Carnival Dream Cruise Reviews - Reviews

This carnival New Years cruise was the twenty first cruise ,over our 44 year marriage .We both have traveled many times on Carnival.The ship was quite lovely. Our room Stewart was very accommodating and efficient . Found the buffet very varied and good.Found the my time dine to be awkwardly handled ,and often times more like a cattle call.We were asked to move to a wall and wait,while arrangements were made to seat us. We're never offered tea ,had to ask for it.Dining entertainment often took place when half the dining room had left.Never met the Maitre D'.Never introduced himself. Didn't find pursers desk to be friendly at all.Tour desk great. Casino one of the best times in all casinos we frequented.Actually paid out! Embarkation and debarkation extremely organized and fast moving.Need to step up quality of food served in dining rooms.Plan on booking The Dream again with my family.know what to avoid and how to lay out meals.Hope on next booking we actually get our 50.00 a person on board credit this time.Dissappointed on the last! Debbie Barrouquere. 

The night clubs allowed smoking in the them. Therefore we were not able to use them. Also the only place to watch a football game on the ship was the casino, witch allowed smoking. We will never go on another cruise that does not have a non--smoking common area to watch a sporting event. IE: "Carnival Dream"

I will do a lot more research about this non feature.

The dining staff was wonderful and really made the whole dining experience wonderful. The shows were disappointing. Wish there was more to do on the boat when it came to game shows, etc.

This was my first time going on a cruise and it was a nice time. Will do it again. Everything was so organized. The different places was wonderful.  I got to see three different countries in 7 days.

Enjoyed the ship.  Was originally scheduled for anytime seating for supper, but this was code for waiting in long lines.  However, the staff took care of that and we were given a reservation for rest of the cruise for early seating.

The cruise went great. The food was excellent. Service was top-notch and the ship was a dream.  But when I returned home and tried to claim my $125 rebate I was met with multiple challenges from  

Before I use again they will need to streamline the process. 

Every since the first cruise I went on a couple of years ago I became a sucker for them. I have been in two New Year's cruises and I am already planning the one for next year. I have to say it is the safest, cheapest way of traveling especially during the holidays. The staff at this cruise ship were exceptional. I would definitely recommend Carnival dream again. 

-I want to give a shout out to Henry, MLanden and Rexlyn. They were our waiters at dinner and they were exceptional. Seriously they took care of our stomachs and were very enjoyable to talk to.. 

-MLanden- (bartender at Caliente) Muriel (bar tender at Piano Bar) was always taking care of us with our drinks. They always had an exceptional attitude with everything. I loved seeing how the staff gets along so well and they have fun at what they are dong. 

-Mattias (Piano Guy)- He sings beautifully, if you want to just have a drink and chill you should definitley go listen to this guy. Hope they let him sing in Spanish more. 

Jamaica gave us the creeps. Poverty, dishonesty, and crime are depressing.

We will never make a cruise with Jamaica as a port of call.

On board attentions, food, environment very good. Evening shows very poor.

     We went on vacation with our 4 kids ages 14, 11, 10 and 7.  New Orleans is a very easy port and there was only a little bit of a line when we arrived around 2pm. The line moved quickly and we were on board by 2:40.  We had adjoining rooms on deck one (I have never been down this low before) but I kind of liked it.  We were in rooms 1289 and 1293.  There was plenty of space and lots of closet space.  We liked how the bathrooms were set up with two showers and we really liked having a couch to sit on.  Only negative about room (my complaint on all ships) is the lack of outlets!  We needed to charge electronics, plug in a clock and be able to use a hair dryer.  This would have been a real nightmare if we hadn't been able to use the outlets in the other room!  The window was great and had a large space for the kids to sit in and watch the waves.  Our room steward was great, we only saw him the first day, but our room was always clean and we had plenty of towels.

