Dream Eastern 9/24/11-10/1/11- LONG REPORT w/ PICS and MICKEY'S HALLOWEEN PARTY

[MissKIA]

Love it! Pube-o! lmao! Can't wait to read more..

[rtw68]

Your "Need Candy" shirt cracked me up. :D

 

I have to find one.

 

Can't wait to see more, we go on Dream in December and can't wait! :)

[KrystalWaters]

I am soooo thrilled that you are doing a late September Eastern Review of the Dream. This is the exact itinerary that i'm doing next year, Sept. 22n-29th. You and your partner sounds just like me and my hubby, a blast! I'm definitely subscribing to see all the details. Give me the good...the bad...and the ugly. PLEASE don't hold back......that sense of humor:p.

Eagerly Waiting,

Kristy:)

[sunnidayz]

Pecos Bills is in Frontierland. It is a quick service restaurant. Needless to say, we love it! Thanks for reading:)

 

Pecos Bills is a staple for our family as well. It doesn't matter where we are in the park...when we get hungry, we find our way there. I mean, liquid cheese...how can it be wrong:D!

 

So excited for your review. We will be on the Dream in January, second time for DH and I, and I have a feeling your review will make me wish tomorrow was January 1st!!

 

-Adrienne

[Joie]

can't wait to read more.

[KrusII]

Loving your review.........can't wait to read your adventures. Love, love your style......too precious!!

[DEERINH2O]

We decided to now throw in a couple extra days for Disney world. I have been to Disneyland a hundred times. We lived ten miles from there for 23 years and had passes. My dream has been to go to Disney world so now we will go.

 

Love your sense of humor.

 

Kathy

[SeminoleFan]

Great start, can hardly wait for the rest! The hair in the shower story :eek: is too funny!

[nathand95]

I'm really enjoying your review so far. I cannot wait to read more. Also, I am loving the pictures!!!

[jetravel]

Great start so far! I can not wait to read more!

 

I did not know that you do not need a park pass for Mickey's-No-so-scary-Halloween. I knew you needed a seperate ticket, but I thought you needed both. GOOD TO KNOW!!!!

 

Great pics and great writing so far! Really enjoying your review.

[tweetylori]

LMAO...the whole hair in the shower thing is HILARIOUS. I am so enjoying your report, your sense of humor, and the PICS...can't wait for more!

[jaybird77]

Wow- thanks everyone for reading and for all the comments. Bryon is trying to teach me how to reply a little better but I still can't understand. Anyway on with the review:

 

Day Two: Getting on the Ship Finally!

 

We woke around 8am. I wasn’t singing this morning, but we were both still in a pretty good mood for having had such a full day yesterday with little sleep. They had a ‘hot’ breakfast at the hotel for free, so we grabbed a little grub and headed out to Park n’ Cruise. We actually had to pass the cruise terminal to get over to Park n’ Cruise and this is where we got the first glimpse of the ship!

 

 

 

So we used Park n’ Cruise for parking our car on this trip. I think it worked out very nicely. We got there, they helped get out our bags. They took the payment up front. We only had to wait maybe 5 minutes for a shuttle. They drove us over to the terminal and dropped us off by a luggage porter. All total, the cost for parking for the week was $59 which is a nice discount from parking at the terminal. We were inside the terminal by 10 or so.

 

 

 

We went through security with no problem and then right to someone at the Carnival counter. We had a little issue when we tried to get all our Sail n Sign accounts on my credit card. I think this might have been because Bryon was the one who booked the trip, but then we were using the credit card from my account. Anyway, the girl said it was only her third day on the job and she had to get someone to help. She was really nice though and after a little while everything was fixed. We got our loading zone number and took a seat. We were Zone 8.

 

 

 

Very quickly they went through the numbers and our zone was called. We had to get the cards dinged and a photo taken, and then another one for the Port Canaveral photo op (facial recognition photo) and we were finally on the ship! The whole process was maybe 30- 45 minutes.

