Pre-Trip Blog and Review: Carnival Dream 2/15/14 – Western Caribbean

[Breadman54]

I am enjoying your day-by-day pre cruise blog!!!! Also, thanks for the tip of printing an extra luggage tag and putting it inside the suitcase! Wish I had thought about that on my last cruise when my luggage tag came off a piece of my luggage! Took a while to get it. I'm sure you will have a wonderful cruise and I can't wait to hear all about it when you return!!!!!

[elktoncruiser]

Watching you sail away on the webcam now, have a great time. Enjoy Mr. Sancho's it is the best.

[cruiseclues]

Liked your photos...looking forward to your photo review. :):):):)

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Surprise! I am live from Paradise Beach. It's a wonderful day here in Cozumel. I just wanted to take advantage of the free WiFi to say hello. We are having an awesome time and I cannot wait to share with you once we return.

 

See ya later!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[asumatty]

Get off of here and enjoy Paradise! You can post on CC when you get back stateside.

 

Seriously, have fun and cant wait to learn from your review when you get back. We are heading out in about 7 weeks.

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Good morning everyone from a cloudy and slightly rainy Port Canaveral. For some reason they kicked us off the ship this morning. They said something about it being time to go home. :D We have made it back to our car and we are waiting for a local natural store to open.

 

We will return home sometime today/tonight and then tomorrow I hope to start the review.

 

I cannot wait to share all the details!

 

I will talk to you soon!

 

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Forums mobile app

[travelgurl2]

Love your blog. We were getting off the Dream as you were getting on...so sad for nus :(. On a brighter note, while we were cruising, our hometowns (Aiken, SC & Augusta, GA) were hit with a MAJOR icestorm and earthquake!! We missed it all! I know you had a wonderful time!!

[2 cruzen]

Looking forward to hearing about your adventures. :D

[UTVolsFan4Life]

We made it home all safe and sound. Now, for the dreaded unpacking. :D

[WiCruiseDreamer]

Glad you made it home and am anxious for your review.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

[Jeansfanatic]

Such awesome tips within this entire post!!! Thanks so much! Can't wait to read your review since we will be going to these exact same ports on our cruise in May!!!!!

[FloridaMomma]

Can't wait to hear all about it!

[michellejed]

Can't wait to hear all about your cruise and hope you have lots of pictures to add. Welcome home!

[Granny1]

Glad you made it back home safe and sound, and anxiously waiting for your review. I know our ports will not be the same in June but the ship sure will.;)

[shoppingfever]

Great start and can't wait to read more!

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Thank you everyone on all the well wishes and your excitement to read the review portion of trip.

 

I have been progressing a little bit slower than what I would like but, I am happy to announce that I am almost complete with the Pre-Cruise Day and I hope to have it posted later today.

 

For now, I have to go back to reality and get to work on my real job.

[cask2393]

I am loving your pre cruise blog and review. Can't wait for the review hope your cruise was fantastic!

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Hello everybody! I am so excited to start the review portion of this tread. This trip was by no means perfect. We had a few bumps in the road, but overall we had an excellent time.

 

Pre-Cruise Day

 

The night before was a late night. I just could not settle down to go to bed. I kept finding something else that needed to be done. Finally, about 10 PM, I decided to get in bed and I went to sleep sometime between 11 PM and midnight. I was awoken at 3:30 AM to use the bathroom. I laid back down, closed my eyes but I never felt like I went back to sleep. At 4:45 AM, I get decided to get up and get going for the day. I went ahead and shaved and showered so I could get all of those items packed. I posted a blog post and then made breakfast for us. I went to wake Cynthia up and found that she had just gotten up and was getting dressed. Breakfast took a little longer to make than I thought it would so I was concerned that we might be leaving later then I had planned. We finished all the last minute packing. Brrr…it was cold. My plan was to wear shorts down since it would be warm in Florida, but I found it was 30 degrees and “jack frost” was on the ground so, I put my jeans on and took my shorts for later in the day. While we were loading up the car, I turned it on so it could be defrosting.

