Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Dream 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise 3/10/19

[Still Dreaming]

We did the Ncl Dawn out of New Orleans a couple years ago.  We did a couple full days b4 cruise and loved every minute!  Love your review, my husband not so much!  Lol. Your review of the Paul Gauguin has had me researching Tahiti for the last year.  What’s the saying. “ show me the money”.  

[Bimmer09]

Great review Dana! Can't wait until you set sail on the Dream!

Norris

[candigirl41]

Can't wait to read more.  Great review.

 

Candi

[deladane]

6 hours ago, Still Dreaming said:

We did the Ncl Dawn out of New Orleans a couple years ago.  We did a couple full days b4 cruise and loved every minute!  Love your review, my husband not so much!  Lol. Your review of the Paul Gauguin has had me researching Tahiti for the last year.  What’s the saying. “ show me the money”.  

 

hahaha send my apologies to your husband, and my condolences to the loss of his bank account 🤣

[deladane]

5 hours ago, Bimmer09 said:

Great review Dana! Can't wait until you set sail on the Dream!

Norris

 

Thanks Norris!  More coming soon!

[deladane]

1 hour ago, candigirl41 said:

Can't wait to read more.  Great review.

 

Candi

 

Thanks Candi!  

[deladane]

A few months before our cruise, there was an announcement that Carnival was raising the prices of their internet packages.  I was already debating if I wanted to purchase the social media internet plan, so this price hike was enough to convince me to buy it.  I paid $4 per day for the 7 day cruise, so it was $28 total.  After the price hike, it would cost $6.80 per day, or $47.60 for the whole week.  That is a really big increase in price and I probably would not have purchased it for close to $50 for the week, but $28 seemed reasonable, especially considering it gave me access to the Southwest app to check in for our flights home.  I was considering buying the Early Bird Check In for one of our flights home, but that costs $25 for our flight and it seemed like a bad use of money when I could spend just $3 more and get to play on my social media sites all week too!  Before leaving home, I downloaded the Carnival Hub app.  Once on the ship, I opened up the app and this was what it looked like…

 

 

 

Since we would continue to have cell phone and data access through the evening, I didn’t need to connect to the ship internet just yet, but later in the evening, I put my phone on airplane mode and connected to the ship wifi.  When I went back into the app, it now showed this screen:

 

 

It was very easy to set up and it worked great for me throughout the whole cruise.  I also really liked using the Hub App to read the dinner menus and daily schedules each day.  This was the first time when I had access to an app like this on a cruise, and now I can’t imagine cruising without it!

 

[deladane]

After wandering around the ship for a while, we ended our tour at the Lido buffet where DH ordered a reuben sandwich from the deli. 

 

I decided to get some noodles from the Mongolian Wok.  There were about 10 people on line ahead of me and it took about 20 minutes from when I got in line until my food was ready. 

 

 

 

 

These are the 3 sauces listed as options for the stirfry.  I do not like anything spicy, so I ordered the black bean sauce because it did not have any spicy pepper icons next to it.  It turned out that there were chili flakes in that sauce and it was definitely spicy by my definition.  To me, if there are no pepper icons, then the sauce should not be spicy at all, so I was kind of bummed that they put chili flakes in that sauce.  I ended up examining each forkful of food and picking out the chili flakes as I ate.  Later on in the cruise, I realized that they also have soy sauce as an option so I ordered that and I liked my dish much more.  I’m not sure why soy sauce is not listed as an option on the menu?

 

If you look closely, you can see the chili flakes on the pieces of zucchini

 

One thing I will say is they were generous in the portion of shrimp they gave me, so that made me happy.

 

[deladane]

At 1:30pm, we went back down to our cabin, assuming Jennifer should be finished cleaning by now and our checked suitcase should have arrived so we could unpack before the Muster drill.  Sure enough, our cabin was clean and ready for us, but our checked suitcase had not been delivered yet.  It was now 2 hours after we handed our bag over to the porter, and with priority bag delivery, I thought it should be here by now.  What made it even worse is we saw several carts in the hallway that were filled with bags for other cabins and none of them had priority labels.  Why did we pay for this service when we were not receiving any of the included perks?!