     The good: This was a great week to go on vacation.  There were lots of families on the ship which meant a large number of children.  The crowd was also not your "typical" Carnival crowd.  I always joke that Carnival is like going to Walmart..all kinds, good and bad.  This was a little more like going to Target...a little step up.  This could be because the price to travel during a holiday week costs a good bit more.  I would compare this crowd to what I have experienced on Royal Caribbean, but a lot more fun. Sorry, not being snobby, just trying to explain the crowd. My 14 year old son is in 9th grade and I was worried about him being with 12- 14 year olds as he would hate it.  He plays varsity football and wrestling and hangs out with an older crowd at home.

They had no problem moving him up to the 15-17 year old group.  He told me it was the best week of his life when we got home. I did give him a good bit of freedom during the week.  Our 7 year old enjoyed camp ocean and had a great time at the night owls as well.  The ports were good - Montego Bay is just so far away from all of the good tourist attractions.  New Years Eve was wonderful on the ship.  They gave out a lot of free champagne...I had probably 3 glasses. Hats were on the dinner tables...they did not have one at each seat as some seats got noise horns. There was a balloon droop in the atrium which was also nice and a large party up on Lido deck at midnight. We loved the movies at night and the blankets they had.  The food was ok, not great and not bad. We were assigned late dining, but it was messing us up for the kids activities, the movies and other things we wanted to do on the schedule.  So, on the third day I asked the Maitre D' if we could move to anytime dining.  He was hesitant but allowed the change. Overall a positive week especially, happy with the the fact that the two requests I made that week (14 yr old moving up and dining change) were allowed so easily.

     The not so good:  The ship was completely booked, probably close to capacity.  This meant long lines for everything: elevators, at the bar, to buy pictures, to get food - you name it.  The worst was the deck chairs.  It was winter so everyone wanted to sit in the sun.  The first sea day I got outside at 9:30 after breakfast - no chairs, anywhere.  I sat in the shade by the pool.  The second day, I got up early and was outside by 8:15 - again no chairs available anywhere! Lots of towels in the chairs though.  One nice lady saw me looking and pointed to the chairs near her and said she had been there since 7:30 and nobody had been by those chairs.  I found a towel person and they removed the towels and I sat down.  Well, at 9:15 (I had now been there an hour) a couple came up and asked why I was in their chair(s). I explained the 40 minute policy Carnival has and the lady got mad.  Said they had gotten up at 7am to reserve those chairs! This happened at several chairs around me as other passengers got fed up with people "claiming" chairs and not even sitting in them.  Carnival needs to do a much better job as this is a very big issue! My 10 and 11 year olds only visited camp ocean twice - each for a very short amount of time and decided they didn't like it.  They have always loved the kids camps in the past, but they had fun and found other kids in the pool that they ran around with all week. The last sea day was cold and rainy and Carnival did a very poor job "adjusting" for this.  The Lido buffet was packed from the moment it opened for lunch.  We actually waited 40 minutes for the Mongolian Wok. Everyone was inside and of course eating as it was the only thing to do.  We wanted to eat lunch while it was warm and by the time we finished, they had closed all of the buffet lines - right on time so we did not get anything extra or desert.  There were lots of people up there looking for food or desert, but they had a schedule to keep and they were not going to adjust it. One of the most annoying was that Camp closed at 3 on the last sea day for "cleaning"...from 3-7! This would have been ok if it was a nice day and kids could swim, mini golf or even be outside. Again, full ship with lots of kids.  Kids were playing on stairs, running up and down the halls - it was crazy! We decided to pack since there was nothing else to do with the kids - and we watched a movie in our room. It was also a good time to go through all the pics and buy what we wanted - I think a good majority of the ship had the same idea as it took 35 minutes just to check out and buy pics. The other negative was that the shops all closed around 5 that last day.  We did not get to buy any t-shirts or anything...I don't remember shops on cruise ships ever closing that early! This was the first time I have left a Carnival ship saying the shows were awful.  The first night was the welcome aboard show and it was not bad. Then Dancing in the streets - awful - maybe it was our performers as other people on other ships liked it. Then a juggler - what?!?! Then Dancing in the streets again - once was more than enough. A passenger talent show one night, Marriage show another night and then a Country Music show.  Why do they even have dancers and singers if they are only going to do 2 different shows?!?! The last thing is that the family size rooms were mainly on deck one and deck one was given latest debarkation times. This was good and bad. We have kids that sleep in, but lots of families had antsy kids they had to entertain in confined spaces.  These issues, except for the deck chairs, were small enough that they did not interfere with our trip at all.

