Today’s Fun Times
After the first three days of our vacation required setting our alarms for annoyingly early hours, preceded by hectic work weeks for both of us, today’s schedule for a day at sea was a welcome treat. You would think I would take advantage of having no where to be and no need to set an alarm clock by getting to sleep in, right? Well of course that didn’t happen and I was wide awake by 7am. I tried falling back asleep, but by 7:20, I realized that was unlikely to happen and I gave up. I peaked outside and it looked like a beautiful sunny day, so I may as well get dressed and get this day started.
I took this opportunity to walk around and take photos of the public spaces on the ship. Most people were still in their cabins, so this was a good chance to get some photos without anyone in them.
Deck 1 hallway
I liked the art they used to decorate the walls on the passenger decks. It had a mid-century vibe and subdued color scheme which is rare to see on Carnival’s older ships.
The photo above is in the mid-ship elevator bank on deck 1. All the other decks have the glass elevators in that spot, but those elevators don’t go all the way down to deck 1.
Mid-ship elevators
Ship map located at all of the elevator banks
The only time I tolerated walking through the casino was in the early morning hours. Maybe they need to upgrade the ventilation system or something, but once the day got started, it was way too smokey in there and I tried to avoid it if possible. Luckily, you can cut across the ship right below the casino by using deck 4, and then use the mid-ship elevator stairs to get back up to deck 5 again.
Fun Ships in the atrium
Decks 3, 4, and 5 in the Atrium, looking down from deck 5
The next few photos are all in the Encore! Main Lounge where they did all of the production shows
Standing at the top of Deck 5. You can access the balcony level from deck 4 and deck 5.
The seats in the front row of the center of the balcony level were almost always left empty because their view is blocked by the control booth. We sat in the front row, but one section over to the left of here for an unobstructed view of the stage
Standing in front of the stage on Deck 3
Funky art work on the stairs
Atrium Bar and lobby, looking up from deck 3
Information about the internet packages… They charge $8 per day for the social media plan if you wait until you are on the ship to purchase it. That is double what I paid!
Information about the Carnival Hub app
They had several of these kiosks around the ship so you could access your onboard account without waiting on line at guest services
The photo gallery before they set up all the photos, and a trash bin for rejected photos
Heading all the way aft on Deck 5, we get to the Burgundy Lounge which is used for the comedy shows. Not pictured is the bar towards the left side, and an additional large seating area on the right side
The Song lounge for smaller live music acts and karaoke
The Piano Bar. We could almost always find a seat up at the bar, and if not, then there was seating available at the tables.
Bonsai Sushi… this was located in the hallway between the entertainment venues aft on deck 5 and Ocean’s Plaza in the midship area. There was no barrier to keep the people eating separated from the walkway, so I imagine that would make for a hectic dining experience
Crimson Restaurant, midship MDR. It was really nice that they kept the doors open to this dining room all day long so you could get from the midship elevators up to the atrium, theater, guest services, and the forward elevators. The galley is just aft of here so you could not go in that direction without going up to Deck 5 or down to Deck 2, but at least you could go forward at any time of day.
Riding in the glass elevators, looking up through the sky roof to see the water slides
Looking down on the glass elevators from deck 11
There are still a few lounge chairs available at 8:30am at the Lido pool on Sea Day #1
Nothing but sun, sky, and ocean
Beautiful views of the wake from the aft pool
Lots of seats available on Serenity Deck at 8:50am
My tour of the ship ended at the Lido Buffet as I was getting hungry and needed a little snack before our real breakfast at the dining room.
Banana bread, mini cinnamon rolls (these were what I picked as my snack and they were really good!), and apple danishes
Croissants and apple panettone
Sliced cheeses and deli meats
Bagels, waffles, bread, and biscuits
Breakfast meats and potatoes
Last night before falling asleep, DH and I made a deal. I knew it was highly likely that I would wake up long before he was ready to get out of bed. He is not the biggest fan of early wake up calls while on vacation, but he’s a good sport and goes along with it on port days. I promised him before going on the cruise that I would let him sleep in on the morning of the 2 sea days as well as Costa Maya day since we didn’t arrive there until noon. Last night, DH said I should go explore the ship if I woke up early, and I could come back to wake him at 9:15am so we could go for brunch. As expected, DH was still in bed when I returned at 9:20am, but he was awake and ready to start his day. While he got ready, I read over this letter that was left in our mailbox.
