Carnival dream - trip report - august 2013

[Dicenator]

CARNIVAL DREAM - AUGUST 2013 - TRIP REPORT

When we departed from the Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas on 8/23 in the morning we went to the Coco Beach Marriot to stay the night. The Carnival Dream was leaving the next morning, Saturday 8/24. Our friends, Mike and Sandi from Ontario met us at the hotel and we spent the day at the pool. The departure port was Port Canaveral and the ship left at 4 PM. The following day Sunday we arrived at Nassau at 11 AM and departed at 6 PM.

In Nassau all of us, me, Eva, Mike, Sandi and their 2 teenage girls, Carley and Cassie went to the Sheraton and paid for day passes for the pools and the beach. We took a cab out their but the #10 bus to return to town.

San Juan Puerto Rico was our next stop after an at sea day but the timing was weird. We arrived at 1 PM and were leaving at 7 PM. All of us went to the Marriot in Condado to do the day passes to use their facility. The girl at the desk told us that they were booked full and she couldn't sell us the day passes. Well the beaches in Puerto Rico are free so we walked through the lobby on our way to the beach. As we walked by the pool there were hardly any people there so we just grabbed some loungers and proceeded to spend the afternoon at the pool. After a few hours we recognized some other passengers from our ship who were sold day passes after we were told none were available. We stayed there until 4:30 PM and then went back to Old San Juan where the ship was docked. I went directly onto the ship but the other 5 went into town to do some shopping and sight seeing.

The next day was St. Thomas and we docked at 7 AM and were departing at 3 PM. My original plans were to go to Magens Bay but after 2 straight days of sun, I decided that I needed a break from the sun for the day. My wife and I went shopping at the Havensight mall which is right at the cruise dock. I lost my original wedding band in Aruba about 6 years ago and about 2 years ago on a cruise I gave the replacement to my wife to put away in the safe on the ship. That wedding band has never been found. So in St. Thomas she bought me a new one. It's very nice, emeralds and diamonds in a yellow gold ring. I call it the Godfather ring and I told her to kiss it every night before going to the casino for luck. Guess what, it did work and I'll give the details a little later.

Our last stop was Grand Turk island and this was a beach day. I only spent maybe 2.5 hours there due to not wanting too much sun. The beach and the water here are great. The highlight of this adventure was Mike bringing some cheerios out into the water to feed some of the tropical fish. Once you crumbled up 1 cheerio and put it in the water it would take about a minute before the first fish showed up. The rest came swarming in about a minute later and there were probably around 150 of these silver with black along the fins fish ranging in size from 6" long to 12" long in a feeding frenzy. You could put your hand right into the middle of this frenzy and be touching the fish. I got nipped on the fingers 3 times but these fish don't have teeth. The funniest thing I saw was this big black guy who saw one of the fish swim by him and he went screaming out of the water.

The last full day of the cruise was an at sea day.

The Carnival Dream is a big ship with a gross tonnage of 130,000 tons, which was built in 2009. The passenger capacity was 4,000 and at times particularly at the buffet and around the gift shops it was very crowded. There were no mechanical issues with the ship and everything looked to be in good shape. We had a balcony stateroom on the 10th deck close to the forward elevators. The AC in our room worked great which is good for my wife who likes the room to be like an ice box.

We had the anytime dining which was at the Crimson Restaurant which was located midship. For the first 3 days we had a difficult time finding our way to this restaurant. This was the first ship where I've had some difficulty in finding my way around. Our head waiter at dinner was a guy named Adi from Bosnia. He was excellent and funny also. His favorite phrase was "I love my job". We tipped him an extra $20 on the last night and also the same to our cabin steward, Christian.

Now for some casino talk. The casino on this ship was large but it was not overwhelmed with slot machines in every available space. There was plenty of walking space to get around the table games and the machines. A lot of the dealers were from Peru and eastern Europe particularly Romania. The table games were 1 Caribbean stud, 1 Let it Ride, 2 Three card Poker, 1 craps table, 2 Fun 21 (Spanish 21), 2 Roulette, 2 Electronic Poker Pro and 7 Blackjack in various denominations from $6 through $25. We ran across Cecilia again for the third time on a Carnival ship. She is a pit boss and gave us a free drink I think on the last day of the cruise. It's just my impression but Carnival seems to have tightened up on the free drinks in the casino unless you are a high roller. If you acquire 1500 points on slots in a 7 day cruise you will get a free drink card.

My wife, Eva, was the big winner in the casino on this cruise. She only played the electronic poker two nights because she felt that too many of the men were too aggressive in their betting patterns and some of the players had some odd personality quirks. The first night she was even but the second night she was up $100. She really didn't play blackjack with the continuous shufflers other than a few times for small amounts of money. The main game she played was Fun 21 because this game was hand shuffled. During the week she was up around $400 at this game. But the highlight was Roulette. Her number is 17 for her birthday. She saw 17 on the Roulette display boards all week long and 2 nights before the cruise ended she had 7 chips on 17 when it hit and then it hit again 2 rolls later with 8 chips on the bet. So that was a $525 win. On the last night of the cruise she had $10 on 17 when it hit for $350. Her final tally for the cruise was up $1000.

