We started our cruise by flying into Orlando and staying at Disney's Port Orleans hotel. We arrived at 8:00 p.m. so with the kids being tired, we didn't feel much like exploring the place. The next day, we spent the day at Magic Kingdom so we could get our "Disney Fix" before heading off on a 7 day cruise. As for the hotel, I have no idea why people upgrade to Disney's moderate resorts, when the value ones are just as nice. We had to upgrade because my MIL went with us and it was the only place that slept 5. But I found no significant difference between our room in the moderate resort compared to the value ones. We've previously stayed at Pop Centry and All Star Movies. Only difference that I saw was there are 2 sinks in the room instead of 1 and the pool had a small waterslide. From now on, we'll save the extra money and stay at the value resorts.

On Saturday Morning, we drove from Disney to Cape Canaveral. It took about an hour to get there. We had rented a car from Avis so we had to drop the car off and take their shuttle to the ship. The shuttle bus pulled right up and the luggage porters took our luggage straight off the bus and into their bins. We didn't have to touch the luggage at all. Good thing we already had our baggage tags on the bags. I had laminated the tags that I printed from the computer. This made me feel better that they wouldn't rip off.

We arrived about 11:30 into the terminal. The line was out the door and I thought we'd be there forever. I was suprised, we were on the ship within 30 minutes. We headed up to Lido deck for lunch. As earlier mentioned, we have cruised RCCL six times (once with the kids) so we were used to going to the Windjammer Cafe. There are a couple different buffet lines and it's very easy to find everything you want to eat. The Dream was VERY different. Depending on what kind of food you wanted, depended on which buffet line you wanted to get in. There was the Mongonlian Wok, Burger Bar, Sandwich Bar, Pasta Bar and various others but they were so spread out. Some were on the front of the ship, some were mid ship, and others were on the back. You had to walk soooo far to get what you wanted. And if you had kids, and one wanted pizza and the other wanted a sandwich, you had to go to opposite ends of the ship to get them. Same deck, but very confusing in the beginning. Finding a table that first day was practically impossible too. After we got our food we changed into our swimsuits and spent the day in the pool. At 1:30, our staterooms were ready so we headed down to check them out. Read more