I knew that FTTF would get us priority access to the tenders in Belize, but I was very surprised that we would also have priority debarkation in Costa Maya tomorrow. There was likely to be a big rush of people all trying to get off the ship ASAP when we docked at noon, and we needed to get to our private tour by 12:45pm, so this priority access was much appreciated to take off some of the stress.
Sea Day Brunch was held in the aft dining room from 8:30am until 1pm. Carnival started rolling out a new brunch menu on some of the ships, but the Dream still had the old menus on our sailing.
I was tempted to get the French toast, but instead opted for a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and 2 fried eggs.
DH ordered the huevos rancheros (and the flamin’ tomatoes soup, but I forgot to take a photo of that… it looked like a bowl of marinara sauce, and that’s basically what it tasted like too!)
After brunch, we went back to the cabin to get a DH’s book and my trip journal, and we were greeted by this cute little towel animal. It took me a few days to get used to seeing the towel animal in the morning instead of with evening turn down service like they used to do, but I still always appreciate the friendly reminder that I’m cruising with Carnival! (Celebrity and Paul Gauguin don’t do towel animals and I missed them on those cruises! To me, towel animals are one of the best cruising traditions.)
I asked Jennifer if we could keep our towel animals through the whole week of the cruise so I could make a little collection on our window sill. Today, our little guy looks a little lonely, but he will soon be joined by lots of towel animal friends!
We made our way back upstairs to the Lido Waves Pool and it was way more crowded now than when I was here 3 hours ago! They were doing the ice carving demonstration in the middle of the deck space, so lots of people were crowded around to get a good view.
As much as I love beautiful sunny days, I try to stay in the shade as much as possible to avoid getting a sunburn. On port days, the sun can be unavoidable depending on what excursions we have planned, so I try to stay in the shade on sea days as I can usually find a place to sit that is close by the “action” but also out of the sun. One of the things I really liked about the set up of the Lido pool area on the Dream was that it was 3 decks high from deck 10 to 12, leaving lots of spots in the shade under the deck above if we stayed on decks 10 or 11. Deck 10 was usually very busy between the pool, the bars, and the many food venues, so we spent a lot of time on deck 11. That gave us a great view over the action below us, but we could still hide out in the shade from deck 12 above us.
I just loved the different shades of blue we saw throughout the cruise
Looking straight down, we could see lots of people using the lounger chairs on deck 5.
I just
noticed the reflection of the lifeboats on the windows below us… that’s a fun
effect!
We spent about an hour out there, with DH reading his book and me jotting down notes in my trip journal. At 12:30pm, we decided to go to Pasta Bella for lunch. Pasta Bella is located upstairs in the Lido Buffet on deck 11. You need to check in with the hostess and she will give you a paper with the menu to check off what you want in your dish, and a stand with a number on it so you can pick your own table and the waiter will know where you are sitting when your food is ready. I hoped that eating here on the first sea day would mean that it was less crowded because people hadn’t found it yet, but I was definitely wrong! It was very busy and the hostess told us it would take about 30 minutes for our food to be ready. We each filled out a sheet, put it in the box at the back of the room, and took a seat to wait for our lunch.
While we were waiting, a waiter dropped off some garlic bread. It was a nice flaky consistency, almost like a focaccia, and had the perfect ratio of garlic and butter. It was tempting to ask for a second serving but we held out to wait for our pasta.
The waiter delivered our food almost exactly 30 minutes after we ordered, so it was impressive how accurate the hostess’s prediction was! The pasta was hot and tasty, but I wish they put in more of the toppings (I only had 3 shrimp and 2 pieces of chicken). No worries though, that just meant I would be ready for my next feeding a little sooner!
