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

[parisbully]

I can't understand why he spent so many pages doing a precruise review and then left after a couple of days of the actual cruise

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Hello Everybody! It feels great to be back here on Cruise Critic. It's been a rough couple of weeks since we have been back and I am thankful for everybody hanging in there with me. Let's see, my work schedule has been crazy combined with Cynthia's business taking off full steam ahead, combined with us both catching what was going around, twice, two weekend business trips and then a family crisis with Cynthia's Mom last week there has been little time for the review.

 

Well, we are all well now, and we have gotten work and business under control where we can handle it better, and Cynthia's Mom is doing better now, but she still has some rough days ahead so now, I hope that I can get some time to finish up this review.

 

Looks can be deceiving with these reviews. They are a little harder and more time consuming than one would think until you get to really building one and then you realize that it's a lot more work than you thought. But I love doing them so, I want to make sure that I finish, no matter how long it takes.

 

Day Three is just about ready to hit the press. I just need to finish scanning the Funtimes and the dinner menus.

 

I will be back shortly to start posting so, get your popcorn, dinner, pj's on or what ever and get ready for day three...Cozumel and Paradise Beach.

[Elegant Tragedy]

Glad to see you back! Can't wait to read more of your review! We sail on the Dream in July!

[LREcruise02]

Yay! Glad to hear all is going better for you! And looking forward to reading we are sailing the same cruise in 2 weeks!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[parisbully]

I too, am so glad you are back!

[mom2tradyl]

Thanks for taking the time to complete your report!!!

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Again, it was an early morning as I woke up at 4:30 am to use the restroom and could not fall back a sleep. Our location on the TV map shows that we are just entering the Yucatan Channel. I updated my cruise notes for the previous day and it’s the last time that I would think to do this so we are completely on my memory at this point. :-)

 

About 5:00 AM, I decided to continue my exploration of the ship since we were not due into Cozumel until 10:00 am. I started at Guest Services since I was not able to get a picture earlier.

 

I then darted up to the Lido deck to take a few pictures. Most of the pictures are of the buffet areas.

 

 

We spent a little bit of time here during the trip. LOL

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

Then up a level I went for some more exploration.

 

I found the jogging track. I did not make much use of it as I should have, but for those that might want the information, here it is:

 

 

Mini Golf Anyone? Actually, I don’t think it’s open this time of morning. We always talked about playing but we never made it.

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

Whale Tail!

 

Lido Pool view from deck 12

 

 

 

More of deck 12

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

I made my way back around to the golf course.

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

I see something out there.

 

 

About 6:30 AM, I made my way back to the room. What a wonderful sunrise it was shaping up to become.

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

A little after 7:00 AM, Cynthia was ready for the day and she wanted to do a little bit of exploring of some of the areas on deck that she had not seen before.

 

We finally stopped for a picture here:

 

 

More picture of our journey.

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

Golf while we had some light for pictures.

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

After about 30 minutes, we decided to make our way back to the room so we could get ready for breakfast. First, we decided to enjoy our balcony for a few minutes.

We made it to breakfast and Cynthia is excited for the day.

 

 

She is ready for the beach.

 

 

Since we were part of the first group in for breakfast we got prime seating to see us come into Cozumel. Here are a few pictures through the window.

 

 

 

We had another excellent breakfast and I see that I totally missed getting pictures. Now, we are full and so we wanted to walk off some of that breakfast and see some of the sights coming into Cozumel.

 

 

A Costa ship is in port. I am not sure which one.

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

I am not sure what happened to my camera on some of those.

 

Here is the pilot boat next to us

 

 

I just love that trail

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

We did not have a much longer to hang around as we were meeting a group of people from our roll call so that we could share a taxi to Paradise Beach.

 

 

 

 

At the shopping show the day earlier, Robert, told everyone that the best way to be off the ship quickly was to be down on deck 2 at 9:45 AM. We headed down to deck three and found one of our groups so, we all headed down to deck two to wait for the other group. After waiting well past the agreed upon time, we decided that since nothing was blocking us from going down to deck 1 that we would make our way down with some other people. This was the wrong move, I thought the Carnival employee at the Encore was rude, this guy was overboard. He was actually screaming and yelling at guests when people tried to tell him what they were told he just said, I have told him 3 times not to tell people that so, I guess I am going to have to tell him again.

 

We walked back up to deck 2 and hung out with some other people that we met. Then the other group in our party showed up and they decided not to make the trip and were just going to hang around the port. We started telling people not to try to advise people not go to down and some just would not listen. It seemed like the more people that went down the more the Carnival guy was mad and rude with customers.

 

Personally, I think two things would have handled this situation. First, put a barrier up so that nobody could get down to deck 1. Second, radio someone to please make an announcement to the effect of we are sorry for the misinformation and to please wait on deck 3 or 5 to disembark the ship.

 

Once it got time, the hallways and stairs got really crowded and I got separated from Cynthia until we were almost off the ship. A was glad to be out of that madness.

 

We stepped out of the port and easily found a taxi van that would take the 6 of us over to Paradise Beach for only $28. Considering that for a taxi for two is $16, this was a huge savings. Plus, we liked the idea of safety in numbers.

 

Here we are pulling into Paradise Beach

 

 

We were quickly greeted and given a quick tour of the facility before we were allowed to pick our spot. We sat and enjoyed our spot for a bit and then I got ready for some sun. While Cynthia was still getting ready, I took some pictures:

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

 

[gamma5]

Kenyon, just stumbled on this review. FANTASTIC!! You have put so much work into this and so much detail. It is as if we were right back on the Dream again. Thanks so much and again Excellent review! Can't wait to read the rest of the review. BTW, we booked the Pride, just after her 2.0 upgrades, for 11/16/14 out of Tampa (same basic itinerary, with Caymans instead of Costa Maya), but this time without the g-son. This is our cruise to relax! LOL The Dream was a blast, but that 9 yr old about wore us "old folks" out. I don't think we stopped for hardly a minute the whole cruise. He had to be doing something constantly! It was truly a joy to be able to take him though and give him that experience, but now we need a vacation from our vacation!

[UTVolsFan4Life]

 

 

 

 

We went out and relaxed in the ocean a bit thanks to some floats that our neighbors let us use. The water was a little cold, but with the sun beaming down, it felt great. We really did not like the ocean flooring. It was too rocky and very slippery. We saw several people getting hurt. After some fun, we decided to come back an order something to eat. Cynthia was happy because they had some real fruit drinks that she was not allergic to so she had her first ever virgin Pina Colada. In the same spirit, I decided to get a virgin strawberry daiquiri so that she could try both of them. Once we drink them down, we decided to mix them and it was so good.

 

Also, we ordered the Nacho Paradise as we were a little hungry. I guess that we were a little more hungry than we thought because we most to ate them too fast as I don’t have a picture of them. Here is our view: