Dark Defender

Hey strangers!

I hope you're all keeping well. It's been a while (4 Jan 2014 since I logged in I'm informed!).

I've been on 2 cruises, both Thomson Dream. First time August 2011, second time June 2012. Went off it the second time as there was a marked drop in quality. One of the main things for us was the food quality and time it took to get served. Drastically worse from 10 months earlier.

We're now considering a cruise again, and I'm wondering if anyone whose been on the Dream a few times over the years can comment on their view on the trend.

Obviously it's just an indicator, as we anticipate cruising again in 2016. As such the game can change again. But I'd really value your thoughts. Right now we're also looking at NCL and RC, but we do really like the entertainment on the Dream. How's this holding up nowadays?

Many thanks in advance!

It just donned on me that when Thomson was touting what Platinum cruising would involve exotic cuisines were mentioned.

Has this been evidenced?

I noted a big drop in food quality between our August 2011 Dream cruise and our June 2012 Dream cruise.

King Soloman was apparently the same Exec Chef on both cruises (didn't see or hear him in 2011, couldn't miss him in 2012!).

I attributed the problem to cheaper ingredients and serving a lot more people with less staff.

I'm convinced in 2011 they set ship capacity to circa 70% of full capacity to have plenty of spare cabins if the plumbing went wrong again. When the ship was legit full even with good ingredients the quality would drop. But provide less staff for more people and surely worse ingredients and it has to get worse.

Examples being soup tasting the same no matter what flavour it was supposed to be, a struggle to get meat, lukewarm food. None of this was a problem less than a year earlier.

All the above is based on Orion btw - the best meals were probably lunch or late night in Sirens/Lido. But we simply didn't want to self serve after getting dressed for the evening - I'm far too clumsy for them games!

I'm going to sound a right bah humbug here, but I'd rather say than not.

We stayed in Son Matias Beach in August 2011. It was week 2 of our holiday, the first week being on the Dream. Nothing could match the first week of the holiday but overall SMB is very good - I'm not completely averse to ever returning.

However, the week we were there was strange in some respects as all the other guests talked about was how many times they'd stayed there. In the restaurant, in the lifts, pool area - it's all we heard. It just kinda got to us a bit.

We also found that some staff could act odd. Eg we went for dinner one evening and no staff were on the door. We waited and were seem by several staff collecting plates or serving drinks and no-one came over so we just went in. The maitre'd later appeared and sajd we'd need to go to the door with him so he could register our cards (validate our entitlement to din dins). We did so. One of our party found this rude and embarrassing. I wasn't embarrassed aa such - more confused why the maitre'd couldn't have just taken lur cards and came back with them.

Again though, everything else was generally fine. Good entertainment, nice rooms with a great view, edible food. Enjoy!