Showing posts with label Carnival Dream. Show all posts

Carnival Dream Day 7

I'm finally done reviewing our trip on the Carnival Dream that left out of Port Canaveral.

Day 1: Set Sail from Port Canaveral
Day 2: At Sea
Day 3: Cozumel, Mexico
Day 4: Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Honduras
Day 5: Belize City, Belize
Day 6: Costa Maya, Mexico
Day 7: At Sea
Day 8: Back in Port Canaveral

Our last day aboard the fun ship was spent at sea. After our last cruise (which was a Southern Caribbean cruise aboard Royal Caribbean Adventure of the Seas out of San Juan, Puerto Rico) H and I decided that we highly prefer our last day on a cruise spent at sea then in port somewhere. On our Southern Caribbean cruise, we spent our last day in St. Thomas and St. John and arrived back in San Juan early the next morning, and we were exhausted and didn't feel relaxed and refreshed like you should at the end of a wonderful vacay. We loved that this itinerary on the Carnival Dream gave us an at sea day at the end so we could just relax on board the ship before returning home.

On our last day, we woke up earlier than usual to go to the Scarlett Dining Room to be served breakfast instead of ordering room service or going up to the overcrowded buffet on the Lido deck. Breakfast was delicious, and we sat with several different older couples who were a lot of fun to talk to, and it turned out one of the couples was in the balcony room right next to us! Too funny...

We then made our way up to the pool to soak up the last of the Caribbean sun and enjoy our last day of fruity drinks with umbrellas in them served by our favorite cocktail server Jeger who was the spittin' image of my close friend "The Funky Bunch".

Side view shot of Jeger (I felt too much like a creeper to actually ask to take a decent pic of him) All I could think is how weird would it sound to be like, "Excuse me, but we've been sitting in your section of the back pool all week because we think you look just like one of our friends back home, can we please take your picture so we have proof?" Yeah... ummm.. no..

H with the real Funky Bunch

Trying to enjoy our last day despite being depressed that our wonderful voyage was almost over

The waves hitting the boat on our last day were insane! I've never felt a cruise ship move so much as it did that last day. Thanks Hurricane Irene!

Despite being really nervous about how I'd feel on the cruise after suffering from Labyrinthitis last fall/winter, I did very well the whole cruise and even for the most part on our last day. I did great all day, even though the boat was rocking A LOT, and we were walking slanted down the halls. I didn't start to feel really off until we were at dinner last night. I took some Bonine at dinner, but could barely touch my food, and ended up having to leave to go back to the room much to my dismay as I wanted to enjoy our last night with our awesome waiters. H was really sweet though, and brought me up some of the Chocolate Melting Cake after he and our friends were done eating. I wasn't so much nauseous as I was feeling really off. I went back out and went to the show with H and our friends, but we left the show early, and that's when we discovered that a lot of people were getting sick in various places on the ship from being motion sick. Despite being grossed out, I realized how thankful I was that my stomach was doing so well, and that no one in our group was suffering from motion sickness. But man, that last night sure was rough. The ship was creaking and making those sounds that you hear on "Titanic" when the ship was sinking in the movie. I knew we weren't sinking, but those noises are eerie. We had to shut our bathroom door and all the cabinets so they wouldn't continually swing open all night.

Our last towel creation from our wonderful room steward

Beautiful last sunset

Our awesome waiters Jean and I Kumang

I can't believe how dark I was at the end of the cruise, especially compared to how pale I was when we set sail just a week before.

In conclusion, it was an amazing trip and we were so sad to see it end, but the best part was sharing it with our close friends from back in CT that we don't get to spend much time with anymore. The ship was wonderful and had a lot of great features since it was so new and so big. Our waitstaff and room steward rocked, and I loved our cruise director so much I want to follow him to his next ship, the Carnival Magic.

Our ports of call were awesome, except for Belize City, Belize. If we ever end up there on a cruise stop again, I will definitely book an excursion, as the port area is really run down and not much going on. Ziplining in Honduras and relaxing at the pool in Costa Maya were the highlights of the trip. Can't wait to go ziplining again!

Carnival Dream

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Carnival Dream Day 6

Day 6 on the wonderful Carnival Dream was our last port of call which was in Costa Maya, Mexico. Aside from ziplining in Honduras, this was by far my favorite stop. Costa Maya is south of Cozumel closer to Belize and was built up for cruise passengers only. After you get off the pier, there is a shopping village and a large pool with a swim up bar for Senor Frogs. Perfect for a relaxing last day in port. The best part is access to the pool is completely free to cruise passengers!

The pier to enter Costa Maya

Our friends got there before we did (we were lazy bums and slept in later) so they were happy to see us arrive :-P

Standing in front of the dolphin pools. I felt bad for the dolphins in there, it's really small and didn't look very clean.

All of us in the pool in Costa Maya

My one complaint was that the swim-up bar for Senor Frogs was a disaster... they took FOREVER to serve the drinks you ordered. I'm not exaggerating when I say at least 45 minutes.. so we made friends with a bunch of people also waiting forever, it helped the time go by a lot faster.

We had to be back on the ship for a 3:00 sailing time, so H and I went back to our room and cleaned up for the past guest reception. Anyone who's sailed on Carnival before is invited to this reception with apps and free drinks. It was great, I got my picture taken with Funship Freddie and our cruise director, Butch.

I can't decide if Funship Freddie is cute or a total creeper lol

The best cruise director EVER Butch! This pic doesn't do him justice, he was adorable and so much fun!

