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

[john1832]

We're sailing on the Dream 11/19/11 and I have read hundreds of reviews. But I must say, your is the most well written and complete review by far. Thank you for all of the great information.

[tweety33]

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:

 

 

OMG, I am still laughing...

I am still laughing also, I can relate. Sooooooo funny.

[TriciaEMTB]

I am not even going on the dream, my cruise is on the ecstasy. Your review makes me want to cancel that cruise and rebook on the dream! It looks like so much fun!

 

Keep it up, I really enjoy your review and how your personality shines through it.

[tweety33]

You were at the port as early as 10am & was zone 8, there must have been a lot there really early before you. I may now try to get there before 10.

 

At the spa usually there is usually a small pool & hot tub that anyone can use. On the dream do you have to pay to use them?

 

We also get a Christmas ornament in each port as our souvenir.

 

I look forward to the rest of your review, it is so entertaining, Funny & educational. Fantastic job!!!

[2tall]

My husband and I have only done one formal portrait, which I hated. It looked so contrived. I've never thought about hamming it up...but since I loved the ones you guys did, I think I might suggest that next time. We're travelling with CC friends on the Conquest in March so I'd better start thinking of some poses...hmmmm....

[mkluvs2cruise]

Am loving your review! We are going on the Dream in March and cannot wait!!! Thanks for sharing!

[babyblue78]

We collect the ship ornaments from the ship gift shop from each ship... I should probably start collecting them in port. I get magnets in port to put in my cubicle at work. :)

[gottacruise@juno.com]

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

 

I know what you mean. I keep looking for another cruise to book. If only I knew when I was going, maybe I could breathe easier....maybe.

[jaybird77]

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!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I know it can drive you crazy from time to time!

 

We're sailing on the Dream 11/19/11 and I have read hundreds of reviews. But I must say, your is the most well written and complete review by far. Thank you for all of the great information.

 

Thanks for reading! I lost a lot of details because I was having too much fun to pay attention, but I tried to get down everything I could recall as the week passed!

 

I am not even going on the dream, my cruise is on the ecstasy. Your review makes me want to cancel that cruise and rebook on the dream! It looks like so much fun!

 

Keep it up, I really enjoy your review and how your personality shines through it.

 

Thanks! I know you would have fun on the Dream, but I've come to know that pretty much any time spent on a cruise ship is going to be great. :p

[jaybird77]

You were at the port as early as 10am & was zone 8, there must have been a lot there really early before you. I may now try to get there before 10.

 

At the spa usually there is usually a small pool & hot tub that anyone can use. On the dream do you have to pay to use them?

 

We also get a Christmas ornament in each port as our souvenir.

 

I look forward to the rest of your review, it is so entertaining, Funny & educational. Fantastic job!!!

 

Thanks for reading! Even though we were zone 8, we were on the ship within about 45 minutes of getting to the terminal, so it wasnt bad at all. You know I dont remember there being a separate pool and hot tub at the spa that was free. They have a heated therapeutic pool and you have to pay for that. Of course I could have just missed it! Bryon collected Christmas ornaments and then turned me on to it. I love it because it's actually a useful souvenir and then every year when I put the tree up I get to relive all memories from those trips!

 

My husband and I have only done one formal portrait, which I hated. It looked so contrived. I've never thought about hamming it up...but since I loved the ones you guys did, I think I might suggest that next time. We're travelling with CC friends on the Conquest in March so I'd better start thinking of some poses...hmmmm....

 

I hopefully will have a few more of those kinds of pics to post. Bryon scanned in that one and uploaded it to Flickr because that's the photo he kept. I have the other ones, so I have to get him to help me scan those in and maybe those can give you a few more ideas!

 

Am loving your review! We are going on the Dream in March and cannot wait!!! Thanks for sharing!

 

You are going to have a great time on the Dream. There is a lot to like about the ship!

[jaybird77]

We collect the ship ornaments from the ship gift shop from each ship... I should probably start collecting them in port. I get magnets in port to put in my cubicle at work. :)

 

That's one of the ornaments I got on this trip! I have one from Freedom also. Soon I'll have a fleet hopefully!

 

I know what you mean. I keep looking for another cruise to book. If only I knew when I was going, maybe I could breathe easier....maybe.

 

If I'm not planning a current cruise, then I'm dreaming of the next cruise I'll be taking... or dreaming of any kind of vacation I can take!

[jaybird77]

I'd like to interrupt this trip report for this special announcement:

 

I forgot to include something!

Ok pretend like you are reading this on the night of our Bahamas stop.

 

Before we went to sleep, I was hungry. Believe it or not I have never yet had the pleasure of ordering room service on a cruise. I wanted to try some things on this trip, so I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a piece of chocolate cake. I was very excited when it arrived, but I calmed myself enough to take a picture, then I saw it...mayo! ewwww. I hate mayo. The smell of it makes me sick. I never even thought to ask about condiments on the sandwich. I just assumed they would give you little packets. So unfortunately, I did not get to sample the sandwich. But the chocolate cake was good!

