Carnival Dream Review
Carnival Dream was a great value. Will do Carnival again.
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I'll preface this by saying that my wife and I are both in the travel business. This was my 15th cruise and my wife's 5th. Neither of us have ever been on Carnival before. We have always preferred Princess and Celebrity. We can go on any cruise for cost. You just have to keep in mind, you get what you pay for and you have to have an open mind. That being said, we would certainly go with Carnival again as long as there was a ship or itinerary that we wanted to do.
We picked this cruise for 2 reasons. Cost: we had a balcony cabin on the upper deck (6221 - starboard- forward) for less than $1000 for the 2 of us for a 7 day cruise. Itinerary: I have been to the Caribbean many times and been to most of the Islands multiple times. We visited Cozumel (both of us have been there), Costa Maya (new to us), Belize (new to us) and Roatan (new to us and our new favorite island in the Caribbean, more later).
Ship - The Dream is probably the newest and nicest ship we have been on. The atrium is unbelievable! The ship is very well laid out and easy to navigate around. Every area was clean. We never felt crowded. The cruise director said there was 1000 kids on board! You could have fooled me as we very seldom saw any kids. My only complaint is the size of the pools (only 2 of them)! They are full with 20 people in them. On sea days with 4000+ passengers we are talking overload! Carnival really needs to rethink this in future upgrades to the Dream and other ships in their fleet. On the positive side Carnival has very few shops compared to the competition. We appreciate that, however the "shoppers" won't. They do lack a "general store" however, which seemed odd. If you need sundries you have to wait for the 1st port.
Cabin Review
Cabin - We had a balcony cabin (our first time ever! We don't spend a lot of time in the cabin so it isn't a priority for us). But it was nice to have an early morning cup of coffee on the balcony and watch the sun come up, or watch us sail into port. We had plenty of room and it was nice to have a sofa. The only negative was the beds were uncomfortable for us. Other cruise lines have more of a luxury mattress. We found the mattresses hard and unforgiving and ended up with backaches. A couple of things about noise. Our cabin was very quiet for the most part, except a couple of nights when the neighbors came in late and were a little amorous. However, on the way back to Orlando we had some cross currents overnight and the waves hitting bow below us (mind you we were around 60' above water and 250' or so from the bow) were frighteningly loud! It was as if a giant hammer was hitting the hull of the ship. (the waves were smallish 3' or less). I cannot imagine what it was like for the people in the lower decks especially in the cove balconies at the sea line. Some of the waves coming off of the bow were being pushed 50' or more off the hull. We were in 10' seas in the Pacific on the Sapphire Princess in February and never experienced anything like that.Cabin Service - Our cabin steward was polite as was his assistant. We really don't ask for a lot of attention, but I do ask that the ice container be full at all times. Carnival only provides a minuscule ice container. You might be able to fill 2-10 oz. glasses with ice and it's empty! So keeping it full is a challenge. (come on now Carnival). I found out the 1st day at sea that the room stewards are off from 1pm until 5:30 pm. so if you want anything (ice) you have to call room service! If you want room service, you are expected to tip (not a big deal, unless you have to call all the time for "free ice"). If you do get room service ice at least they bring you a large bucket! So keep the bucket and tell your room steward to fill it! Our steward never did anything out of the ordinary, he just did his job. (see tipping)