Carnival Dream Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,963 reviews

Beware: all of the negative reviews are true.

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Dream
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mar7956
First Time Cruiser • Age 50s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Apr 2010
Cabin: Deluxe Ocean View
Traveled with children

Embarkation: Group of 12: 6 adults and 6 children ages 14,11,8,7,5,3. Landed at Orlando Airport and met by two Mears 8 passenger vans, this was much cheaper than purchasing individual transfers. Got to port by 11:30 and had to stand in line outside until 12:30, apparently some inspection on ship held things up today. We were at the front of a line so once we were allowed in, things moved fairly quickly. I wouldn't have wanted to be at the end of the line. Went to Dining Room for lunch to regroup, service was slow this day for lunch. Headed to our rooms at 1:30 and immediately greeted by "the smell" on deck one. It wasn't overwhelming and comes and goes, worst on the waterslide stairs.

Ship: Our room was nice and clean and actually accomodated 5 of us pretty well. We didn't mind being on deck 1, it was quiet and the elevator was usually empty by the time it got down to 1. I wouldn't want to try to get on at 4, 5 or 6. If some people would learn to climb one or two flights of stairs, then the elevators would be a lot more efficient. I had read all the reviews and unfortunately everything is true. The ship is jammed with people. Only two small pools and unless you get up at 7:00 am and get a deck chair, you won't get one. We were lucky if we could find one chair for 5 of us to share, elbow to elbow with the other passenger next to us. Forget going to the Gathering during peak times, it was too crowded and chaotic. We enjoyed breakfast in the Dining Room almost every morning...no wait at 8:30 AM. We enjoyed Dinner every night in the dining room. Our waiters, Tata and Kar were FANTASTIC!!! This was the highlight of the trip. Dinner took 1 1/2 hours but we ate constantly from beginning to end and it didn't seem like that much time had passed. Most nights we went directly to the theater after dinner at 7:30 because you had to be there an hour early to get a good seat. The theater is poorly designed and there are few good seats. Lots of poles in the way and bad angles to the stage. Dancing in the Streets was the best show by far. Also, Bob Brisendine was very good.

Camp Carnival: Camp Carnival was terrible. We are previous Royal Caribbean cruisers and my kids couldn't wait to go to Adventure Ocean but they wanted nothing to do with Camp Carnival. The activities were boring and very immature for the 9-11 year olds. One night, they brought the 6-8 year olds down to the show, as soon as the kids saw their parents, the evening was over. The show wasn't even appropriate for these kids. If I wanted my kids to come to the show I would have brought them myself. You couldn't sign your child in if the group was doing an activity elsewhere, you had to wait until they came back and then sign your child in. We were late for several things we wanted to do because we had to wait for Camp Carnival. The 12-14 years olds basically just hung out in Circle C, they didn't really have any organized activities, no wonder people are compaining about kids just running around the ship out of control, they don't have anything else to do.

Cabin Review

Deluxe Ocean View

Cabin 6N
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