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A Winter Escape: Dream 2.0

Indytraveler83

By Indytraveler83,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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Indytraveler83

Indytraveler83

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Sea Day 2: Relaxation and more relaxation

 

We woke up to room service knocking on our door about 20 minutes earlier than requested. Again, no big deal, but what's the point in the 30 minute window you mark if they are going to ignore it?

 

We had our relaxing breakfast on the balcony where we encountered Mom on the balcony next door. She was having a quiet breakfast too, while Dad braved the Lido buffet. She told me that they planned on spending the morning in the spa, and that she'd scheduled more spa services.

 

We went to the spa and were pleasantly surprised to find that the front desk already knew who we were and our room numbers. They welcomed us back and went spent most of the morning in relaxation.

 

We did however notice that the spa occasionally had problems keeping the rooms the way they were supposed to be, with aromas absent or rooms to be at room temperature instead of heated. We frequently saw maintenance workers coming in and out, and hoped that this was just a unique problem.

 

After this we headed to the water slides and found that only one was open. The waterworks area was closed, and a mother was chewing out a maintenance worker while her swimsuit clad children stood by disappointed. Again, not sure what was going on here, but at this point all of the hot tubs were closed too. The Dream seemed to be struggling with many of its water features throughout the cruise.

 

For lunch we went to Guy's Burgers, and found that even though the line is often extremely long, it moves very very fast. The burgers were fantastic, but I don't see the big deal about the slightly soggy fries. We then headed back for a second round in the spa, as we couldn't seem to get enough of those relaxing spaces!

 

As we finally returned to our cabin, we found our favorite towel animal waiting for us:

sea22_zpsskyvfqag.jpg

 

Missing our dogs terribly, we named this turtle "Phil" and he became our in-cabin pet for the remainder of the cruise. While it was sort of a joke, we actually had a really hard time letting him go at the end of the trip, and Jake even considered "kidnapping Phil" rather than leaving him to be dismantled by the room steward.

 

Before we knew it, it was dinner time again. Today would be the first day we were fully exposed to the "American Table" experience. But I can say that in all honesty I felt like the food was significantly better than last year, and maybe some of the best food I've had in the dining room. When we told our server about visiting Guys burgers he went into a very proud and extended chat about how much better the fresh burgers were than the frozen patties previously used. He talked about how the kitchen in general is trying to use fresher and better ingredients in all of their food and was excited to see how passengers reacted to the new menu.

 

Overall I can say it was very good. There were hits and misses, but I feel like the American Table menu is better prepared and better presented than the previous menu options which often felt like they'd been removed from a microwave meal tray. My only complaint continues to be dessert. Aside from chocolate melting cake (which was done perfectly every single night) they really struggle to do dessert right. I learned to avoid cake completely, as each cake tends to be just a bland and mildly flavored item. The pies they offered were pretty good however, which was a new addition. These were offered warm and a la mode, which worked out fantastic for my father, who could survive completely off of pie if allowed.

 

Both of our parents had after dinner plans that involved another retro show and variety show. I think they spent this evening together. For the older crowd, these MoTown, flashback and 80's nights are amazing, and our parents loved every minute of it. For us, we had to find different places to enjoy ourselves.

 

We stopped by the piano bar very briefly, but when we realized that Patrick's antics were going to be his normal routine, we abandon it completely and headed into the comedy club for a pair of shows.

 

sea21_zpsbnha3b5o.jpg

 

The drink quality in the Comedy Club was significantly better than it was on the Serenity deck, and they were not clearing the lounge between shows. So we settled down to several rounds of drinks and a couple of comedy shows that were pretty good.

 

Upon leaving the Comedy Club we made an interesting observation: The piano bar was attracting the most drunk and disorderly passengers on the ship. Therefore if we just avoided the lounge, we could avoid the poor behavior all together. Lesson learned.

 

We then headed to the deck party on Lido that was lead by Chris and the Fun Squad. Again, the environment was electric as he tried to teach us dances. What we really appreciated though, was that the Fun Squad was mingling with passengers, not just standing in front of us, making the entire thing feel like a fun party, rather than a staff sponsored presentation. At the end, Chris did a monster back flip into the Lido pool to cap his attempt at rock star style. We soon realized that it was after midnight and Jamaica waited for us in the morning.

 

We headed to bed exhausted and sweaty, wondering if we'd have the energy for our first port day!

 

Up Next: Port day at Jamaica. Ya mon!

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Indytraveler83

Indytraveler83

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I'm curious, with your time dining, can you go to either of the MDRs or are you assigned one or the other?

 

On the Dream the forward dining room is Your time, while the aft dining room is assigned dining. I don't think this is universal across the fleet though.

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beckatron

beckatron

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I just googled it and a map came up. It had it for the whole fleet. I'll try to post the link. It was from John Heald's blog.

 

http://johnhealdsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/John-Version-12.19.16.pdf

 

 

Thanks! Looks like we will just miss Chris since we are on the 6/18 Dream.

 

 

Enjoying the review very much. This is our first Carnival cruise (we have previously only cruised on Disney) so trip reports really help me know what to expect.

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Hoot51

Hoot51

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Really enjoying your review! Congrats on the engagement! I just took my bf on his first cruise in February, and thank god he loved it (not liking cruising could be a deal breaker [emoji12]). I want to go on the Magic next time (since Florida is closer to me than NOLA). I'd assume the experience between the two ships is about the same since they're sister ships. This is a random question, but if you opt for only the morning turn down service, is that when they leave the towel animals? When we were on the Paradise last month we weren't asked if we wanted morning or evening service and the steward came twice a day. I've read on several other reviews that you have to choose now. Odd that they didn't do that on our cruise (not that I'm complaining as I prefer it twice a day).

Looking forward to hearing about the rest of your trip!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

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bluemarie2

bluemarie2

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Wow, that's awesome that the Flying Scotsman was your Cruise Director! He was on the Entertainment Staff a few years ago when I was on the Conquest. It was the first cruise after a drydock and they were having technical issues with the electronics for the new playlist production and had to cancel it. Chris offered to do his one-man show, "The Flying Scotsman". It was hands down the best show I've ever seen on a Carnival ship. So glad to hear that he's still around. It makes me want to book a cruise on the Dream just to see him again!

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CozGurl

CozGurl

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Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. I really think this could be the best trip report I've ever read on ANY forum.

 

We leave on the Dream on the 19th and couldn't be more excited!

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sailor05

sailor05

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Thanks! Looks like we will just miss Chris since we are on the 6/18 Dream.

 

 

Enjoying the review very much. This is our first Carnival cruise (we have previously only cruised on Disney) so trip reports really help me know what to expect.

 

I'm going to be on the same week! Feel free to join the roll call for this sailing.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2429514

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