 

The offending condiment is revealed!

 

 

 

Now we rejoin our regularly scheduled trip report.

[jaybird77]

Day 5: St. Thomas- Sunny Liston and Sapphire Beach

We awoke around 8:00am and got ready for the day. I decided that on our port days, we just wouldn’t do the gym, but definitely on our sea days, we’d have to make time to work out( yeah right). We headed down for breakfast on the Lido deck. We discovered this morning that you could get buffet items quickly at the back of the ship- where the Indian Tandoor station is at lunch. There is no omelet station or anything, but you can get the basics at a little buffet here and there was never any line at all.

My standard bacon egg and cheese sandwich makin's

 

 

After breakfast, we headed up to the upper decks to take some photos of our arrival in St Thomas. This port area is always so beautiful to me with all the sailboats anchored and everything.

 

 

 

 

 

I remembered at this point that we had meant to buy tickets to Paradise Point through the ship. We knew we wanted to go up to Paradise Point after our tour and this is one time where buying through the shore excursion desk of the ship actually saves you money- about $3 or $4 per person. By this time we were starting to get close to time to get off the ship. Bryon got really nervous we were going to be late but I got in line at the shore excursion desk anyway. The line moved fast and we got our tickets. Mission accomplished!

 

 

Anyway, We were pretty excited since we were going on a tour with Sunny Liston. On our first few cruises, we were a little reticent about scheduling private tours because we didn’t want to get caught in some scam, or worse, get left behind because we were on some fly by night tour that couldn’t get us back to the port in time. Well on our trips to St Thomas, we had seen these brightly colored Sunny Liston Tour buses with loud music playing and it looked like everyone was having a great time! So this was going to be out time to check it out. We booked the tour that gives you shopping time and beach time and little island tour. It was $35 per person. We met the buses near right near the pier around 10:30. We ended up on a bus with the guy himself, Sunny Liston. We met a nice couple from New York. They had just married and it was her first cruise.

Ok, so the buses are not really buses per se. They are really just converted pick up trucks with open air row seats in the back. There are no seat belts or other safety precautions that us babified mainlanders are used to. Also it seems that red lights, stop signs, and parking signs, are more..suggestions than laws apparently.

 

Sunny and his bus

[Trish12345]

We boarded the Dream on Oct 1st. I am not able to post a complete review as we like to drink alot. We did attend breakfast & lunch in the formal dining room several times. Since you are seated to fill up tables, this can be a challenge as some people talk, some don't. However we did find out that someone's room caught on fire the day before & most cabin stewards on that hall were working to clean & refurbish that room. We were on the Western Caribbean, Cozumel, Belize, Roatan (don't call me Honduras), & Costa Maya. We booked Rm 9206 which is the first room at the front of the ship on the left side. Had this room before, it's a blast. Since it is at the front of the ship...when you hit a large wave, the front of the ship pitches up, then abruptly falls back down. I think this is a blast, my husband, not so much. He puts toilet paper in the shower door tracks to keep it from sliding back & forth all nite.

Enjoying your review so much!

[jaybird77]

So first off, he drives us over to the little shopping area in Charlotte Amalie and drops us off for about an hour of shopping.

There was a large shopping district with all the usual suspects ( Del Sol, Diamonds International, etc.) There was also a little park, with chickens roaming around and a little straw market kind of place. I got a Christmas ornament, and Bryon bought a T shirt. I also bought a pair of Flip Flops which I thought I liked, but ended up blistering that area between my toes. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. We walked around and took a picture of a pirate ship and Bryon took a picture with Captain Morgan!

 

 

 

 

 

Afterward, we started the crazy ride up the mountain. All the time very loud party music was playing. We got some Black Eyed Peas ‘I Gotta Feelin’and a little island tune that creeps into your mind worse than a Britney Spears song. It goes ‘Monday…Tuesday…Wednesday… Thursday too!” And its infectious. So in the pauses of this song he makes everyone in the bus go ‘Woop! Woop!’ and the whole time you are just seeing your life flash before your eyes on these twisty and turning high edged roads. So yeah, it was awesome!

I should also mention at this point that there was a very large roll call group from CC on this cruise. Bryon followed the thread a lot more than I did. They referred to themselves as the ‘Fun Bunch’. They even created a Facebook page. They organized a meet and greet which I understand was crazy with Butch pouring shots and they also organized a cabin crawl. We didn’t do any of those things, but it was sort of like we were living on the fringe of the Fun Bunch the entire cruise. Our table mates, Victoria and Tiffany, were bigger partiers than us and spent more time in the disco, where the Fun Bunch could usually be found and they ended up interacting with a lot of the group. The Fun Bunch was also close to us in the Scarlet Dining room and just always seemed to be partying it up wherever we were. They really did seem like a fun group of folks. Anyway, a large portion of that Fun Bunch was on this same tour. Some of them were on our bus, but another large group of them were on another Sunny Liston bus. It was funny because on that bus, whenever it would start to backup, the entire group would start yelling ‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’ like when a big truck backs up. Everyone was really enjoying themselves.

 

Ok so the next stop on the tour was a little look out area where Sunny gave a little geography and history of St. Thomas and showed us the Caribbean side of the island. The views from here were incredible.

 

 

[BettyPC]

What a fun review! It takes loads of work & I appreciate that you are sharing your vacation with us! I have been reading the Most amusing moments to my husband - who is also enjoying your trip!

[gapearl]

OMG I LOOOOOOOVED Sunny! I took his tour last month on the Valor. I remember that I love you baby Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday..... song you're talking about. It is catchy, and thanks to you, it's stuck in my head right now! LOL Did you get a cd of all the music? I did and played it for days when I got home, especially on my way to work. Nothing like a little Bob Marley when you're facing a 12 hour work day right after vacation. How about this one- follow the leader, leader, leader, follow the leader..... :p

[jaybird77]

Next stop was a place at the very top of the island called Mountain Top.

Sunny gave another little geography lesson. From here you could see the Atlantic side of the island including Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, St. John. There was a nice gift shop here and a Cruzan Rum bottle statue. This was the home of the banana daiquiri. You could buy one for $8. Of course I had to partake. I was watching this guy making the daiquiri and he was just pouring that rum. I thought ‘wow this is going to be nothing but alcohol..yes!’ But actually you could not even taste the rum in this drink. Now there was plenty in there, but something about the ice and banana or whatever, it was really good. I would have liked another one, but by the time we snapped some photos and looked around it was time to go.

 

 

 

 

 

We piled back in and went to one last lookout spot where you could really see Magen’s Bay and beach. This was where Sunny explained that we had a choice. We would get 2 hours at the beach of our choice. We could go to Magen’s Bay, but we had to each pay $4 for beach access and there would be little snorkeling opportunities. Or we could choose SapphireBeach, which was free and had some pretty good snorkeling. The bus decided on SapphireBeach. At the time we were kind of disappointed. Magen’s Bay is supposed to be a really beautiful and nice beach and is usually on those lists of the top beaches in the world. But we were ok since we would get an opportunity to snorkel.

 

 

View of Magen's Bay

[Hockey Addict]

Thank you so much for posting your review! I have done a couple and it is hard work especially when photobucket acts stupid! I'm loving the review!

[jaybird77]

WellSapphireBeach was really nice and the snorkeling was great.

I am glad we got the opportunity to go here. The water was a little seaweedy, but they said that was not necessarily normal and probably due to the storms that had come through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did make a little mistake here though. When we first arrived, some of us put our stuff on chairs that were lined up on the beach. After a little while, a guy came up and not so nicely said that all the chairs were already reserved and we could not keep our stuff there. And there were like a LOT of chairs set out. So we were like ‘All of these are taken?’ He said yes, and did not really offer any solution of how to get a chair. After a little prodding by one of our group he pointed to sign that said that chairs were $7 a piece and said that someone would be walking around and we could get him to go get us a chair to set out. Well that turned me off and I decided we’d just sit right down in the sand…yeah…so you know what happens when you go into the ocean and then get out and sit in the sand… you get sand everywhere, and you cant get rid of it. Also, all our stuff got in the sand, so here’s some advice. Swallow your pride and pay the $7 for a chair.

 

We had brought out own snorkels, so we didn’t have to purchase those, and the snorkeling here was pretty good. We saw a sting ray, a conch with a live thingy in it, and a bunch of fish, some of which looked like Dory from ‘Finding Nemo’!

[jaybird77]

There were also a number of large iguanas living on this beach.

They would just eat out of this guy’s hand like they were a dog or something. In fact I’m pretty sure they were feeding it dog food….

 

 

 

 

After the beach, Sunny drive us back around the east side of the island with some chill Bob Marley tunes, and dropped us back at the port around 4:30. I can highly recommend this excursion. We had no issue with booking or the tour. Sunny was full of energy and he makes sure you have a great time. It might not be for the history buff, or for the person who just wants to lay on the beach all day, but if you would like a fun tour that mixes sightseeing and beach time, this is the one for you.

 

 

We then headed over to Paradise Point on our own. Now we had a late port day here, and also, the only other ship in port was one of the Monstrosity of the Seas Royal Carribean cruises which was not docked at the Havensight area. I say this because we had a different sort of experience up at Paradise Point than we usually have had. You ride up the mountain in a little gondola. Now I don’t remember this ever being an issue, but this time there was absolutely no air flow at all through this gondola and it was so hot. Once again I was sweating like a stick of butter in Paula Deen’s kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finally got to the top, only to find it was kind of deserted up there. Normally when we have been there are tons of people up there and a lot of partying. There was loud music, but it just was not the same as we remembered.