     We had such a good week that we are planning to go over the holidays again next year.  We will pick our ship based on ports and price...if it is Carnival again, fine, but if we find something that looks better for us we will go with that.  We did not leave saying we loved Carnival....we left saying we loved the vacation.

We had a wonderful week on the Carnival Dream. It is a new and clean ship with very friendly staff. The food was delicious and our daughter loved the water works. Roatan Island is one of the most beautiful islands we have seen thus far, and we would love to go back one day. However, the only issue I had is that there were too many guests on the ship. It was hard to get a chair on the upper deck, and the food lanes were very long. I believe if there are less people it would get easily five stars!! Overall, very nice trip with tons of memories.

All in all, a great trip. The "sea days" were well planned and executed. The ports of call went well. Lots of shore excursions to choose from, but many run on "island time" so avoid trying to schedule more than one a day. The schedules "look" like they will coordinate, but they won't. The entertainment was good. The comedy club was outstanding. The dinner-time food was great, but breakfast and lunch were merely adequate.

heap Cruises is a TERRIBLE company to go through!!! My wife and I booked this cruise for our honeymoon from December 20-27. We got married on the 19th, and I told cheap cruises over the phone. Cheap cruises booked our flight to leave on our wedding day at 5 am!! When I called to see if we could switch our flight, cheap cruises did NOTHING and showed NO SYMPATHY towards our situation. We're newlyweds so we don't have a lot of money, just enough to make the cruise, and they want to charge us almost $1,000 extra to cancel and change flights! They wouldn't do anything to help us, so to save some money, we booked our own flight which was cheaper. Come to find out, after the cruise, that our flight home was canceled. We were stuck in New Orleans with NO COMPENSATION! We had to spend more money that we do not have to get a hotel...WE ALSO HAD TO BUY MORE PLANE TICKETS OUT OF OUR OWN POCKET!!!! We were not able to even get a flight for a couple of days through United Airlines. We switched over to Delta Airlines and they got us home on a one way flight, and we had to pay for our luggage twice!...once again, no compensation from United Airlines. In short DO NOT USE CHEAP CRUISES THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AND THEY JUST WANT YOUR MONEY!!! They hook you up with UNITED AIRLINES WHO HAS TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SWINDLES YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY! DO NOT USE EITHER OF THESE COMPANIES!!!

Restaurant were good and crew were so kind especially.

24hour food system was exccellent!

************************************************** Thank you for everything!!!

Happy new year!

The Carnival Dream is a large, new, spacious boat! It was very clean and had plenty of room for all passengers. The only time things were crowded were boarding and eating on Lido deck. The rest of the time there were plenty of deck chairs, small waits for your time dining and fast service at the bars and coffee bars. The boat was beautifully decorated for Christmas and there were lots of celebratory options for the holiday. However, there were a few things that are making me reconsider traveling with Carnival again. I am a Platinum member which used to get us several perks. This trip the only perk we receive was the quick check in (priority lounge, luggage first and no lines).  I usually receive free drinks, free gifts in my cabin and priority getting on/off the boat. None of that happened. In fact our cabin steward was the WORST we have ever had! He only cleaned our room once per day, while we were at dinner. The rest of the time, we had no towels and had to call for everything. When I say call, I mean call the cabin steward line 4 to 5 times, go out in the hallway and look for someone and then call again several times before we got what we needed. This level of service is unusual because we have always been well taken care of on Carnival. It makes me think why not switch cruise lines because it doesn't matter that we have cruised with them so many times. We were treated worse than a first time cruiser.

