EMBARKATION As always, we booked a suite room so that we can breeze through the VIP embarkation process. It's well worth the money both at embarkation and the comfort you enjoy throughout the cruise. Any time I'm in the room, I have the balcony door open to hear the water. One small problem with the Dream's layout, however, is that they have placed 4 hot tubs (2 on each of the ship's side) two levels down; so many times the oceanic sounds are replaced by adult voices and children's shrieks and laughter from the hot tub. It wasn't a deal breaker, but I would recommend a suite at either far 1/4th end, and not in the middle 2/4ths of the boat.

FOOD Not sure how it happened, but my confirmed "early seating" dinner reservation in the Crimson dining room, ended up changing to "Your Time Dining" when we checked in - meaning open dining anytime between 5:45 pm - 9:30 pm in the dining room's upstairs level. I didn't think I'd like it, and it turned out, I didn't. We got there at 7:30 PM, and were given a typical restaurant beeper-type notifier and told to wait in the adjoining lounge for a table. Once at our table, the service was just so-so, the server was stretched between tables and seemed overwhelmed. We asked the maitre de on the way out, if he could switch us back to early seating assigned dining, and we were thrilled to get a note under our cabin door by lunch the next day telling us we had been assigned to the Scarlett dining room. WOW! What a treat...the Scarlett dining room is located in the back of the boat and has a whole back wall of windows looking out to the water. It was lovely being able to watch the boat leave ports at dinner time.

One note about the Scarlet dining room's location at the back of the ship: when the ship goes in reverse /moves sideways to get close to the pier -- the noise and vibration are strongest there! One breakfast, as we were pulling in to Roatan, the view was beautiful from our table, but the shaking/vibration and noise was deafening - even some of the glasses set near each other on tables had to be moved because they were rattling into each other. The same thing happened on a smaller scale, that night at dinner. Read more