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

[jaybird77]

Loving your review. My phone is my GPS and her name is LuLu. No cool backstory. You and your boyfriend are aaaadorable. You have such beautiful eyes!

 

Makin me blush :o

Thanks for reading!

[jaybird77]

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

 

 

I saw your link to your review in your signature and clicked it last night. You roped me in and I read the whole thing! Even had me thinking that Epic ship might be good choice for an upcoming cruise! ha.

Hey did anyone ever tell you that you kinda look like Timberlake circa early 2000s??

[gapearl]

Hi Jay! *waving to you from across town in ATL* I'm LOVING your review! I loved all the Disney pictures. I've been once when I was 9 and would really like to go as an adult. You guys look like you had a blast and have got me adding it to the bucket list for next year. You've got me cracking up at these Whitney and Kirstie analogies. :p Keep it coming!

[nathand95]

Your review is awesome!!!! Definitely one of the best I've read. I love your sense of humor. "Sweating like a pork chop next to Kirstie Alley" HAHAHAHAHA! I literally spewed Coke all over myself. I can't wait to read mroe. Also, your pictures are great!

[mavis2222]

I need to take another cruise from PC as well. Been a few years. Next time Im going to use the "park N Cruise". last time I was there I dont think it was offered. It was many yrs ago. I live in Acworth, NW of Marietta and Kennasaw.

[KrusII]

Waving to you from Shellman Bluff off the Golden Isles of Georgia, between Savannah and Darien. Great review and love your style. Hugs to you both.

[bougiet]

OMGosh!!! This is the best review everrrrrr!! I don't know the last time I laughed out loud so much while reading a review !! Kirstey Alley/Pork Chop hahahahaha, Whitney Housten/DEA bahahaha.....Thank you!! :D

[amethyst08]

The food pics are yummy looking. I almost licked the screen. :D

[shoppingfever]

I came for my "fix" tonight and I don't see an update today!!! You are killing me!

[jaybird77]

The food pics are yummy looking. I almost licked the screen. :D

 

Tell me about it! My mouth starts to water like a dog just posting them!

 

OMGosh!!! This is the best review everrrrrr!! I don't know the last time I laughed out loud so much while reading a review !! Kirstey Alley/Pork Chop hahahahaha, Whitney Housten/DEA bahahaha.....Thank you!! :D

 

Glad you are enjoying it. I'll try to keep it up!

 

Waving to you from Shellman Bluff off the Golden Isles of Georgia, between Savannah and Darien. Great review and love your style. Hugs to you both.

 

Hi! the Georgia coast is so pretty. All those moss covered oaks! I love it!

[jaybird77]

Thank you so much for writing this review. You are a very talented writer and I can't wait to read more.

 

Keep it coming... :)

 

Sandi

 

Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

 

Awesome review!! you are crackin me up! We are on the Dream in Feb!

 

 

nanci

 

You will love the Dream. I hope you have a great cruise!

 

More, more, more. I'm hooked. Can't wait for the next installment.

Linda

 

thanks for reading! I'll try to do an update per day... as long as I can...

[jaybird77]

Hi Jay! *waving to you from across town in ATL* I'm LOVING your review! I loved all the Disney pictures. I've been once when I was 9 and would really like to go as an adult. You guys look like you had a blast and have got me adding it to the bucket list for next year. You've got me cracking up at these Whitney and Kirstie analogies. :p Keep it coming!

 

Oh hey! I see you over there! You definitely need to head on down to Disney. It's truly like being in a different world... a clean and kind one...ha

 

Your review is awesome!!!! Definitely one of the best I've read. I love your sense of humor. "Sweating like a pork chop next to Kirstie Alley" HAHAHAHAHA! I literally spewed Coke all over myself. I can't wait to read mroe. Also, your pictures are great!

 

Now don't choke or I'll feel bad! Thanks for keeping up with the review :)

 

I need to take another cruise from PC as well. Been a few years. Next time Im going to use the "park N Cruise". last time I was there I dont think it was offered. It was many yrs ago. I live in Acworth, NW of Marietta and Kennasaw.

