A DREAM cruise for a party of 9 - Dec 7, 2013 Review

[Therobielyn's]

Hi all,

Just returned a couple of days ago after a whirlwind Carnival Dream 7 day Western Caribbean cruise and a quick 1 day stop at Disneyworld.

Going to be a few day process to post a comprehensive review with photos, so bear with us and hope you enjoy hearing of our travels.

[Therobielyn's]

First, let's introduce you to this mangy cast of characters.

Travelling on this journey was my incredibly beautiful wife, my 20 year old son, my 23 year old step son and his girlfriend, my 20 year old step son along with his girlfriend and my 72 year old in laws, along with myself.

We had planned this cruise originally as just a get away for my wife and I as we LOVE to get away together. We are absolutely best friends and soul mates and spend every non-working minute together.

We were married last October and took all of our children (7 in total) on an Eastern Caribbean cruise as a family "melding" cruise aboard RCCL's Freedom of the Seas. We even managed to experience first hand what it was like to be aboard a ship during a hurricane (Hurricane Sandy), but the cruise was such a success and our kids formed a huge, close knit family, that some of them decided to join us this time aboard the Carnival Dream for a December 7th embarkation.

About 4 months ago, my wife and I were visiting her parents, who live about 3 hours away and mentioned to them that we were taking this cruise and that their grand kids were coming along. Well, they decided that they were coming along as well. This may not seem like such a big deal until you become aware that they have not travelled before….I mean ANYWHERE, so for them to decide to take their first ever trip and have it be on our cruise was a great feeling. We would be able to see their faces and experience the cruise through their eyes, just like the first time for us again.

My wife and I are avid cruisers, having cruised 7 times before and are without a doubt, addicted. In fact, we have already booked our next cruise for September of 2014 aboard the Carnival Miracle out of our home port, Vancouver BC to Hawaii and by telling you that the in-laws have already said they are coming along shows that we have converted a couple of more as well.

[LuvCruising01]

Great start, thanks for posting. Looking forward to more

[Therobielyn's]

Well, the time had finally come to leave for the airport.

We live in a suburb of Vancouver BC and while we have an amazing international airport here, because of the taxes it is far cheaper to fly out of Seattle for any travel within the U.S. It is only a 2 and a half hour drive from our door to the airport in Seattle and it saves us around $450 per person for a flight, so it really is a no brainer.

Anyways, our flight left Seattle at 8 am so we left our home at 2 a.m in order to be at the airport in Seattle at 6 am, this giving us some extra time to stop at Mc D's for a quick Mcmuffin and to stretch our legs a bit.

We arrived at the airport at 6 as planned and checked in. Needless to say, we were all tired, but what the heck, we could sleep on the plane anyways.

The first leg of our flight took us from Seattle to Washington D.C. It was a 4 and a half hour flight but to be honest with you, we all thought it was pretty cool that maybe Barrack would look out of his White House office and wave to us. Ya, we know we were being silly but it was fun to think like that.

I can honestly tell you that I have never landed in a more confusing and awful airport than Washington Dulles. Wow, we walked FOR EVER to catch our connecting flight and looked everywhere to catch a quick bite to eat but had a hard time finding anything.

Our connecting flight to Orlando was only a 2 hour flight and we arrived into Orlando at 7:30 pm.

Our shuttle was waiting for us to take us to our hotel. We used Black Car Orlando for the shuttle or at least we thought we did. I booked with Black Car months ago and they sent us instructions on how to find them once we got to the airport. We got down to the baggage carousel and there holding a sign with our name on it was a young lady. We introduced ourselves, got our luggage and headed for the shuttle. Her name was Brianna and on the side of her van it said, "Orlando Vacation Transportation". She went on to explain that Black Car does not have a van large enough to hold a group as large as ours and when they get a call from a group, they always call Brianna to take the booking. Brianna was absolutely outstanding and was by far the best driver/shuttle that we have ever used. As you will see in the next few days, we used her for all of our transportation and boy are we glad we did.

We loaded all of the luggage into the van and hopped in. We asked Brianna if she would make a quick stop so that we could get our water and wine for the cruise and she gladly obliged. As the grocery store was only a block away from the hotel, it didn't take us overly long, maximum of 10 minutes for the stop and the onto the hotel.

We have found Trip Advisor to be an outstanding source of reviews and ratings for all of our hotels, restaurants and shore excursions for our travel and we found a review for the Quality Inn and Suites on Entry Point Blvd in Kissimmee. The hotel is older but was outstanding value at only $60 per night. We would gladly recommend the hotel and will stay there again when we travel to Orlando again as everything is close by as far as restaurants and shopping are concerned.

We had a quick bite to eat at the Denny's across the street and then off to bed as Disneyworld awaits and we only have one day to get as much of it done as we can.

[alreadypacked]

Great start to the review and thanks for posting!!:)

 

Congrats to your in-laws on their first travel experience!

[2 cruzen]

Looking forward to reading your review. A favor, could you please add some spacing to make it easier to read your paragraphs? Thanks so much.

[Therobielyn's]

Well, here we go.

 

Up at 7 am and off to Disneyworld.

 

Being on the west coast, it is far easier for us to go to Disneyland than to make the long journey east to go to Disneyworld, in fact, between my wife and I we have been to Disneyland well over 20 times, but we had really been looking forward to seeing the much larger Floridian version.

 

We only had one day so we knew that there was no possible way that we would see even a 10th of the park, but we were excited to bring along the parents and show them some immature fun, after all, there really are not too many more immature people in the world than my wife and I. We are just 2 big kids at heart.

 

Brianna picked us up in the morning and the short shuttle run to the Magic Kingdom began.

 

Before long, we arrived at the park

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It really was an incredible feeling seeing the gates before us.

 

I will keep this day really short in the review as I really do want to get to the meat of the review, which is the cruise.

 

Needless to say, the day was a huge success for all of us, including the 72 year old newest kids on the block. They LOVED all of the rides, including Splash Mountain.

 

Back to the hotel at around 8 pm to get ready for the big day ahead of us tomorrow.

[Therobielyn's]

Sorry everyone,

 

Got to learn how to post a photo on here.

 

Will research and get back to the review.

[Jenny in TX]

Can't wait to read your review! DH and I cruised on the Magic in February 2013 and took both sets of our parents with us. My parents had cruised before, but DH's parents sound like your in-laws. They had never been anywhere much less on a cruise ship. We were more excited than they were just to see the excitement every time they turned the corner and saw something new. What wonderful memories you will always have of this cruise with your family!!

[brookeq]

Can't wait to read more. We are on the dream in January.

[boaterette]

Awesome start to your review. Thanks for taking the time to do one.

[cruisebabe50]

Awww what happened?