We just returned from our 7 night cruise aboard the Carnival Dream. After reading many reviews here on cruise critic, we felt we had a pretty good idea of what to expect. We went away from Disney Cruise Line this trip for a change of itinerary. Unfortunately, Disney only offers so many choices and we wanted to change it up. While we loved our ports of call of Cozumel, Costa Maya, Roatan, and Belize, many things about the ship left us without the sadness we always have when disembarking with Disney. I'll give you my honest summary below!

Day 1 Embarkation Very smooth. We stayed at the Radisson and took the shuttle over to the port. We arrived at the terminal, put our bags in the bag "bins", and went inside to check in. Make sure to remember to get your "boarding number" BEFORE you get in the check in line! We were in group 6 and were onboard by just after 11 am. The ship is MASSIVE so make sure you hold on to that little map they give you as you will need it. There are NO directional signs in the ship and the layout is confusing. More on the confusion later. The welcome buffet was average at best. The tea is not sweet and is like that canned Nestea stuff and the lemonade is very sweet. We watered ours down and then it tasted like Crystal Light. The Gathering Buffet is STRANGE the way it is laid out. Right in the middle of the buffets are stations like the Mongolian Wok (which we did not try), and the Burrito Bar (which is kind of like Moe's). Upstairs in the middle of the area is the Pasta Bar which is odd because you have to get a number, order on a piece of paper, and then sit and wait (which we found can take up to 25 minutes or longer for a small bowl of pasta). After lunch, my daughter and husband swam in the pool and found a couple of inconveniences there. First, the pools on this ship are SALT water, which is definitely not as great as DCL's freshwater pools. Second, if you want a towel at the pool, you must show your sail and sign card and "check one out" from the pool hut since Carnival uses these very nice towels out by the pool. You will find them in your stateroom as well, but just know that if you lose one you will owe Carnival $22! Finally, a note about the pool deck. I don't know what kind of material they chose to build it out of, BUT be warned that it gets BLISTERING hot in the sun. You WILL need to wear shoes when walking to and from the pool or you will burn your feet. Also, the pools are average size for a cruise ship of average size, but remember that this ship was carrying 4400 passengers and this made the pools extremely overcrowded. They have tons of hot tubs all over the ship, but who wants a hot tub in 90 degree weather. Poor planning here.

At 1:30 we made our way to our stateroom which was one of the Family OV types. It was VERY spacious. Larger than our stateroom on Disney. Here lies one of the only things we liked better about the Dream when compared to DCL. The bathrooms in this category are split, just like on DCL, BUT the upside is that BOTH sides of the split bath offer a shower (one is a traditional shower and the other is a Jr tub with a shower). This came in VERY handy for us, particularly in days in port. We were very lucky when we arrived at our stateroom to find our bags waiting for us at 1:30. There were still people receiving bags well after 6:00 and some bags were even lost (as noted by the note left in everyone's staterooms). I feel like this is, in part, related to the stupid way Carnival has you tag your bags. No stickers here. You print them at home and have to figure out how to not make them fall off! At 3:00 we went to see the Maitre D to try to change our dining to early seating because the shows on this ship for the late seating don't start until 10:30 and my 8 year old likes the shows. We were told that the ship was at capacity at 4400 cruisers and at that point nothing was available for early seating. They said they would try to work it out for us by the second night but made no guarantees. We ended up going to dinner around 6:30 (early seating is 6:00) and asked if there were any available tables for us. The Maitre D, Drago, was awesome and found us a table. After a few minutes, he came back and asked if we would like this table for the rest of the trip and we were very happy with this. Dinner was good. Our servers were good, just overworked (too many tables for too few staff). They don't really have time on this ship for you to develop a personal relationship with them. The show the first night was okay at best. Entertainment on this ship is definitely lacking. Like Simon would say, very karaoke and the singers would not be getting that yellow paper to "Go to Hollywood." Read more