[KrystalWaters]

Yeaaah Jay is back! Something for me to read tonight. Whew....keep it coming, hun.:)

[jaybird77]

I was already backwards because I thought I was turning to head to the front elevators and instead was heading to the back of the ship. We found our way to the elevators and went straight to the Lido deck.

 

We went straight up to the pasta bar because we had heard you needed to come early or risk waiting a very long time. The pasta bar is on the upper floor of the Gathering restaurant toward the back of the ship. Here is the set up: You stop at a little station and get an order form and a number. You can then take a seat, fill out your order form, and a waiter will pick it up, or you can just drop it off at the pasta station. You can choose your pasta, sauce and add-ons. Once it is ready, the waiter delivers it to your table.

 

Ok, here is a cautionary tale- I am usually a very observant person, but when I am on vacation or excited, all bets are off. So at the bottom of the order form, there are some extras like breads and Caesar salad. There is also a check block for Lasagna. Well, I assumed this was some sort of small side portion of Lasagna. Yes, in retrospect, a side of lasagna does not make sense but whatever. So here is what arrives at my table for lunch….

 

Hungry???

I thought the lasagna was really good. It was not like any lasagna I ever had. It had…well… like… pot roast inside and maybe some sort of squash?? Anyway, it was really good.

Bryon ordered bow tie pasta with chicken and alfredo sauce, which came out as Linguini with chicken and alfredo sauce. We both thought the pasta bar was a really good addition to the food offerings.

 

 

Yeah- the bowl in front was what I ordered... in addition to the lasagna! crap....

The bowl in back is Bryon's food!

 

We then decided we would go around and explore the ship. The Disney Magic was in port. It was a nice looking ship. A Disney cruise is definitely on our list of future vacations- well, in my tradition of add-ons to vacations, a week at Disney World followed by a Disney cruise is on our list of future vacations!

 

 

 

We saw the Encore Theater and I took a crappy photo of it.

 

[jaybird77]

First impression of the Dream: this is a BIG ship!

 

You definitely feel it when you walk from one end to the other. The ship is really pretty and not as gaudy as some of the others we have sailed. We checked out Ocean Plaza, another great addition. There is a lot of space and tons of couches/chairs in this area and we found throughout the week, you usually can get away from noise or other people in this area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By this time, my carry on luggage was on my last nerve and I was sweating like Whitney Houston performing for a DEA convention, so we found a seat and ordered our first drink- oh yeah!!! -The Funship Special. So even though Bryon and I had just been carb loading in the pasta bar, we both got tipsy off this one drink. Maybe it was because we drank it too fast, or maybe they make the drinks stronger on the first day, but we were both feeling pretty good by this time.

 

[jaybird77]

The rooms were ready right at 1:30.

Well actually, the rooms were open, but when we got to our cabin, 1328 on the Riviera deck, our room steward, Jose, was still trying to clean up. We told him we would just come back, but he kept apologizing and trying to wipe out drawers really quickly. I felt bad, but he was insistent that we go ahead and come in. Jose was great throughout the week. He always greeted us and kept our little soft cooler full of ice. Then there is always the little weird part where we have to try and communicate to the room steward that, yes, we are two guys, but yes, we still need the beds put together. But with Jose, he understood the first time through and said he’d get that done for us when we went to eat dinner.

 

We had a deluxe ocean view room. This room has two bathrooms. One is the traditional bathroom with the toilet, shower, and sink. The second bathroom had a tub with a shower and a sink. We absolutely loved this room! And let me tell anyone who is traveling as a family or with kids, this is definitely the way to go if you can’t afford one of those huge suites. Having the two showers and sinks really saved us time getting ready in the mornings.

 

 

Main Bath

 

 

Second Bath- with shower/tub and sink

 

 

Free goodies in the bathroom!

 

 

So after we unpacked our carry-ons, we headed out to look at more of the ship. We ended up somehow on a tour of the spa. It is very beautiful. Of course, I didn’t learn until the end of the tour that if you want to use all of that, you have to buy a pass. The free stuff is a co-ed sauna, the gym, and a steam room (not co-ed). These were nice, but not as big as on the other ships we have sailed. But I understand Carnival has to make its money somewhere other than the bars and the casino.