 

 

Everything went rather quickly and we were leaving the house a few minutes before 8 AM. Before we could leave town, we needed to stop for gas and at the same time I am using the opportunity to add some gas treatment in the tank. When heading south I like to stop in East Albany for gas for two reasons: it’s on the way out of town and the gas stations normally have the cheapest gas in town. This morning we were disappointed to find that the gas was about the same price that we could have paid on our side of town so, I am glad that we did not go out of our way to get gas.

 

We quickly filled up and started our travel. There are several routes that we could take to get to Port Canaveral. The one that I decided on for this trip is the most direct route but it comes at a price as there are two toll roads. It’s about a 5 ½ hour trip to the hotel. Here is a map of our route:

 

 

Before we started down the road, we started Pandora up and got the music going. I had not used Pandora in a while but the station played ready good music so we only needed to skip 2 songs at most per hour.

 

Starbucks! Yes, my favorite coffee shop has a location in Tifton, GA that I have to drive by. Knowing all the bad stuff that I would be eating over the next week, I resisted the temptation to make a stop for a coffee break.

 

For it being a holiday weekend, I was surprised by the light police protection that we saw as we drove through GA. I think we maybe saw only 2 or 3 police cars scattered over several counties.

We made it to FL.

 

We made our almost traditional stop at the FL Welcome Center. It’s a good place to stretch our legs for a minute and take a restroom break. I love that this Welcome Center is very interactive. It makes GA’s Welcome Center look like a dump when compared to FL.

 

Here is an interactive picture that I took:

 

 

Cynthia wanted to try the grapefruit juice so we walked over to the main counter to grab some juice for her and found an awesome coupon from Shutterfly. They were giving away a free 8X8 Photobook.

 

I cannot wait to use this coupon to make a book of our trip.

 

One of the things that I loved about our Facebook roll call was that as we were all traveling, people was posting updates as to where they were and what they saw. For example, there was heavy police protection just past Gainesville, FL. Cynthia was nice enough post an update that let the people behind us know to be on the lookout. Also, it was just as fun seeing where people stopped along their journey to port.

[UTVolsFan4Life]

We have now made it to the Florida Turnpike. We have decided that we are a little hungry and need a restroom break so we stopped at the Okahumpka Service Plaza. It’s the first one once you get on the Turnpike. The restrooms were horrible! I did notice an employee was starting to clean it a bit but it was in bad shape. Once we returned to the car, we opened up our lunch. The nice part of it being a day trip to the port is that we can pack our own lunch from home and just stop and eat somewhere fairly quickly and then get back on the road. Today, we had sandwiches, chips, and some chocolate chip cookies that Cynthia had baked.

We made it through both the toll roads at a total cost of $8.25 and now we are on the non-toll part of the Beachline Expressway. This is my favorite way to enter into Port Canaveral. It totally makes us excited for our cruise. I will let the pictures do the taking.

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

We arrived at the Radisson Resort at the Port. I walked in and was quickly greeted, checked in, and given all the cruise information that I needed. We were in room 123 which is actually a second floor room. This is the first time that we have had a room on the second floor. We would have preferred a room on the ground floor, but I noticed that the hotel was completely sold out so I did not ask for a room change. The room looked similar to our other two rooms at the hotel so, I did not take any pictures. The only note to make on the room is that the shower/tub drainage was slow. Everything else was nice and the room had a newer Sleep Number bed.

 

Now, that our room was all taken care of the way that we like it. It was time to do a little bit of exploring. We hoped to see the Exploration Tower back in October but the opening was delayed a month so, we wanted to check it out. I had read somewhere that the prices were high to get in so I was not sure if we were going to be willing to pay to get in. We found that the price was very reasonable at $6.50 per person. It’s even cheaper if you are a senior or live in the same county. Here is a paper that we picked up on the Exploration Tower:

 

 

We quickly went up to the observation deck as the Enchantment of the Seas would be leaving port soon.

 

Here are a few pictures of the observation deck:

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Here are some pictures from around port:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Our Enchantment of the Seas is leaving port. It’s always great to see ships that we have previously sailed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]