On to craps. The table was 12 feet long with a red micro fiber layout. The table bounce and the wall bounce were absolutely normal and the table had small radius corners so there were no issues with the dice bouncing into the curved section of the wall. None of the dealers had anything to say about my notepad and pen on top of the chip rail. On the first afternoon on the ship all 4 of us, me, Eva, Mike and Sandi make some practice throws and I felt confident that my throwing would be good. WRONG!!!! Normally my throw if it is 95% (100% being a perfect throw) will give me good results. My throwing for the whole week looked and felt good but the results were not what I was expecting. It is so frustrating when you make a good throw to see the dice rebound a short distance from the wall with a 5/2 or 4/3 or 6/1 result. My throwing started improving on the last 2 days when I concentrated on keeping the throws low, 3 inches, and landing them around 27" from the wall. I also ended up using the 3V dice set instead of my usual hard way set. For the whole week I was not able to figure out what was wrong. I always assume it is with my throw. Speed changes, landing zone changes, height of throw changes and dice set changes had no influence on my throwing results. I was actually so frustrated after the first 3 or 4 days that I was going to the craps table with $100 that I was willing to lose. Fortunately, most of the short hands had at least 2 paying hits on box numbers and didn't end up with a loss. My wife Eva had pretty good throwing results from the end of the table with her Parr throw. She made a change in her throwing technique which seemed to work very well for her. What she did different was bend her wrist back to get more spin on the dice when throwing. Most of her throws looked very nice with both dice staying together in flight. She had the longest hand for the week with 29 throws. My friend Mike also makes a Parr throw from SL. His results were pretty much average with a high hand of 24 throws. 90% of his throws were soft with a small bounce off the wall but the dice were staggered and we didn't get a chance to work on this during the week.

Here are the throwing results for the week:

EVA

DAY #1

7 THROWS 1 POINT

6 THROWS

9 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

DAY #2

14 THROWS 2 POINTS

19 THROWS 3 POINTS 3 CO WINS

DAY #3

15 THROWS 1 POINT

5 THROWS 1 CO WIN

5 THROWS 1 POINT

6 THROWS

DAY #4

29 THROWS 3 POINTS 5 CO WINS

DAY #5

15 THROWS

6 THROWS 1 CO WIN

23 THROWS 3 POINTS 2 CO WINS

7 THROWS

10 THROWS 1 POINT 2 CO WINS

DAY #6

19 THROWS 3 POINTS 1 CO WIN

DAY #7

7 THROWS 1 POINT

9 THROWS 1 CO WIN

BOB

DAY #1

UH 12 THROWS 2 POINTS 1 CO WIN

UH 4 THROWS 1 POINT

PARR 8 THROWS 1 CO WIN

UH 9 THROWS 1 CO WIN

UH 4 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 15 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 3 THROWS

UH 5 THROWS

PARR 7 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 10 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 16 THROWS 3 POINTS 1 CO WIN

UH 17 THROWS 1 POINT 4 CO WINS

UH 15 THROWS

UH 14 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 10 THROWS 2 POINTS

DAY #2

UH 4 THROWS

UH 7 THROWS

UH 7 THROWS 1 CO WIN

PARR 6 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

DAY #3

UH 8 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 8 THROWS

UH 6 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 15 THROWS

UH 16 THROWS 3 POINTS

UH 10 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 9 THROWS 1 POINT

PARR 10 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 13 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 12 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 8 THROWS 1 CO WIN

UH 7 THROWS

UH 7 THROWS

UH 4 THROWS 1 CO WIN

PARR 6 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 9 THROWS 1 POINT 2 CO WINS

UH 6 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

DAY #4

UH 4 THROWS 2 CO WINS

UH 8 THROWS

UH 6 THROWS

PARR 19 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 16 THROWS 1 CO WIN

UH 13 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 6 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 9 THROWS 1 CO WIN

PARR 13 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 9 THROWS 1 CO WIN

PARR 7 THROWS

DAY #5

UH 5 THROWS

UH 7 THROWS

UH 10 THROWS 2 POINTS 2 CO WINS

UH 7 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 7 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 19 THROWS 1 POINT 4 CO WINS

UH 7 THROWS

UH 11 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

DAY #6

UH 2 THROWS

PARR 11 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 6 THROWS

UH 13 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 8 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 5 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 12 THROWS 1 CO WIN

UH 10 THROWS 1 POINT 5 CO WINS

UH 23 THROWS 5 POINTS 1 CO WIN

UH 17 THROWS

DAY #7

UH 9 THROWS

UH 10 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

PARR 16 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 5 THROWS 1 CO WIN

PARR 10 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 6 THROWS 1 POINT

UH 12 THROWS 2 POINTS 1 CO WIN

UH 25 THROWS 2 POINTS

UH 10 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 7 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

UH 19 THROWS 1 POINT 1 CO WIN

In summary Eva made 20 points in 18 hands with 17 come out wins. I made 64 points in 76 hands with 48 come out wins. Our win for the week was $365 of which half was due to Eva's throwing. After the first few days I had a big drop in confidence which really cut back on my betting. There were no other players who could throw the dice with enough skill to help out the profit. They were all shake and bake throwers. So I bet on myself, Eva and my friend Mike. Again on this ship there were quite a few craps players so that I never really got the opportunity to switch to the left side to see how throwing with my left hand would work.

I would go on this ship again because I still feel that the table was good and that it was my throwing that was questionable.

Dicenator

[Fred Ziffel]

Dicenator, still some nice shooting. What were the table minimums and odds?

[Dicenator]

Fred,

 

First, thank you for your kind words concerning my throwing results.

The table minimum was $5 with a $500 maximum with 2X odds.

 

Dicenator

[orangeglitter]

thank you for the review