We looked at the gym and decided right there that we were going to start each day off with gym time (we’ll see if that comes true or not). :p

[jaybird77]

We made our way back to the room and then headed to our safety briefing.

 

We were in muster station C4. This was a weird sort of conference area on Deck 4 sort of between the two dining rooms. The Muster Drill was really painless. I do think they could have improved one thing though. Seeing as how the drill was being done in a more roomy comfortable area than when everyone had to pile in with each other outside by the boats, there seemed to have been little thought given to taking advantage of this space. Specifically, this conference area had a lot of available stacked chairs. If Carnival had put out these chairs, most people could have fit in the room and sat comfortably. Instead, it became a free for all where the passengers were just grabbing chairs and putting them down. A lot of the space went unused and many people ended up standing and crowded around the edges of the room. No matter, this deal is still a lot better than the old way of doing it.

 

Sail Away was next on the agenda. I got another DotD and snapped some pics. I’m not sure what was going on but as were sailing out of the cruise terminal, we noticed that there were just hundreds and hundreds of jellyfish in the water. I’m not sure if this is an all the time thing, or just due to some storms or something else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went back to the room and our luggage had arrived. We like to go ahead and unpack everything as soon as possible so we can make it sort of like home for the week instead of living out of suitcases. We unpacked everything and even had a whole closet plus a drawer that remained empty, so there is really ample space in these rooms to hold all of your stuff.

After we unpacked, it was time for a swim! We changed into our suits and went out to the Aft pool. Ok, here is where some of the criticism of this ship is justified. The two pools are not sufficient for all the people on this ship. This would become more of an issue later in the cruise, but for this first swim, it had gotten cloudy and windy outside, and a little cool. So we were almost the only people in the pool. We didn’t stay very long because as I said it was little cold.

 

We decided to go ahead back to the room and get ready for dinner. We had late dining in the Scarlet Dining Room, lower level. We had table 415, which was off to the side and sort of out of the way. We couldn’t see all the various dining room shows that well, but I kind of liked being tucked away, like a dirty little secret.

First dinner is always a weird time too. We knew we would end up at one of those tables for 8 people and you just never know who’s going to show and how you will get along. We have been super fortunate on both of our other cruises together to have had awesome people at our tables that were very nice and entertaining, and Facebook friend worthy. We just knew that this luck had to run out and I was thinking that maybe this cruise was going to be the dud, the time where we are put with people who we really don’t like, or even worse, people who don’t like us! Well I am happy to report that Elvis, the maître d, did an incredible job and we had the greatest table mates.

 

There were already two people at the table when we arrived, two girls- Pamela and Angela. Then two guys arrived and sat right across from Bryon and me- Raymond and Darin. The last to arrive were two other girls- Tiffany and Victoria. Ok, so I am really bad with names, but I heard somewhere that when someone tells you their name, you should make some familiar association with it so you can remember it. I tried this trick because I was determined I was going to try to get people’s names early. So since I am a pop culture fiend, I tried to relate the names to some TV shows- Bewitched, Everybody Loves Raymond, Baywatch, and Who’s the Boss. When Tiffany and Victoria arrived, that sort of threw a wrench in the TV show theme, but no problem. They became ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ and Posh Spice. Anyway, this seemed to do the trick, and from that first night, I never had to try and remember any of their names! So when you meet new people try it and see if it works for you.

I should also mention that at the end of dinner, Pamela and Angela announced that late dining was just too late for them and they were going to switch to early dining. And true to their word…. I never saw them the rest of the trip. I hope it was the time of the meal truly and not the company!

 

Our Table (this picture was not taken this night- notice the absent Pamela and Angela- I just wanted you to see us!)

 

[jaybird77]

Our server was Emil.