 

Oh hey Acworth, I've been through there! Yeah Park N Cruise was great. We were a little worried about the extra trouble of getting from a separate place and depending on a shuttle to get to the port, but it was no trouble at all!

[jaybird77]

I came for my "fix" tonight and I don't see an update today!!! You are killing me!

 

I'm trying! I'll get one up tonight hopefully :D

[gottacruise@juno.com]

Jay - I was on the Dream last month. Thank you SO MUCH for mentioning the salt. So many times it wouldn't come out. How difficult is that? I took the top off to get some out and it came out too much in clumps.

 

Can I cruise with the 2 of you next time? I love people who want to have fun, but mostly I don't want to pay the single supplement.

 

MaryLou

[jaybird77]

Thanks everyone for continuing to read my report. I am enjoying seeing all your comments! This day is a little short on pics, but more on words, so you ADHD people out there, take note- concentrate!

 

Day 4: Day at Sea

Ok, I should mention something before I talk about wake up time on this day. I bought this white watch from American Eagle this summer. I really like it. But it did not come with an instruction manual, so setting it was kind of an ordeal. Well this watch beeps on the hour, every hour. At first, this really bugged me and I thought about taking the watch to a very high cliff and dropping it off. But as time has passed I have actually gotten so used to it that I hardly notice. Well I mentioned this to my tablemate, Darin, the night before. He asked me to see the watch determined to figure out to turn off the beep for me. Well he didn’t turn off the hourly beep… but he did…turn on the ALARM…set for 6AM!!!!

So we were both awakened at 6am by my beeping watch. Somehow, in the darkness I figured out how to shut it off, made a mental note to kill Darin at dinner tonight, and collapsed back into bed.

 

 

We actually woke up around 9am and decided…get ready for it… to go to the gym to work out. It was absolutely beautiful this morning on the treadmill, so that made it a lot nicer. We got a 30-minute run (well walk for me… I’m not going crazy here). Then we got our swimsuits on and headed up to Lido for breakfast.

 

 

FYI- that round crusted looking thing- yeah, I thought that was going to be some awesome breakfast fried potato/cheese/bacon ball- so I bit into it... and it was a crumb covered BOILED EGG! ewww I hate boiled eggs...

 

We went out to the aft pool and got a chair. Ok, let me talk for a minute about deck chairs. We never had a problem finding a deck chair. Now if you expect to come out at 1:00pm and want a chair right by the pool, you will probably be disappointed. But there are plenty of good spots, with good views that you can find around the ship. We most often found open chairs on the top deck right behind the movie screen, or on either side of the ship on decks 10 and 11.

 

Just as we settled in, it started to rain. It was kind of funny the whole week because we kept running into these rain storms or showers. All of a sudden, you would just see all this activity around you like little ants starting to run around. We found some shelter and waited out the rain, then went back out to get some sun. Then it rained again… Beer time!

 

 

We got some drinks at the pool bar and once it was sunny again, we headed up to the upper deck behind the Seaside theatre. We were actually able to get some good sun time in here.

 

 

 

 

After this, we decided to go back down to Ocean Plaza for another drink and some movie quote trivia. Now I think this could have been a cool trivia game. I was thinking they would have a screen and play a little clip of a famous movie, or at least have the audio of the quote… Well, no. The poor entertainment guy who was hosting the trivia had to actually do all the quotes. And he was Irish. So you would hear ‘Go ‘head…make muh day’… that sort of thing. I forgot to write down how we did on this one, but even though I think we did pretty well it was not enough to win a ship on a stick.

 

I decided I wanted to go swimming. I tried the main pool this time. The pool was rocking! I don’t mean there was a rocking party going on, I mean the water was sloshing from side to side as the ship was moving. It was pretty fun though trying to hold on and not get tossed around the pool. I’m pretty sure Bryon was eating ice cream during this time. This was also when the ice carving and hairy chest contest was happening on the Lido Deck, but I was just relaxing in the pool so I didn’t see much.