Our roll call on Cruise Critic was not very active for this cruise. I think there were only 4 pages in the thread by the time we sailed. This was my first cruise when there was a group on that other social media site (pretty sure it is against the rules here for me to mention the site by name… I’ll just call it “Thumbs Up”). The Thumbs Up group had over 400 members and it was very active, especially in the last few weeks leading up to the cruise, with people posting daily countdowns and asking questions about excursions. Someone organized an informal meet and greet in the Atrium Bar for 1pm today, so DH and I went down there to check it out after lunch. We sat at the bar until 1:10pm and couldn’t figure out if anyone else was there for the meet and greet. It’s hard to meet in a public space for something like this when you don’t know what everyone else looks like, and there can be people there who are not part of your group. On my previous cruises, we have always worn plastic beaded necklaces to these kinds of events so we can all find each other, but no one suggested that for today. Maybe this just wasn’t meant to be, so we left because we wanted to get seats in Ocean Plaza for the One Hit Wonders Name That Tune event at 1:30pm.
Somewhere during our walk through the ship, I saw this piece of art… Not sure if you can really call this art? It kind of reminded me of the painting with dogs playing poker haha It made me smile, so I guess that’s all that matters!
Right near Ocean Plaza, they have a screen with this map of our location. I think they also had it on one of the stations for the TVs in the cabin. We’re about halfway to Costa Maya!
We arrived at the Ocean Plaza around 1:25pm for the 1:30 trivia game, and it was already really crowded. We found two open seats off to the side, but had we arrived a few minutes later, we would have needed to stand through the game.
The theme for this trivia was 80’s and 90’s one hit wonders, and we had to name the song title and artist for each of the 20 songs they played. It was worth one point each for a total of 40 points, and we did respectably well, earning 31 points. We knew the titles for all but one of the songs, but it was tricky trying to remember the artists (after all, they are one hit wonders!). Even though we didn’t win the coveted gold plastic ship on a stick, we had a lot of fun playing as name that tune is our favorite type of trivia. We played it nearly every day on our 14-night Celebrity cruise last year, but on the Dream, the timing often conflicted with our plans in port. Our only other chance to play was on the last sea day, but the theme that day was Country music so we had zero chance of knowing any of those songs and opted to skip it.
In our quest to avoid the sun, we went out to the lounge chairs on the port side of deck 5, since the ship was sailing south and it was now into the afternoon so the port side faced east and would be completely in the shade. I think this is one of the reasons we do better not having a balcony on cruises. It gives us the flexibility to seek out the side of the ship that has shade at that moment, instead of feeling obligated to make use of our balcony even if it happens to be in direct sunlight at that moment. Don’t get me wrong, we love having a balcony, but this one factor did help ease the pain of not having it on this cruise.
After a little while, I started to get hungry. I didn’t want to eat too much and spoil my appetite for dinner… after all, tonight was lobster night in the MDR! The pizzas on Carnival are thin crust, so they aren’t that filling, and I thought a slice or two of pizza would make the perfect snack. I left DH to hold our lounge chairs and I made my way up to deck 10 Aft. I must have had really good timing because not only was there no line at all, but there were 3 slices of the Quattro Formaggi pizza sitting behind the counter. I really only wanted one or two slices, but when I asked for it, the guy working there just handed me the whole plate with all 3 slices! I was planning to sit in the buffet area to eat it, but now that I had more food than I wanted to eat on my own, I took the pizza back downstairs to deck 5 and forced DH to help me eat some of it. He’s a trooper like that! I forgot to take a photo of the pizza at that moment, but I ended up getting the Quattro Formaggi again later in the cruise, so here is a photo from then.
Another perk of the hub app listing all the menus is that I could take a screen shot of the menu to post on this review. I did that for the dining room menus each night too because it comes out much better than when I try to take a photo of the menu with my camera and have to fight the glare from the lights above. I know that people who sail on Carnival regularly can probably recite these menus by heart because they have not changed in a few years, but I wanted to post them for people reading along who have never cruised with Carnival.