We had two different assistant waiters over the course of the cruise, one girl and one guy (I was remiss in assigning them pop culture name references and as such I have no idea what their names were). All of the wait staff was super nice, but I think honestly, there was a language barrier so most of the communication was done with pointing and nodding.

 

Dinner was really good. I was not very hungry, but that doesn’t stop a fat person from eating, so here is the low down:

I started with a cheese plate and chicken tenders. The cheese plate- I just love. And it may just be my imagination, but it seems like the chunks of cheese on the cheese plate have actually increased in size which is music to my cheese addicted ears. The chicken tenders tasted like Burger King’s chicken tenders, and I mean that in a good way. They were tasty.

 

 

 

My main course was the Beef Brisket. Now the flavor was really good here, but most of my meat was really fatty, so I had a few bites of really good meat, but had to leave the rest…Bryon had the brisket too and he really liked it.

 

 

 

For dessert, I ordered the banana split. This is off the kids menu so it won’t show up on your regular menu. I asked them to nix the chocolate ice cream part. The banana split was really good, especially the strawberry ice cream part of it, but I was just too full to really enjoy it. Bryon had the WCMC which he loved of course.

 

 

 

After dinner, we changed into shorts and decided to attend the Welcome Aboard show. We found a seat in the upper level of the Encore lounge. Let me here say something about the lounge. We had heard about huge crowds here and people having trouble finding a seat. We never found that. Of course, having late dining and going to the late show might have had something to do with that, but just wanted to throw that in there.

The Welcome Aboard show was pretty entertaining. Once again, it might be my imagination, but I think the dancers may be showing more skin than in the past. No problem there, they are all certainly good looking people, just an observation.

 

Butch, the cruise director, got to do what he does best here, which is interact with the passengers, and wear tight pants. He was great as usual. He was our CD on our Victory cruise, and we really liked him and were excited to sail again with him as CD. This is the show where they find a newly married, mid range married, and older married couple, then have the male part of the couple come on stage. Then Butch talks with them and they end up having a little dance off thing. Now I don’t know if these people are plants, or if Butch just sort of prods them on what to say once they are up there, but the same sort of thing usually happens here. It was entertaining enough. This was a nice way to close the night, because by this time, we were TIRED! We were in bed by 11:00 that night.

 

 

Next up: Nassau and Formal Night!

[jaybird77]

Your "Need Candy" shirt cracked me up. :D

 

I have to find one.

 

Can't wait to see more, we go on Dream in December and can't wait! :)

 

 

Hey I got the Tshirt at JC Penney. They had a lot of designs and I think they were only like $5.00. Looks like they are an even better deal now!

 

http://www.jcpenney.com/jcp/XGN.aspx?DeptID=70673&CatID=82301&cmCatLevel=3&shopperType=G&CmCatId=EXTERNAL|82301

[jaybird77]

I am soooo thrilled that you are doing a late September Eastern Review of the Dream. This is the exact itinerary that i'm doing next year, Sept. 22n-29th. You and your partner sounds just like me and my hubby, a blast! I'm definitely subscribing to see all the details. Give me the good...the bad...and the ugly. PLEASE don't hold back......that sense of humor:p.

 

Eagerly Waiting,

Kristy:)

 

 

You will not be disappointed! This is a great cruise! I won't hold back i promise :eek:

[jaybird77]

We decided to now throw in a couple extra days for Disney world. I have been to Disneyland a hundred times. We lived ten miles from there for 23 years and had passes. My dream has been to go to Disney world so now we will go.

 

Love your sense of humor.

 

Kathy

 

 

Yeah! I can't think of a better combo- Disney and a cruise!

[thecruisers723]

I'm really enjoying your review so far. Thanks for writing it. Looking forward to more! :)

[pafam4]

Enjoying your review! We sailed the Dream last year and reading your review brings back great memories. I'm looking forward to reading more...

[pettrib]

I was sweating like Whitney Houston performing for a DEA convention,

 

I almost fell out of my chair from laughing so hard at this! Loving the review...keep it coming!

[mama_2_boys]

Loving your report! I can't wait for the rest!