2 TINY pools... Hot tubs were always cold.. Every bottle of water is $5 & every soda is $2. Gratuity is expected everywhere, even for a $2 soda..(comes to $2.48). The food was terrible always. Lobster/steak/fish/shrimp all sub-par. 6-7 main channels with ESPN not as one. Every movie played during the "movie nights" we're terrible. The track has no grip & wasn't usable after it rained (unless you wanted to slip). Big basketball court on top but nobody played because it was constantly windy.. Only got 3 half days on the islands but had to spend 5 1/2 days on the boat. Everyone couldn't wait to get home! Seriously, just find a resort at the place you want to & save thousands.. 

We were first-timers looking for something different over Christmas. Despite my wife not feeling stable enough to get out of bed for the first 60 hours, we had a nice time. The best part - the dedication and concern shown by each and every staff member. The worst part - Carnival's website is a disaster to understand and the wifi policy is a joke. If you're going to charge me up to $25 / day, then it should be available on every device I have at the same time. To log off one device to use another.....stupid! Also, the food lines need to be better managed. Too often large families would have one proxy in line and then when they got to food they would fill and pass plate, after plate, after plate (Tandori).

Overall, we did really enjoy the experience that Carnival provided. Our two boys, ages 13 and 10 really had a good time between the water slides, pools, hot tubs, putt putt golf course, and football table. My husband and I enjoyed ourselves, but found that 7 nights was a bit long. Sharing a stateroom with our boys was a bit cramped. If we were to ever do this again, we would definitely look to get two separate rooms.

If if you are not willing to fork over the money for excursions once you dock, then buyer beware. We were at the mercy of the locals who were not very honest. This made for a bad experience that was still expensive. 

Our favorite part of the cruise was getting to know our dining room servers. They made each evening so much fun for us and our children. We really looked forward to seeing Pik, Wayan, and Dewa! THEY WERE AWESOME! We will remember them always!

We also really enjoyed the magician, Rezaul. He was so down to earth and my boys still talk about him constantly. We also really enjoyed the juggling show by Dana Tison. 

We we were disappointed with the cleanliness of the bathroom and our stateroom. My sister and her family have been on 4 other cruises besides this one and she said that this was easily the dirtiest ship she had been on. However, the cleaning was very helpful and friendly.

The food was good overall. We would definitely recommend the dining room for dinner just to change things up and receive exceptional service. You definitely will have plenty of options daily to choose from. We enjoyed eating on the Lido deck for breakfast because you could get anything that you wanted in small or large quantities. 

My children did not use the kid's clubs at all and were old enough to play and swim while doing scheduled check ins. Again, overall an enjoyable experience...just too long and we weren't willing to pay the high prices for the offshore excursions, so things got a bit redundant day after day.

we had a fantastic time. Ryan was our head waiter and his team was awesome! Raymond was our steward and was great too! No complaints and will definitely go again soon!

We had a fabulous time. Our cabin steward Charles was so very helpful, friendly, and courteous. Our cabin was always spotless. Our waiter in the Crimson Dining Room was Genaro. He and his team were always friendly, courteous, and efficient. The crew of the vessel were always smiling, helpful, and friendly. It is your crews that make a cruise worthwhile and enjoyable, and the Dream Crew on this cruise is while we will be returning again for another Carnival Cruise.

Great trip!  Super Christmassy and fun.  Food was fabulous, staff was amazing.  I think each and every 1300+ employees were making every effort to make sure I had a fabulous week.  So much to do that the biggest problem is that we came home exhausted from doing too much- should've said no to a few activities and napped instead.  Favorite entertainment was the piano bar.