 

The view is great, but as we had gotten some great shots already this wasn’t as awe inspiring as usual either. Also, we had neglected to eat anything since breakfast that morning, so our batteries were literally out of juice. I’m sure this was my fault, as I have a tendency to say something like ‘We’ll eat at the next stop’ thinking some awesome place to eat is just around the corner. Well we looked at the menu and decided that we didn’t really want to eat here either! We got a sprite for Bryon, a water for me and a chicken finger basket ( 4 chicken fingers) and it was almost $20!

 

 

[jaybird77]

 

We headed back down and shopped a little more.

We went into a place called Pirate’s Chest which I remembered from past trips as being a shop up at Paradise Point with some cool stuff. Bryon found a car tag he liked here and bought one. I asked the guy who worked there if they were in fact the same place that had been up at Paradise Point. He said they were and he went on to say that Paradise Point had new owners. They had gone up on his rent by over $800 (!) and he said were just in general catering to a different kind of crowd- specifically the partying/drinking crowd. He said he wasn’t happy so he ended his lease and moved down to the Havensight area. Maybe this change over of management is why there was no one up at Paradise Point???

 

 

We headed back to the ship and ordered room service- a grilled cheese for me, which was really good, and chocolate cake and cookies for Bryon. Bryon enjoyed the cake a lot more than I did. The cookies were ok, but oddly dry. Like dried out Chips Ahoys…

 

 

 

We got dressed for dinner and headed down to Bryon’s favorite- the casino! I lost some more money and then we headed to dinner.

Tonight, to start, I had mushroom soup – very good. I also had the didja selection again which was Oysters Rockefeller. They were horrible. I actually got some oyster shell in my mouth when I was trying to eat one. Victoria said that normally Oysters Rockefeller is really good but that this version was not great. Bryon had chicken noodle soup. He didn't like, but that was because they had vegetable chunks in there. He's not much of a veggie eater. I tried it and thought it tasted pretty good.

 

 

 

[jaybird77]

Both Bryon and I got the Filet Mignon with braised short ribs for our entrée.

This was really good! The meat was tender and very flavorful.

 

 

For dessert, I got a cheese plate, which was heavenly as usual, and I got the raspberry cake. This was a pretty good little layered cake with raspberry filling and pastry cream layers. It tasted good, but once again was served room temperature (what is with these room temperature cream desserts Carnival?)

 

Now during dinner, Victoria and Tiffany announced that they had met some dancers from the Fun Force the night before in the disco. We were supposed to meet this guy Justin, who was about to take over for another Fun Force member who was leaving the ship, on the front row for tonight’s show ‘Dancin in the Streets’ . I’m also pretty sure Tiffany had developed a crush on this guy. So our whole table made the way to the Encore theater after dinner. I ended up on the end of the front row. Now I was about to have a little heart attack. I was very concerned that I would get pulled up on stage by someone for something and I can think of nothing worse. So the whole time during the show, I am like a little cat, nervously darting my eyes around at everyone, ready to run if anyone came near me.

Our table getting ready for the show.The pointy guy is Justin.

 

 

Another view!

 

 

This was Amy (6'3") finishing up bingo before the show

 

 

This show was very entertaining. The Fun Force guys do some good tricks through dance moves and tech stuff. It was pretty cool.

 

After the show, they had the Mardi Gras celebration in the atrium. This is basically where they play jazzy New Orleans music and Butch and the rest of the entertainment crew throw beads at everyone. By this time Victoria had decided to introduce me to her favorite drink- vodka, OJ, and Red Bull.

 

 

I had a few of these in the atrium and then we all headed down to the disco.

[KrystalWaters]

Jay, i was thinking about doing the Sunny tour in St. Thomas. I like to sightsee and bargain(straw market) shop, do you feel the stores he dropped you off to shop were any good? Would you recommend this type of excursion for my type?What about safety, did you feel safe while he drove? I know a lot of questions, sorry.:p

No seat belts?!:eek:

[jaybird77]

We lost Darin and Raymond due to the smokiness of the disco.

Now this is where the story gets a little hazy.

I know there were more vodka, OJs, and at some point a member of the Fun Bunch who we called Nebraska bought us all Tequila shots. Bryon, who apparently is the only one with a brain, declined the tequila shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok sidebar- Doesn’t Nebraska look like Ben Affleck? No one else seems to see it, but it’s clear as day to me.

 

Anyway, I ended up in bed by unknown means at an unknown time. I’m sure it was fun though!

 

 

Next Up: St. Maarten and Nudity!