We stayed outside relaxing on the lounge chairs until around 4:30pm, and then went back to our cabin to get ready for formal night. I am a firm believer that my fellow passengers can take just as good a photo (if not even better!) than the cruise ship photographers, especially on a formal night (oops, I mean a cruise elegant night). Last year on our Celebrity cruise, it was fun to find a new piece of beautiful art work each night from one of the public spaces around the ship and use that as our backdrop for a photo. Unfortunately, the décor on the Dream is a bit flashier and does not make for as good of a back drop. A lot of the art is very busy and loud, and would take away from seeing us in the photo. Tonight, we opted to keep it simple and stood by the stairs in the elevator bank (luckily the person taking our photo was patient as a bunch of people came running down the stairs right as we were about to take the photo, so we had to wait for them to pass first).
With that chore out of the way, we found a seat on one of the couches on deck 4 that overlooks the atrium so we could listen to some live music. This became our favorite spot and we sat up here nearly every night. We had a great view of whichever performer was in that stage area, we could people watch down to all the people at the bar and on the dance floor, and it was never crowded so it was a comfortable little hideaway on a ship with nearly 4000 other passengers. Tonight’s pre-dinner performer was Chris Ayden playing acoustic jams.
I was
pleasantly surprised at how many options of live entertainment were available
on the Dream. I have grown to expect
that on Celebrity ships, but I honestly did not think we’d have so many live
performers on Carnival. The Fun Times
has a section that lists what acts are performing at what times in each venue,
and every night there were 6 musical acts performing, plus Zack in the piano
bar, whatever kind of show was happening in the Encore! Theater, and the DJ
playing in the nightclub. Of those 6
musical acts, they had Chris Ayden (an acoustic guitar soloist), Charles and
Phoebe (a variety music duet), Machine Company and Horn Troupers (a Motown band
with like 6 or 7 members with a full brass section… very unexpected!), Kudos
Strings (a strings trio who played incredible arrangements of pop songs… I
don’t usually care for strings but these guys were fantastic), Black Jack Duo
(a country music duo), and Cavair (Steel Drums at the Lido pool). There was really something for everyone’s
taste, and often two or three acts performed at the same time in different
venues so it was hard to pick where we wanted to go! No complaints though… that’s a good problem
to have! Haha
Anyway, back to tonight… We listened to Chris Ayden for a few minutes, then made our way to the Scarlet Dining Room, all the way aft on deck 3. Since we ate at the steakhouse last night, this was our first time eating in the MDR and we needed someone to show us to our table. On the Monday prior to our cruise, I emailed the maitre’d to request a private table for two, hopefully near a window. I remember from our last Carnival cruise that many of the tables for two get lined up in a row, with just inches between each table, and it’s hard to get in and out of your seat and it kind of feels like you are sitting at one big table with those around you. While we do enjoy eating dinner with others, that tends to make the meal take way too long, and we did not want to have 2+ hour long dinners every night. As I mentioned last night, we prefer to keep our dinners to about one hour long, so I thought that if I could request a private table for two, hopefully our wait staff would allow us to eat at our pace and not necessarily the pace of those sitting around us. I did not get a reply from the maitre’d, but I just assumed the email went through and he was too busy to reply but would hopefully grant my request. I totally forgot that the MDR is opened in the afternoon on embarkation day, and we could have stopped by to find out our table assignment, so we just left it as a surprise for when we arrived at dinner tonight.
We checked in at the hostess stand and they escorted us up to deck 4, and then all the way to the back of the room. Wow, did the maitre’d deliver a fabulous table for us! It was table 637, located along the windows all the way at the back of the room. All of the tables around us were long tables for 10-12 people, but ours was just a small table for 2, separated from the rest, and it felt like we had special treatment!
I even used the little ledge near the window as a place to stash my camera and purse while we ate. We could not have asked for a better table for the rest of our cruise dinners. Our head waitress was Prudence from Zimbabwe, and she was supported by I Ketut and Kadek (not sure where they are from). They worked together really well, and always kept the meal moving so we were finished by 7:15pm at the latest (and that was on the days when we arrived at 6:05 or 6:10pm so it was still just about a one hour meal).
Here is the menu for tonight’s dinner…
The bottom 2 sections of the menu are available every night, but we never ordered from those items…
Dessert Menu…
Drinks menus…
Kadek brought over a basket of bread and I picked the cranberry whole grain bread. One thing I never followed was that on some nights he served us each one piece of bread, and on other nights, he left the whole basket on the table for us to serve ourselves. Maybe it was elegant vs. casual night? I am not sure. Personally, I don’t like to fill up on bread so I never take more than one piece and didn’t care if he left the basket or took it away.
