We just returned from our 7 day cruise to the Western Caribbean (Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, and Costa Maya). This was our third Carnival cruise and LAST one! We decided to give Carnival one last try (3rd is the charm – I guess not!).

First, we received notification the day prior that embarkation was going to be delayed after 3pm. Not a big deal, since we don’t live far from the port. However, that was a sign that things were not going to run smoothly. Service and food was bad, and the waiting time even worse. I’ve cruised before and enjoyed to have dinner at my own time –big mistake with Carnival Dream. Not only we needed to wait in a long line to get our pagers; we also needed to wait to be seated for an hour. The shortest amount we waited was 40 minutes. So if you dare to book this cruise, select the late seating since having “my time dining” is not worth it! We usually were there by 7 and needed to wait for an hour to get a seat. Simply ridiculous. We were never impressed by the food quality in the restaurants or the buffet. Be ready to make lines everywhere in this cruise; they did a poor job with the design of the common areas with the amount of people they carry.

The only good thing this cruise offer is the comedy show, but again be ready to wait in line to get a seat if you are lucky to find one. Also, around the third night after coming back to our room the service staff left our cabin door unlocked! Thankfully, all of our things were intact but that was a sign of lack of attention to details. We called to notify and the response we got was that they were going to notify the manager. No one came to our cabin to make sure all was ok as a follow up. Read more