 

Before DH was allowed to lay down for his nap, I took a few moments to take photos of our clean cabin.

 

 

 

 

There were 4 closets along the wall when you first enter the cabin.  The hanging rod in the first closet goes front to back instead of side to side, and it looked like the people in this cabin on the last cruise didn’t use it because there were no hangars in here.  We ended up using the floor of this cabinet to store our backpacks and beach bags.

 

The next two closets were identical, with a regular horizontal hanging bar for clothes.  They gave us plenty of hangars, especially since there were only 2 of us in the cabin and the cruise was only 7 days long so we didn’t have very much clothing to store.  I really liked having separate closets though because I am used to having to share one big closet on the Celebrity ships.

 

The last closet has a few shelves and a full length mirror.

[deladane]

These photos are from the last morning of the cruise but I wanted to share it here because it shows the counter space and all the drawers, closets, and cabinets.  There is a very thin drawer along the middle where the stool goes, but I don’t think I took a photo of the inside of that drawer.  The biggest door under the counter with the small key hole houses the mini-fridge.  It kept our drinks cold all week, but make sure to leave the cabinet door ajar to allow for good ventilation and air flow or the fridge might not work as well.

 

 

The desk has 4 drawers.  Even though they are not very deep, they do go pretty far back and I was able to store a lot of loose items in these drawers.

 

The top drawer holds the hair dryer, but there is still a good amount of space for make up or small items that you don’t want to leave rolling around on the counter. 

 

The 2 doors on the side angle of the counter house the safe and an extra shelf that we used to store our snorkel gear. 

 

There are also 2 open shelves next to this cabinet which worked well to store our sun screen and extra Clif Bars.

 

Overall, I thought there was more than enough storage in the cabin and we didn’t come close to filling all the nooks and crannies.  This cabin is designed to have 3 or 4 people in it so I imagine a bigger family would appreciate all that extra space.

 

[bettyboop16]

23 hours ago, deladane said:

 

Oops, just noticed you wrote two replies and I could have responded to both at the same time. 

 

Spoiler alert... we did get beignets on disembarkation day and they were amazing! 😋

Did you try the coffee?

[deladane]

Perhaps the best feature of this oceanview cabin was that it has two bathrooms.  The first bathroom is just like the bathrooms on the other Carnival ships, with a toilet, stall shower with a curtain, a sink, and lots of counter space and storage shelves.

 

 

The second bathroom has a sink and a bathtub, with 2 small shelves next to the mirror (sorry that I did not get a picture of that).  The floor space in this bathroom is extremely cramped, making it tricky to get dressed after a shower, but it was really great to have 2 showers to get ready for dinner when we had limited time after a long day in port, and the 2 sinks made getting ready in the morning and getting ready for bed at night much more convenient.  I still wish this second bathroom had a toilet, but I knew it didn’t have one when I booked the cabin so I can’t really complain.

 

[deladane]

Just now, bettyboop16 said:

Did you try the coffee?

 

I don't drink coffee, but DH had a regular drip coffee and he said it was good.

[Rudyard]

Great review so far! We're booked on Dream for March of 2020 so I'm looking forward to more pics of the ship. I wanted to cruise sooner that year but all the January and February stopped in Progresso. The March cruises stop in Costa Maya. Been to Progresso a few times already and wanted to try somewhere we've never been so decided to wait the extra couple of months. At least it's under a year now! 

[Ariel0185]

Loving your review! My husband and I bought FTTF one time and had a similar experience as you. It was even worse bc embarkation was delayed for some reason that cruise. We’ll never purchase again, especially now that they’ve made it even more expensive. 

[deladane]

4 hours ago, Rudyard said:

Great review so far! We're booked on Dream for March of 2020 so I'm looking forward to more pics of the ship. I wanted to cruise sooner that year but all the January and February stopped in Progresso. The March cruises stop in Costa Maya. Been to Progresso a few times already and wanted to try somewhere we've never been so decided to wait the extra couple of months. At least it's under a year now! 

