Cruising Christine's Dream Review 10/25/15

[bakersdozen12]

Sea Day #3: Halloween cont'd

 

When it came time to be on stage in the Encore theater for the costume contest, I was actually pretty darn nervous! I cannot recall the last time that I had been in front of that many people! We were all called up one at a time (or one couple or group at a time), and we were sort of interviewed by Hennie the CD. Here's a picture of us on stage that I also snagged off of the social media roll call group page. I would like to go on record to say that I swear I didn't have that gut before the cruise. Really. I blame the chocolate melting cakes and bitter n blanc! :D

 

 

We didn't make it to the finals, but it didn't matter. It was so much fun and it will be an experience that I will never forget! Here are the finalists.

 

 

The b&w Titantic couple won, and I was so happy they did because their costume was amazing and took a lot of effort on their part. We sat next to them while waiting for the contest to start, and they told us the makeup took hours. And they made their costumes themselves. Here's a picture of them that I snapped earlier in the evening.

 

 

Well, our last day on board the Dream finally came to an end, and I knew before going to bed that debarkation day was going to be so depressing. And I also knew that I would be doing many more cruises in the future!

 

In addition to the automatic tips, I also tipped our headwaiter extra, as well as our cabin steward. And actually, I tipped our cabin steward (Jimmy) even more than the head waiter because his service was beyond amazing. Such a nice guy. I gave both extra tips in nice thank-you cards. For Jimmy, I had left the envelope on our bed so he would find it when he did our turn down service. When we saw him later that night he thanked us and you could tell that he was really appreciative. The card that I gave him said something along the lines of "Sometimes the people who deserve the most thanks, hear it the least." Anyway, I think he was generally touched by it. That night, we found a very special towel animal.

 

 

Debarkation Day

 

Just to touch upon this briefly, because we had FTTF, we were given zone 2 tags, however, we were staying in NOLA for a couple additional days, and renting a car that we weren't scheduled to pick up until 11 am. So, knowing that I wanted to be one of the last people off of the ship, I went to Guest Services the previous day when we got the tags and asked if we could get the highest number tags as possible. The guy actually looked shocked! I guess he doesn't hear that much. Anyway, he gave us ones with zone 35 and I gave him our zone 2's and told him to give them to someone else that wanted them. Hopefully someone who really needed them, got them.

 

We had a nice leisurely breakfast in the lido, and hung out there until we eventually heard "last call" and were forced off of the ship. Getting off was easy. The line moved quickly. It was actually after we got off the ship that the line through customs was much slower. Now, we weren't in a rush so I wasn't stressing at all. But it does make me think that I don't ever want to have an early flight on debarkation day. I don't think I could handle the stress of possibly missing a flight. I'm anal like that. I would rather get to the airport hours early than just before takeoff.

 

Anyway, we had no problems finding our bags, and we made our way out to the front of the terminal to catch a taxi to take us to the car rental office. At that time we saw all of the lucky people getting on the ship, and I remember thinking that was just us one week ago, and now *we* were the sad people getting off that we had seen ourselves the previous week. I did not like the tables being turned around, that's for sure!

 

Well, that's it for me for the night. Tomorrow I will try to post about our post-cruise activities in NOLA, in case anyone is interested in ideas of things to do while visiting the city. NOLA is my favorite city to visit, so I highly recommend taking at least an extra day or two to see the sights if you are cruising out of NOLA.

[untailored bostonian]

If you have 2256 on the Dream, I think you are going to love it! [...]

 

 

Thank for the info and pictures.:)

[MsSoloTravel]

Thank you for taking the time to post a review. It was enjoyable to read. I'll be on the Dream next Sept and can't wait! (I can't believe you didn't make time for the slides!!) Welcome to cruising!

[bakersdozen12]

[U][B]Post-cruise New Orleans Vacation

[/B][/U]The rest of this review will be about our 2-day post-cruise stay in New Orleans. My husband and I vacationed in New Orleans years ago, and to this day it's been my favorite city to visit. There is just so much to do. The French Quarter has an "up all night" Vegas feel to it, and the plantations near the city are worth a drive to the countryside. Last time we visited two plantations: Oak Alley and Laura. Oak Alley is much more picturesque, but the Laura Plantation had a much better tour, rich with history. This time around we were going to do two things that we didn't have a chance to do last time: a swamp tour, and a visit to St Louis Cemetery.
I had figured out that it would be most cost effective to rent a car for two days from Avis. The cost was a little over $50/day, and would be cheaper than the total cost of transportation to the post-cruise hotel, to the swamp tour and cemetery, and from the hotel to the air port.

After taking a short taxi ride from the port to the Avis office on Canal St, we headed to Prytania Park Hotel in the Garden District. I had booked the hotel through bookit.com, and in doing so, received two free passes for a swamp tour. In addition to saving money on that tour, the hotel itself was a good price; just a little over $100 per night. And they had free parking for the rental car.

Overall, I was pleased with the hotel. The staff was very nice, and the room was decent. The set-up for the hotel is definitely unique. I can't speak for all their rooms, but our room was located off of a cute little courtyard.

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I had known ahead of time that this hotel does not have elevators, so if you end up with a room on the second floor, you have to carry your bags up. Fortunately we had a bottom level room, but anyone thinking to book this hotel should specifically request a first floor room if you don't want to carry your bags up stairs. I was prepared to if we had to, so I didn't make the request. We just lucked out.

The room was cute and comfortable.

