with these bad experiences we are not opposed to sailing on the Dream again since we know there are great wait staff on there, and they'll likely have most of the issues I've seen fixed by the then.

On the upside, Room Service was fast, though they did miss part of one of our orders. The room attendants did a great job of cleaning our room and were very friendly.

We didn't partake in as many activities on board as we usually do since we were enjoying our first balcony. We did do the photo scavenger hunt, and there weren't nearly as many people playing as there usually was on the previous cruises. We won the ship on the stick out of about 5 groups.

I was slightly disappointed that they seem to have locked the HDMI option out of the TVs. I had brought a cable to hook to my phone/tablet and watch TV shows that we had missed preparing for the cruise when there wasn't anything else to do, but it would never change off of the option they had set for the IPTV box. I had also planned on using my tablet as a remote control for the TV, and because I didn't know the model of the box they used, I could only turn the TV on and control the volume.

I won't go into detail much on the excursions since we didn't do too much.

In Roatan we did the Relax on the Beach package which included the Magical Flying Chairs and Clamshell covered lounge chairs on the beach, as well as a water mat to float on. I'm afraid of heights, but enjoyed the flying chairs; it helped that it took a lot of the walking out of everything. Near the pier on the beach, where the swimming area marker makes the area bigger there were a ton of colorful fish near a group of underwater rocks.

Belize was interesting on the tender since the waves really picked up from a storm that was coming up. We basically walked around, but did the Moho Chocolate tour that was $2 with samples of milk shake and chocolate and their history.

In Cozumel we did the Playa Mia beach excursion. The last time we went there it was a Carnival offered tour, but wasn't this time. Since then they've added a water park, which was basically two slides, one closed, and a children's water area. It does have a larger pool added, as well as a hot tub. They also had the buffet, open bar, ocean inflatables, kayaks, water bicycles, paddle boats, and even sail boats included in the $60 price; if you don't know how to sail they even had someone there who would go out with you for free (though would appreciate a tip for their time). The taxi was $16 each way, and we'll definitely be going back again when we return to Cozumel.

Disembarkation seems to have changed since last year as well. The self disembarkation before was getting off the ship at almost any time. Now they had it set to around 7:15ish to about 8. And for the people staying who were zoned they wanted us out of the cabins by 9 and either on Lido or Encore theater.

It was our first balcony room, and we are definitely hooked. The room did seem a little warm when the sun was facing our room, but even with the sheer curtain closed it stayed tolerable. With the blackout curtain closed it was very comfortable.

6321 is over the casino and slot machines, and they can be heard. But only if the room is completely silent. When I had my fan going I caught a faint noise that I really had to listen for. Even then I couldn't tell if it was really the casino or if I was just thinking it was the casino. If the TV or music was on and even on very low it wasn't audible. The people in the other balconies were far louder than the casino noise. The layout of the balcony rooms is far better than the interior, though I did need a cord cover for the extension cord for my CPAP machine so that I didn't have to take it up every day. On previous cruises I was just able to lay the cord along the wall and tape it in a few spots.

I'm sure the room attendant appreciated the cord cover since he didn't have any trouble cleaning and the covered stayed down with the double sided tape that was included.

Fun Times

Ship Pictures

Cabin Pictures

Towel Animals

Various Other Pictures

Here's a bonus as well. A video shot from our balcony of the storms with some very impressive lightning.

[YOUTUBE]

Unable to edit the last post, so here we go again.