Carnival Dream Cruise Review Western Caribbean July 10-17, 2010

This review is from the perspective of two families, enjoying a vacation. There are four adults and four children in our group. Adult ages ranged from 42-50. Children's ages range from 9-16. Both families have been on previous cruises with Princess, RCCL, and Carnival. We chose this cruise because of the itinerary and because the Dream is the newer ship in the Carnival fleet. We had been reading the not so great reviews about the Dream during the past many months. The negative reviews concerned us but we're people with reasonable expectations and understood that we'll be on a ship with thousands of others, from all walks of life. We knew things wouldn't be perfect but we were going to have a good time anyway. During this review, we'll provide observations and some confirmations of other Dream passengers.

Embarkation: We rolled the dice and gambled that we could fly from OH to FL on Saturday morning and get on board the cruise, without any delays from weather, etc. We thought about coming in the night before to make sure we arrived on time but our gamble paid off. We had an uneventful flight to FL. We booked private transportation with LuxTranso, LLC to get from MCO to Port Canaveral. Our party of eight, along with our 7 large pieces of luggage and carry-on items fit very comfortably into the large van. We stopped at a local Publix store that was close to the port and purchased some bottles of wine and a few cases of bottled water. We printed out luggage tags from the Carnival site and then laminated them, just in case it rained. I had read about another group that purchased cases of water, taped luggage tags to them, and the waters were delivered to their rooms. We tried this also but the luggage porters told us they weren't allowed to bring the cases of water on board. So we carried the cases of water through the embarkation process without incident. I don't recommend this for anyone because the cases of water are very heavy and a pain to carry around. Upon entering the ship, we proceeded to our deck, opened the fire door, and went to our cabin. (around 12:30pm) There are signs on the fire doors that read that rooms won't be ready until 1:30pm. We weren't challenged by anyone when going to our cabins early to drop off our carry-on bags and the water and wine. If it weren't for the heavy cases of water, we would have waited until 1:30pm like most everyone else. None the less, our rooms were ready and we began to unpack and get settled. In general, the embarkation process was very smooth and it only took about 30 minutes to get on board. Nicely done Carnival! The safety drill was conducted around 3:30pm in the main lounge area, the Encore Theater. This also went smoothly and it was great not having to bring the life vests to the safety briefing. Read more