We enjoyed beautiful views of the sunset throughout the whole cruise. Unfortunately, these photos really show how badly the windows need to be washed! Haha
Caesar Salad… I really enjoyed this and ordered it on several nights when I didn’t see a second appetizer that interested me. For the most part, I ordered two appetizers and one entrée each night. Tonight was the one exception because I wanted two orders of my entrée.
DH ordered two soups… first, he had the Sicilian Meatball Soup
Then, the Roasted Wild Mushroom Bisque
Looking through my photos, I just realized I missed taking a photo of DH’s entrees. Oops! When I ordered my entrée, I asked Prudence if I could have two lobster tails but only one portion of the side dishes. I’m not sure if it was lost in translation or if it was just that they pre-plate the dishes in the galley so Prudence can’t honor a special request, but she ended up bringing me two of these plates. It’s a good thing I only had the caesar salad as my appetizer because I was actually able to finish nearly all of the two entrée portions!
Such a beautiful sunset! Try to ignore the filthy windows hehe
Just as we finished our dinner, it was time for sssshhhhhowtime! Being all the way back on the upper level of the dining room meant we had no view of the action on the stairs and on the lower level. The waiters in our corner of the MDR did a good job of trying to get us excited, and of course we all had to wave our napkins in the air. Cruising has such bizarre traditions, doesn’t it?!
For dessert, I ordered the malted chocolate hazelnut cake. It was really rich and right up my alley for a sweet chocolatey dessert, although it was more of a fudgey mouse than a cake.
DH ordered the Vanilla Crème Brulee. He finished every bite of it, so I think that’s a good sign that he liked it!
I don’t think I mentioned this yet… one of the fun features of the Carnival Hub App is that you can mark off the events in the daily schedule which you want to attend, and then if you click on the favorites button, it will just show you those events and you don’t need to scan through the entire calendar. I think you can also set it up to give you a notification on your phone at the time of the events but I didn’t use that feature. This is what the favorites screen looks like…
After dinner, we wanted to catch the 8pm comedy show, so we just walked up one flight of stairs when leaving the MDR and we were there! How convenient!! This photo was taken at 7:43pm and you can see that the Burgundy Lounge was already quite crowded. Our options were limited, but we were able to find two seats together.
I liked that the cocktail waiters were always walking around and eager to take drink orders. Sure, one of us could have walked up to the bar to get the drinks, but we’re on vacation and it’s okay to be lazy. DH ordered a martini and I ordered The Punchliner drink.
It took about 10 minutes for the waiter to return with our drinks. Mine was fruity and sweet, just how I like it!
This show was the family friendly show with the same comedian we saw last night, Geoff Keith. Sometimes I actually prefer these shows because the material content tends to be funnier instead of just relying on cursing and dirty humor to get a laugh. I didn’t take any specific notes on the theme of this routine but I did like how he had a pre-written script rather than just improving and making fun of the audience.
The comedy show ended at 8:30pm, so we made our way all the way forward to get seats for the big production show in the Encore! Theatre. When we arrived, the doors were still closed.
No worries! They have a display case right outside of the entrance so we checked out some of the awards that the Dream has won over the years. This record seems like it was made to be broken…
We still had a few minutes before they were going to open the doors, so I left DH waiting there and went downstairs to talk to someone at Guest Services about our experience with FTTF on embarkation day. Our assistant stewardess indicated that she would speak to her manager about her mistake in not realizing we had purchased FTTF and therefore not having our cabin ready by the time we boarded at 11:45 yesterday morning. I expected a phone call or letter in our mailbox with an apology, but I gave it the remainder of the day yesterday and all day today to no avail. With nothing better to do in the few minutes before getting seats for tonight’s show, this seemed like a good time to voice my concerns at Guest Services.
