Carnival Dream Review
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If you read about the Dream on cruise critic you'll know the dream is a blown up Carnival ship. This is true... the issue is the number of cabins and passengers blew up but the guest areas did not. There are a TON more people on the ship but only two pools. So many guests are in the pools the water is murky to the point where you can't see the bottoms. They were quick to close the pools each evening to change the water over. The saving grace for the kids were the slides. The slides were also fun for a bit for adults but we mainly sat there while the kids went up and down over and over. Be warned on the tallest two slides, they may take a solid toll on your back. The tubes don't quite line up like they should so it's like a bumpy cheese grater of sorts but we didn't get physically cut just a bit sore. Certainly not enough pain to not ride again though... I went a good dozen times over the week:)
On a plus side there are plenty of hot tubs. However each one had the white plastic parts that surround the tub breaking in pieces and generally floating around inside of the hot tub. We watched, from out balcony, a crew work on one hot tub all day while in port fixing/re-sealing/etc. yet when it was turned back on all the white parts floated around again.
Balcony rooms along the sides of the ship get to enjoy everyone's conversations from deck 4 below. Unlike traditional balcony rooms where you look over and see water on this on you look over and see people lay out on Deck 4. It was almost shocking how well we could hear individual conversations from the hot tubs and deck chairs all the way up on deck 9. If you want a quiet balcony this isn't the right ship for you. A plus of the balcony setup is they stay very dry during rain storms and during rainy times it was one of the most peaceful places to be.
Cabin Review
This room is typical Carnival Balcony. HOWEVER it is directly below the entrance from the pool deck to the inside / buffet area. This entrance has a grated drain type piece that you probably wouldn't ever notice while walking on it.... But inside the cabin every time anything rolls over it (i.e. the many carts that they use in the buffet) it sounds like a train rolling over tracks. The ceiling would literally shake at times. This goes on all day and into the night until say, 3:00 AM - ish and starts back up 5:30AM-ish. I am a deep sleeper and noise usually doesn't bother me and I managed only a few hours sleep through the 3rd night of the cruise. The noise is INSANE.Carnival ended up giving us 20% back and a discount on a future cruise after complaining for 4 days straight. That discount was NOT worth it in ANY way. Stay the heck away from this cabin and I'd assume the one directly on the other side of the ship. There are others as well.I think the thing that annoyed me the most is Guest services has to know which cabins are like this. It was THAT bad. And they jerked us around for days with ear plugs, etc. They should be putting a rubber mat over the grated thing upstairs at night and it would probably solve the issue but they are either too dumb or truly don't give a crap about passengers.To put things in perspective: This was my 14th cruise (5th with Carnival) and I didn't complain about a cabin on any other ship. I may have had a minor issue here and there but never had any need to go to guest services about it. The way guest services handled the situation was flat maddening. The likelihood of taking another Carnival cruise is slim to none after being in a sleep deprivation experiment for the week and being 'compensated' with 20 percent back.