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My only real complaint about the hotel can be seen in the last picture that I posted. See that little computer monitor on the desk? Well, I'm being sarcastic. That's not a computer monitor. It's a TV. That just happens to be the size of a computer monitor. They really need to invest in larger TVs!

That first night we didn't do much, as it was raining in New Orleans. After settling in, we walked to a Mexican restaurant called Tacos & Beer on Saint Charles St for a late lunch/early dinner. Sorry, no food porn this time! The food was really good, but I was starving and pretty tired so I forgot to take a picture. After dinner we just went back to the hotel to relax, and crashed pretty early.

[bakersdozen12]

[U][B]Post-cruise cont'd[/B][/U]

The next morning we got up bright and early so that we would have time to go to a place that I didn't even know about the last time we were in NOLA: Cafe du Monde!

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I have no idea how we didn't know about this place before. Actually, the first I heard about it was from this forum, when I was researching for this cruise. I just had to see what everyone was raving about! I had heard about the long lines, but it was Monday morning, so I figured how bad could it be? Well, this is what we were up against:

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Honestly, though, it wasn't that bad. The line moves really quickly as there are a lot of tables, and the service is quick. And besides, it's worth the wait! Their beignets really are as good as everyone says they are!

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After breakfast we did a little walking around and shopping in the French Quarter. It was starting out to be a gloomy day, but at least it wasn't raining like the day before.

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Our swamp tour wasn't scheduled until later that afternoon, so the cemetery would be first. Upon arriving we quickly found out that you can't just walk around the cemetery yourself, you actually have to pay for a guided tour. I wasn't too please with that, but I begrudgingly paid the price because I really wanted to see this cemetery. After all, scenes from AHS: Coven were filmed there!

In the end, it was worth paying to see, although I do think it's overpriced considering how short the tour is.

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[bakersdozen12]

[U][B]Post-cruise cont'd[/B][/U]

The most popular tomb in St Louis Cemetery No. 1 is Marie Leveau's resting place, which I was excited to see.

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What I didn't know is that it's also going to be the final resting place (eventually) of Nicholas Cage. He's tomb doesn't exactly fit the surroundings, but I guess it's fitting for him. He always has been unique!

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We had just enough time to finish up with the cemetery tour and make our scheduled swamp tour in Laplace, LA, which is about a half hour drive out of New Orleans. The name of the place is Cajun Pride Swamp Tours, and I do recommend them for anyone thinking of taking a swamp tour while in NOLA.

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Our tour was on Nov 2nd, which is pretty late in the season for swamp tours. Fortunately it ended up clearing up and being a nice day for the tour. But, since they don't do as many tours that time of year, the little restaurant that they have was closed. No lunch for us that day! So we checked out the gift store and found some snacks, and then walked around the grounds while waiting for the tour to start. There were enough people that they split us up onto two of their boats.

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[bakersdozen12]

[U][B]Post-cruise cont'd[/B][/U]

Because it was late in the season, we didn't see any large alligators, and we didn't get to watch the tour guide feed any. But we did see a ton of juvenile alligators all over the place.

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The swamp itself was incredibly beautiful though, and even that alone was worth the price of the tour.

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The tour guide was very knowledgeable about the area and about the various animals that live in the swamp. He even brought out a little baby alligator, a snake, and various turtles for everyone to take turns holding.

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I've had plenty of turtles for pets, so I skipped holding the turtles, and I definitely wasn't going to hold the snake, but the little alligator was adorable!

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And here is a picture of my husband with the giant snapping turtle shell.

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After the tour, we were starving due to having skipped lunch, so we pulled off of the highway on the way back to New Orleans and ended up eating dinner at a Golden Corral, for no other reason than I was already missing the lido buffet!

There was a mall nearby, so we decided to stop after earting and walk off the very large meal that we just had (an all-you-can-eat buffet is probably not a good idea when you are starving). Now here is where our vacation could have ended very, very badly.

We walked around the mall for about an hour, but honestly, the mall was practically deserted, and there wasn't much there. Half of the mall was just empty store locations. It was actually pretty creepy because there was hardly anyone in the mall. Now, that little fact would end up being a godsend.

Because when we were ready to leave, I realized that the car rental keys were not in my pocket where they should have been.

They weren't in my purse either.

I was suddenly panicking. Envisioning someone finding them and then going out to the parking lot and taking off with the rental car. What a way that would have been to end our vacation: to have to call up Avis and tell them that the rental was stolen!

And all of our valuables were in the trunk of the car too, because we didn't want to leave them in the hotel room. Our cameras, my tablet, etc.

Well, we both separated and frantically back-tracked our steps, with me practically in tears. After what seemed like eternity, my husband ended up finding the keys on the ground at the first place we stopped in the mall, an Orange Julius where I bought a water. Because the mall was so dead, no one had picked up the keys! No one even noticed them Now, I would like to think that if someone had, they would have just turned the into the mall lost & found. But, you just never know these days.

Well, after that I was more than ready to fly home the next day. Our ten day vacation had come to an end, and it was wonderful overall! I am now officially addicted to cruising, and have two more booked for next year. Counting down the days! This Western itinerary was great, but next up is an Eastern, followed by a Southern. After that...who knows. ;) Edited December 28, 2015 by bakersdozen12

[beef8066]

Great review. We are going on the Dream in December. 12 of us from South west Missouri. We are staying before the cruise so I am glad you included, the extras you did.
Thanks so much.