We were
Disney Cruise first-timers until the 7th of this month.
We did a 3 night on the Dream, because that's what my cousin's family was doing. I knew it would be too short, but it was what it was. We ended up doing Concierge because my MIL dropped out of our traveling party and I came across an 00V fare that was just $300 more than what we were already paying for our verandah room.
concierge thoughts
00V is a fairly normal family oceanview verandah room, but on the Concierge floors, by the way. It's not a 1 bedroom suite or a suite at all. But it sure is pretty. Our stateroom was 12528. My cousins were on deck 6 and their room was laid out pretty much the same, but it wasn't full of glossy wood and the hallways weren't as pretty IMO also.
3 nights is too short, there is no getting around that. But it was still good. We were trying to coordinate with 5 other family members who had different interests and purposes, and that made things more challenging, time-wise, than if we had been alone.
The sundeck was very pretty, though you don't get to see anything else; there are opaque walls around it so you don't see the ocean, etc. The non-concierge area beyond it is adult only, in case that matters to you.
There are receptions each day in the concierge lounge where alcohol is, in fact, free.
EVERYTHING about the lounge is laid out for you,
in writing, when you first go in there upon embarkation. When we got to the terminal and went back to the special concierge area, after they took pictures and gave DS his kid's club band and all, we were escorted through the side way (not through the big Mickey head you see in pictures of the terminal), escorted through the first pictures they'll take (besides the keycard picture you just took), and onto the ship. Then they will escort you all the way to the lounge. Then you'll be met by a staff member, you'll be able to sit down and have a cappucino, etc, and they had free alcohol at that reception as well.
They lay it all out for you; how to get the ipad rental, how to get the free 100 minutes of internet, etc etc etc. It's all written and given to you in a folder.
There is different food out all day, ever-changing. If you are at all a fan of egg salad sandwiches, I would highly recommend that you find out when they will have those, and eat a couple triangles of them. It was the most delicious egg salad I have ever had in my life, and I have had some egg salad sandwiches.
You can get water (bottled Evian) whenever you go through the lounge. It might be different for the suites, but as an 00V fare we had a few bottles in our stateroom fridge along with some sodas, and it was NEVER restocked at all. So we just got them from the lounge, easy peasy.
They have games to play in the lounge (or you can take them to your stateroom) and there's a TV.
We had gone back and forth on getting a cabana and decided to not (because we would have felt guilty not including family, but to include family would mean paying for an extra 2 people), and then we saw online that the cabanas were sold out. But while on the cruise they had 3 cabanas available, and were offering them to concierge guests. We still didn't do it (our reasons hadn't changed), but it was interesting to see how many were available, when they had been sold out online. We now wish like anything that we had rented one, and if we ever do the 3 or 4 day cruise again, we WILL make room in our budget for the cabana.
We now cannot imagine NOT doing concierge on the Dream. The problem is when we price out the longer cruises and concierge. ha ha ha. So much money. Short cruise, long cruise, having that level of service just made it all so very pleasant....
passport thoughts
We have passports. We have them for general purposes, because it just feels wrong for our family to not be able to travel if the mood and money strike (DH has one because he travels for work, but even before that he has had one since childhood). So it's a moot question for us. If an emergency hit while we were away, I would rather be able to get home as soon as a flight could be arranged, not after the emergency passports are arranged AND the flight.
I blather a lot and go off topic, but there's a link in my sig to my cruise report that I'm still working on, and there are some pictures of our stateroom in there, if you'd like to take a peek.