As I expected, it wasn’t very busy at this time since the late seating for dinner had just started and most people were enjoying their evening on the ship right now. There were one or two people at the general line, but I was able to walk right up to the desk and be helped immediately in the FTTF/Diamond/Platinum line. I explained that we were disappointed to not receive two of the benefits we paid for when we boarded the ship yesterday… having immediate access to our clean cabin, and having priority delivery of our one checked suitcase. At this point, it was water under the bridge for us, so to speak, but I did want to make sure that someone higher up the chain knew what happened so they could work to make sure it does not happen to other passengers on future cruises. The representative took notes on what I told him and said he would pass the information along to a Guest Services manager. The whole thing was very quick and DH was surprised to see me back upstairs within 10 minutes of leaving.
Shortly after that, they opened the doors so we could get seats in the theater. I prefer sitting up in the balcony level so I can have an unobstructed view of the whole stage and not need to worry about someone tall sitting in front of me and blocking my view. Unfortunately, that does make it hard to take clear photos of the performers, especially without using a flash. Every night, they opened the doors 30 minutes prior to the start of the show and there was a big rush of people all arriving at that time. This photo was taken at 9:05pm and already, most of the seats in the middle sections of the lower level were taken.
While the theater never filled up completely for the late shows, most of the good seats were taken pretty early leaving just the back of the balcony available for people who arrived later. Perhaps this was a sign of sailing on a ship filled to capacity during spring break with lots of 3rd and 4th passengers in the cabins, or maybe it’s just how things always go on the Dream because it was the biggest ship we’d ever sailed on, but either way, we made sure to arrive early for all the shows to get a decent seat.
Tonight’s Playlist Productions show was Motor City, featuring Motown and R&B hits from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I had seen this show already on the Carnival Sunshine in 2013, but I enjoyed it then and that was over 5 years ago so I didn’t mind seeing it a second time. At around 9:20pm, they started the pre-show and pulled up a few daring members of the audience to dance on stage. Sitting up in the balcony meant we were saved from that embarrassment!
They also had everyone in the audience stand up and learn a little dance routine as a fun way to get us excited for the show.
The show itself started around 9:30pm and ran for just over 30 minutes. Before I share my views about this show, I need to put in a little disclaimer… As with everything else in this review, these are my personal views and you may or may not agree with them. Any negative opinions are not meant to upset or offend anyone, but merely to educate you about my experiences. With that said, we were not impressed with most of the production shows on this ship. Maybe it was because this was a relatively new cast and it was only their third cruise performing these shows, but the singing was pitchy (and sometimes downright cringe-worthy), and the dancing was often sloppy and out of sync. We enjoy going to theater and have held season tickets to the Broadway traveling shows in San Jose for 6 seasons and counting, so maybe we were being overly critical? We did not expect Broadway-caliber performances on a cruise ship, but we expected more than this. I actually think the song selection for all the shows was great, and Carnival knows how to pick crowd-pleasers that appeal to a mass audience, so maybe we would have enjoyed the shows more had we seen the prior cast last month, or even if we saw this cast after a few more weeks of practice? We really did want to love the shows as that’s usually one of our favorite parts of cruising, and we went into each of the 4 shows on this cruise optimistic and with an open mind, but sadly this cast fell short for us. There are 8 performers in the cast… 4 men and 4 women. Within the cast, there are singers who dance, and there are dancers who sing, but perhaps none that excelled at both. To give credit where it is due, I will say that there was one male and one female dancer who we could tell had good training and technique, but we almost never heard them sing! With all of that said, we did attend all 4 shows and stayed through the whole production each time, so they did have some redeeming qualities. We had fun and enjoyed it for what it was.
When the show ended, the cast danced out into the lobby for an after-party. As you can see from the people lining the railing on decks 4 and 5, and from the packed dance floor down on deck 3, everyone was having a good time as the DJ played more Motown hits and Gary had us all up and dancing.
We sat in “our spot” on deck 4 to observe all the excitement, then went back to Ocean Plaza to listen to Machine Company and Horn Troupers play more Motown classics. This band was fantastic, and it was refreshing to see a big horn section in a cruise ship musical act as we don’t see that very often. We stayed until around 11:30pm, then headed back to the cabin to rest up for tomorrow in Costa Maya!
Step Tracker Daily Total: 11,042 steps; 4 miles; 22 flights of stairs
Dana's Destination Diary 