We had a wonderful cruise on the Carnival Dream. First time in adjoining cabins and the setup was great for us. It affords privacy when needed and when the doors were open it certainly felt like the area we had was huge. The balcony doors opened up the balcony as well and we noticed a design flaw had been corrected on this ship which was the doors between the cabin balconies open against the rail and they have a lock to keep them stable without banging. Before they opened against the cabin door to the balcony which got in the way. The location was also great as we were close to everything and we had the aft dining room and it was convenient as well. Certainly since there were 1600 kids on this cruise under the age of 18 (and I would venture to guess a whole lot that were college age and drinking as well) you had to be tolerant especially at night when there was running, yelling etc in the middle of the night in the hallways but other than that it was awesome. The ride home was a nightmare as everyone who was in the state of Florida left the state at the same time. You would have thought a hurricane evacuation had been issued as the traffic was at a standstill. What took us with stops about 8 1/2 hours driving down took us 11 1/2 hours coming home. I felt bad for the kids who actually did very well and I felt horrible since I got a sore throat/sinus infection the night before we got off so needless to say we were all glad to get home.
The kids had a blast on their last day onboard and Chris won the dance contest in Camp Carnival and Lindsay made friends in her age group as well. Paige had fun too and found a boy (Corbin) who followed her everywhere. When we grow up that would be considered "stalking". Chris was distraught over having to get off the ship and has decided he wants to be a cruise director so he won't have to get off...watch out John Heald but since he is only 6, John can feel secure for a few more years that Chris won't take his job! This new ship design has it's good and bad features but overall we liked it a lot. The promenade on deck 5 which was one down from us actually goes all the way around the ship with no inaccessible areas which is really nice. The main bad issue is the Lido buffet which of course with 4650 people on a sunny day is going to be busy just has a poor layout for traffic flow and they are trying hard to find ways to fix it but I think that it is what it is and it's just best to do it at off times. The food on the buffet was impressive according to Teresa & Keith. Debbie and I didn't try it although we did walk through there to see what the options were. I have to hand it to the crew because with the number of kids things were spilled and dishes broken and food spilled all over the floors and carpets throughout the ship but they did a great job getting it cleaned up immediately. We had the best cabin steward we had in many cruises, Kun Kun who called us all by name everyday and our dining room waiters were very good as well. The food was good (Kay, Judy would have been pleased as the strawberry soup actually looked like a strawberry milkshake) and the warm chocolate melting cake was wonderful as usual but we actually thought the Bitter and Blanc bread pudding with the warm vanilla sauce was to die for this cruise. The Creme Brulee was awesome as well. The watermelon, oranges and pineapple were really good too. Debbie and I would share desserts by getting one fattening and one fruit to offset the calories...right. I bought a Premium Wine package the day we got on and of course we had champagne too. We also had a bottle of Jordan which is my fav and a splurge on each cruise. I know it comes from the Sonoma Valley (Dave has been there) so I don't have to remember the french regions the grapes are grown like Kay does.