 

[Megan_Strick]

Waving to you from Shellman Bluff off the Golden Isles of Georgia, between Savannah and Darien. Great review and love your style. Hugs to you both.

 

 

No way. I'm in Brunswick!!!

[jaybird77]

After swimming, we decided it was time to find some lunch.

We were walking around trying to decide what to eat, and then it started raining again.

 

 

We ducked into a door and there we were at the pasta bar again. Oh well! I guess I’ll just have to suffer through lasagna again!

While I was waiting for it to be delivered, I made my way down to Ocean Plaza again to build my own salad.

 

After lunch, we headed down to Ocean Plaza to do some 70s music trivia. This was another game where they played a clip of a song. You had to write the song title and artist. We did well again, but still no win for us. I thought to myself, happily, we must be too young to beat all these other people with 60s and 70s trivia, but I bet we’ll kick butt on 80s trivia.

Well we will never know, because we ended up in the casino and totally missed totally 80s trivia that evening. booo

 

Bryon got his picture in the 'big' chair!

 

 

 

We headed down to the photo gallery to look at our pictures. I was really pleased with our funny photos. The little face recognition scanner thing is pretty neat and a good idea actually. We found pictures of us that we didn’t even remember taking and would never had looked for in the actual photo gallery!

 

Then we headed back to the room and guess what we found!

 

 

Champagne and strawberries and a nice note from Butch! See we read John Heald's blog and liked him on Facebook. Anyway, a few days before we left, Bryon wrote on John Heald's Facebook wall to tell him we were heading out on the Dream, and how excited we were and how we were looking forward to seeing Butch. He wrote back that he was sending the message on to Butch and then we got this from Butch! How nice huh? It's these little touches that keep you coming back!

[babyblue78]

Loving this review! We are cruising this itinerary next October, so excited! Keep it coming, you have a great sense of humor! :)

[jaybird77]

We changed into dinner clothes and headed down to the Scarlet Dining room.

 

This easily becomes one of my favorite parts of the day by this point in the cruise because we had so much fun with our table mates. Tonight, to start I had chicken quesadilla (good!) and the cucumber soup (tasty!). I also decided to try the didja dish, which this night was a ‘Study in Sushi’. I tried…. This just was not good. I think there was some tuna and maybe a California roll… I just couldn’t do it. I apparently had a mental block because I didn’t even take a picture of it. This dish was just not my cup of tea. I think I need to go to a sushi place that does really good sushi and go with someone who knows what they are ordering and try it. Then I can figure out what ‘good’ sushi should taste like and really figure out what I like, if anything…

 

 

 

For main course, I had meatloaf… ok, good try here, and it wasn’t awful, but this is not your traditional mama’s meatloaf and it just wasn’t my favorite. Bryon had the flat iron steak and it was actually pretty good. It was a little chewy, but had good flavor.

 

 

 

For dessert, I was so happy… cheesecake. I love, love, love cheesecake. How can you mess up cheesecake? Well, for starters, you can serve it warm… Room temp cheesecake? Yeah, it’s not great. I can appreciate how difficult it is to serve so many people on this ship, and overall, Carnival does an incredible job, but really? It was just weird. I have to figure that this was just a matter of the cheesecake being out of the cooler for too long before it got to our table. This can’t be a conscious choice on Carnival’s part to serve room temperature cheesecake, right? Thankfully I had a back up cheeseplate, which is correctly served at room temp, so all is well!