Afterwards, H and I changed back into new suits and hit up the hot tubs on deck 5 and just relaxed until it was time to get washed up and ready for our last formal night on board.

One of our fabulous waiters breaking it down

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Carnival Dream Day 5

Day 5 of our fantastic voyage was a stop in Belize City, Belize. We were all really looking forward to this port, and were hugely disappointed. I've never understood how people complain about cruise stops, because I couldn't imagine a tropical place that a cruise ship would deem fit enough to make it a stop being that bad. We didn't book an excursion at this stop, and planned on walking to or taking a cab to a nearby beach and seeing if they had jetski rentals or parasailing. Boy were we wrong... the night before we were watching my favorite cruise director ever.. Butch Begovech on the tv in our stateroom, and he was talking about Belize and how it was the one port you should definitely book an excursion in as it doesn't have any beaches except for a sandbar, and that you don't want to leave the port area as it's not appealing to the eye at all and can be dangerous. We were disappointed that our beach day wasn't going to be, but still wanted to take the tender boat over to shore and at least see Belize. This is where the day started off bad...

Ships cannot dock at a pier in Belize because of the reef, so they drop anchor a few miles off the coast and all the passengers are tendered to shore. No big deal... I had to do this on a cruise that stopped in the Cayman Islands, and H has done this before on the private islands in the Bahamas. Well, it turned into a big deal, because when we decided to join all the other non-excursion passengers in the lounge where they told us all to meet around 11:00am, they just released us all to Deck 0 and there were no tender boats available. Talk about an angry crowd packed in like sardines! One guy in the crowd even proceeded to start flipping out on the poor girl trying to calm down the crowd saying a tender ship was on it's way and to please stand behind the line. In all honesty, we waited a good 45 minutes in a very uncomfortable situation. And it wasn't worth the wait at all. When we arrived at Belize City, the water was nasty and not that picturesque blue/green water of the Caribbean, and there was only a tiny strip of shops that all appeared to be very rundown. Needless to say, this was the first and only port I've ever walked around for a little bit, picked up a few quick souvenirs, and went right back to the ship. And let me tell you I have never seen so many people on a ship during a day it's in port somewhere. It seemed like most people had the same type of experience as us, and preferred to be on the boat for the remainder of our time in the port of Belize. We went and got lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool.

A view of our ship as we pulled away on the tender boat

Pulling up to Belize on the tender boat

Me and H during our short stop in Belize

Back on the ship we all ordered the drink of the day "Bahama Mama" and enjoyed them in the pool

We had more fun on the ship than in our port of call that day

Towel animal of the day! I thought it was a dinosaur, H disagreed :-P

That evening, was the deck party up at the main pool where there was live music, a laser show, and team spirit of the red, white, and blue teams that are broken down by which deck you're staying on. We were on deck 7 and a part of the white team. Our cruise director got everyone all riled up and started leading off the conga lines.. the team with the longest conga line won for that night. The blue team won (booooo), but that's ok because on the last night the white team was announced as the winners for the week! Wooty woot!

Using our glowsticks as microphones.. yeah we're huge dorks

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Carnival Dream Day 4

Day 4 on the Carnival Dream was another port of call, and this time we stopped in Mahogany Bay which is located on the island of Roatan, Honduras. I was super excited and nervous all at the same time for this stop because we had booked a zip lining excursion combined with Gumbalimba Park with our friends we were cruising with. H had read about a lady on a Norwegian ship who fell to her death while on this same ziplining tour in February so he freaked himself out and me a little bit, but I still pushed for us to go because I knew it would be an amazing experience. So, he reluctantly agreed to go since the rest of us were all going. He was too cute, he barely touched his breakfast that morning, as I ate enough for the both of us not knowing when we'd have lunch, and I know I tend to get cranky when I'm really hungry. I was planning ahead!

When we woke up, I looked outside our balcony and saw a beautiful island with a little village of shops built up just for Carnival passengers. There was also a beach to the right of the bay that had a chairlift to take passengers to. The beach is also reachable by a short walk if you don't want to take the chairlifts over as they can sometimes break down, as I've read on Cruise Critic and then you're stuck up there until it's fixed. H and I got off the boat and made our way to meet up with our tour and our friends.

View from our room when docked

All suited up and ready to go

Just like I thought, after the first run he did great and was ready for more!

After zip lining which by the way was AMAZING and so exhilarating, we went on a tour through Gumbalimba Park where we saw lots of iguanas, birds, and monkeys. We also walked through a cave that taught us a lot about the history of the island including a pirate called Coxen.

Crossing the bridge to the bird and monkey sanctuary

After re-boarding the ship, we got ready for dinner where we were once again stuffed with good food and entertained by our awesome waiters.

After dinner, the guys got cigars and we went out onto the deck and played a Apples to Apples and just enjoyed the beautiful night together.

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Carnival Dream Day 3

Our 3rd day on the wonderful Carnival Dream was our 1st port of call which was Cozumel, Mexico. I had visited here before on a past cruise, but it was a new port to H and our friends. Even though I had been there a few years before, I didn't see anything I saw 3 years ago on the Carnival Liberty. Our ship docked at a completely different pier, and we went on a completely different excursion.

When we woke up and went out on to our balcony to enjoy our breakfast we saw that a Royal Caribbean ship was in port, and I got all excited because by the size of it I was pretty sure it was the Oasis of the Seas.. and it was!

Such a beautiful ship! I was really surprised that our ship wasn't dwarfed by how huge she is since ours was pretty big too, but not that big! Whoooo ee!