 

The time will pass faster than you think, and your cruise will be here before you know it!  We really enjoyed our day in Costa Maya... more on that coming up in a few days!

[deladane]

4 hours ago, Ariel0185 said:

Loving your review! My husband and I bought FTTF one time and had a similar experience as you. It was even worse bc embarkation was delayed for some reason that cruise. We’ll never purchase again, especially now that they’ve made it even more expensive. 

 

I hope you at least had an easy time boarding when they did start embarkation!  I would think FTTF would come in handy for a situation like that because all the check in time slots would be pushed back, but Diamond/Platinum/FTTF still board first, no matter how late that boarding happens.

[JaniceB]

Thanks for all the cabin pictures.  Like you, I don't understand why there isn't a toilet in each bathroom.

[deladane]

2 hours ago, JaniceB said:

Thanks for all the cabin pictures.  Like you, I don't understand why there isn't a toilet in each bathroom.

 

To be fair, I'm not sure where they could have put the toilet with such limited floor space in that second bathroom, but it definitely would have been amazing to have a toilet in there!

[deladane]

I took a few minutes to unpack my carry on bag while DH took a short nap, then we went up to the casino bar for happy hour.  There were signs posted in the elevator banks which advertised happy hour from 12-2pm on embarkation day, only in the casino bar, with half off 3 specific cocktails and 3 kinds of wine, and $1 off beers. 

 

 

While we were trying to get the attention of one of the bartenders, we overheard multiple people around us complaining that they were charged full price for their drinks.  It turns out that they ordered “rum punch” instead of “island rum punch” and those are two different drinks.  Why would anyone order the full price drink?!  It seemed like a scam or something, but the bartender did correct their bill.

 

DH ordered the Tropical Mule and I had the Island Rum Punch.  I think DH said his had too much ginger beer, but I enjoyed my drink.

 

 

It was too smokey in the casino for us so we took our drinks to go.  I try to take a photo with these wood storage benches on all of my Carnival cruises.

 

 

[deladane]

We made our way back to the Lido buffet because I wanted to try the fancy cakes for dessert.  These were huge upgrade over the cakes they used to offer, but unfortunately, they are only available during lunch and they serve the old style of cakes during dinner hours.  I ordered a piece of the Funfetti Cheesecake and it was really good (although who taught this woman how to cut a slice of cake?!)

 

 

We still had a few minutes to kill before the Muster drill so we went back to the cabin to look for our suitcase, but nope!  It was still not there!  We relaxed in the cabin until 3:15pm, checking out in the hall every few minutes but the bag never came.  It was fun watching the boats move up and down the Mississippi River from the window in our cabin.

 

 

This is the current room service menu.  We never ordered anything so I can’t speak to how things tasted, but I did notice the limited free options on half the left page, versus the list of paid options which took up the other half of the left page plus all of the right page.

 

 

Breakfast room service door tag

 

[deladane]

Jennifer left us a few goodies while we were gone.  Here is today’s Fun Times:

 

 

 

 

Welcome letter explaining the benefits of FTTF

 

The 12 pack of water bottles that I preordered online

[JaniceB]

Great idea taking photos of the benches!  

[vicky3vicky]

I am having such FUN reading your review! Are you going to be platinum soon, because I would love it if you were to do a review on all the specifics on first cruise platinum. How can I find your other reviews? The only other one I have read was the one in Europe in 2015. I have always wanted to see Europe, but after reading your review [and the pictures, OMG the pictures!] I am becoming OBSESSED with the idea! Do you have a blog or a travel channel I could follow? If not, you would be great!

[deladane]

1 hour ago, JaniceB said:

Great idea taking photos of the benches!  

 

Thanks!  I wish other cruise lines had something similar, but for now, I just have photos on the benches of the Carnival ships.  I also always take photos with the orange life saver rings on embarkation day because that's something they have on every ship and it says the ship name on it.  I think that photo is coming up soon, probably tonight or tomorrow morning 🙂