 

 

I should also mention at this dinner, our table mate, Victoria showed up in a not good mood. She announced that she had been upset the whole day because Carnival had canceled her and Tiffany’s dolphin encounter excursion. They originally rescheduled it to a different time, but then notified her that it was canceled all together due to a lack of participation. Apparently if not enough people sign-up, then they cancel it. She and Tiffany had also apparently had a very hard time getting good answers from the Carnival front desk. She admitted she had been a Debbie Downer the whole day being negative because she had really been looking forward to swimming with the dolphins. After that, the whole trip, if I would say anything negative, Bryon would say ‘Did your dolphin excursion get canceled?’ But really, I would have been pretty disappointed too. I cant imagine why there is a minimum number of people for that excursion, or how with that many people on the ship, that not enough people bought the excursion. Oh well…

 

After Dinner, we headed to the Encore theater for Balloon Bingo and to see Karen Grainger, the female impressionist. I really did not know what to expect from a female impressionist. I actually thought we were going to a drag show, but that’s not what it is! First, they had balloon bingo, where they have different amounts in little balloon animals and whoever wins gets to choose a balloon and they pop it and whatever is in there is what you win. Of course we didn’t win, but something weird happened during this game. Two people bingo’ed at the same time. Then they have a Carnival team member go to that person and call out the ID number of their bingo card to make sure the Bingo is correct. Well a man and a woman bingo’ed and when they called out the card ID for the woman, the Bingo moderator noted that this lady should have had BINGO back a few calls before. If this lady had just been paying attention earlier, she would have won all by herself! So the lady ended up being the one who got to choose a balloon. I think they ended up winning $500, but they had to share it! So FYI- pay attention when you play BINGO!

 

Our pre show drinks!

 

 

Ok, now on to Karen Grainger. This actually ended up being the show I enjoyed most on this cruise. So she is not a drag queen. She is eager to point out that she is a female impressionist, not a female impersonator. She is a woman and she does impressions of female divas amongst other things. She had an outstanding voice. She did Cher, and Celine (and her singing of Celine’s song was almost perfectly on the mark!), and Whitney, and Alanis Morissette. I really enjoyed the part where she sang the duet ‘On My Own’, you know, the one with Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. Well she does both parts and it was funny and very impressive. She ended the set by singing a song in her ‘own voice’. It was a really entertaining show and I’d recommend it if this show is offered when you are on the ship.

 

Next, we deposited more money into the casino, before heading back to the room. I had neglected getting thoughts down in my journal for this trip report so I wanted to catch up on that. Also, we decided it might be nice to go back to the room, pop a bottle of our champagne, and spend a little alone time… oh yeah! So with Marvin Gaye playing on my internal soundtrack, we went to the room. I poured two glasses of champagne. We got comfy and I took out my notebook to write a few things while we let the alcohol set in…. and a few sentences in, I heard Bryon next to me in the bed….snoring… ahhhh romance!

 

Next up: St. Thomas and Iguanas!

[jaybird77]

Jay - I was on the Dream last month. Thank you SO MUCH for mentioning the salt. So many times it wouldn't come out. How difficult is that? I took the top off to get some out and it came out too much in clumps.

 

Can I cruise with the 2 of you next time? I love people who want to have fun, but mostly I don't want to pay the single supplement.

 

MaryLou

 

Ok- when do you want to go! ha! We are so anxious to get back on a ship!

[jaybird77]

No way. I'm in Brunswick!!!

 

 

Small world on CC! Wonder if Carnival will ever put a ship in Savannah!!!

[shoppingfever]

I got my fix tonight!!! Thank you! Love your review....now I will wait patiently...kinda....for more!

[jaybird77]

Loving this review! We are cruising this itinerary next October, so excited! Keep it coming, you have a great sense of humor! :)

 

 

Yeah- we love St. Maarten, that part of the review is coming soon!

[jaybird77]

I got my fix tonight!!! Thank you! Love your review....now I will wait patiently...kinda....for more!

 

Ha- you are welcome! I could have done more tonight, but I am having a flickr picture limit dilemma, but I hope to have some solution in time for a new update tomorrow!

[Silverman]

Really enjoying your review. Its always good to read and laugh!! I also love Disney World but after a week there. There is no way I could go on a Disney Cruise! B2B is never going to happen. I can still feel the strollers being pushed into my ankles by some children. Not very pleasant. One thing to say about that. Parents wake up! and watch your children!!!!!!!!!!!!