The" Never Say Never" Cruise - Dream August 25, 2017 - COMPLETED

[ukintheus]

Hello to anyone that follows along on another of our adventures on Disney Cruise Line. I used to think that we were addicted to Disney World but I am definitely having to admit (without any therapy, so that’s a good thing ) that this cruise malarkey has surpassed that and then some. But, I don’t want to be cured, so we will continue to spend the inheritance of kids that we don’t have! So the crew for this trip is just Scott and I. This photo was taken on my 50th birthday, which sadly wasn't this year! LOL But I thought it was nautical and somewhat appropriate to kick us off here.

This is my first time using Flickr instead of Photobucket so please bear with me if the photos need oodles of manipulating.

Potentially boring pre-cruise amble ahead. This cruise began as a thought of a quick weekend away somewhere back in April this year. I didn’t have an onboard booking that I could use, so it was going to be a full-fare type deal, but we figured it would be a fun and relaxing weekend. The last time we did a 3 night on the Dream we really enjoyed it, so we decided to find something that was reasonable and go for it. Originally I wanted to book an inside room as we had one on our last cruise on the Dream and really liked it. I used the DCL website and found the end of August was somewhat reasonable, presumable because the majority of the US kids are going back to school, and it’s still in hurricane season. After messing around on dates for a bit we settled on the 3 night leaving on August 25th. I really wanted an inside room but they didn’t have any so I booked a port hole room, which we had never done before, so that would be fun. Within a few weeks of booking there was a night….it may or may not have involved some sort of alcohol while Scott was off working either out of town, or super late. I don’t remember which, but I know I was on my own.

You also need to know that this “night” was on the tail end of a weekend away with his racing team where I am the pit Mom, cook, washing up crew and general helper who runs around like a crazy person all weekend. We also have all of the race team (3 other guys) in our 5th wheel for the weekend. I work my tail off before and during that weekend and I ruin my nails. Enough said about that. Here is a photo of the offending item and as you can see, it positively oozes luxury, I know you are all jealous.

You may already be able to tell where this confession is heading. So, on the night in question ladies and gentlemen, I put to you the evidence that I was alone, I had justifiable reasons for my actions, and I was of sound tipsy mind. I found myself back at the DCL website for no real reason other than boredom, and decided that we “deserved” to be in a verandah room, that then changed to we “deserved” to be in a concierge verandah room. For full disclosure, I remember very well the trip report from November 2016 where I casually reported “…I don't ever see us splurging the money for concierge”.

Yeah, well. Never say never, right? Because we had never stayed concierge and never have I ever even been interested in concierge, I started doing a bit of research after booking it. I stumbled across someone’s blog about staying concierge (I don’t remember anything about it now) and she made the bold statement about if you are going to stay concierge, and it’s likely to be a one-time thing, then go for it and book a suite. And so THAT, ladies and gentlemen is how we got to our final booking of a one bedroom suite. Cabin 12512. I will admit that I questioned myself on this rash decision for days afterwards. In my defense though, I had just cancelled two verandah rooms for the eastbound panama canal cruise, so I had that "extra" money burning a hole in my pocket. If you are still with me kudos to you. I’ll get to the real stuff now.

Coming up - Travel day to Orlando and stay at the Hyatt.

 

[Zarina]

That's awesome logic for booking a suite! Excited to follow along on your once in a lifetime adventure.

 

[ukintheus]

Thursday, August 24th - Travel Day

It’s always good to have that countdown photo from your phone!

We both woke up early at 4 am. Scott had just completed a marathon 24 hour travel session back from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night and so the jet lag thing was ongoing. He travels a lot for his job, and while this isn't unusual, the timing on this one had me really nervous that he wouldn't make it back in time. Thankfully he got to come home a day early, instead of arriving the night before we had to leave. I had to work for a few hours that morning, but did it from home, and we still had to shower and pack. Seeing as we were up at the crack of dawn that wasn't a problem and by 8 am we were all done. Scott cooked breakfast (ahh ) and we milled around the house for a bit and finally left the house at about 9:15 am. I hadn't had time to get away from work to get a mani/pedi done, but I managed to convince Scott to go with me to get a pedicure on the way to the airport (this is the third time he’s had one and he’s secretly enjoying them ). We did some quick last minute shopping in JC Penney and finally finished at about 12:30 pm and headed out to the airport. We had pre-booked at the Parking Spot and got in there quickly and were soon on the shuttle on the way to the terminal. Check in was super easy and we found our way to a wine bar that serves a little bit of food on the side. We sat and had a pretty laid back lunch. I had a chicken Caesar salad and Scott had prime rib sliders. The food was really good for airport food.

We also got caught up on the weather as Hurricane Harvey was barreling down on the Texas coast and was due to make landfall the next day as a Category 3. We were very glad to have flights the day before and were hoping that everything at home would be good while we were gone. Our house isn’t in danger of flooding but the area that we live in often has roads blocked by rising water with no way out for several days. We had our first drink of the trip which was a white wine for both of us. Scott needed to work for a little while so after eating we left and found a seat where he could get on a call. With that out of the way, we then made our way down to the gate. When we got to the gate the plane was there but we still had a while to wait before boarding.

We figured we had time to grab a glass of wine at the bar across from the gate. It had a cool ordering system where everything was ordered via ipad.

It was ridiculously expensive though. One of the cheapest choices was Oyster Bay. Enjoy looking at this photo because those two glasses of wine were $36 with tip.

That same wine is at HEB (a Texas grocery store) for about $10 a bottle, although I will concede that HEB mark it as "highly rated" . It really was a rip off...talk about mark up, that's crazy!!

Scott said that they were starting to board and as we were about to get on, they pulled us to one side. I could see it now, sold out flight and a hurricane barreling down on us. But instead we were upgraded to first class! Our seats in first class weren't together but Scott asked the man sitting next to him if he would be willing to switch and he agreed and so we ended up together. It was so nice of that man and I am very grateful as it made the flight much more fun to be together.

And added bonus, the flight left on time.

Goofy picture while we were taxiing.

We were brought warm nuts, and being totally immature we cackled over that for a minute or two.

Random photograph of the flat scenery below. There's not much to see between Texas and Florida.

We played Spot the Difference for a bit. Somehow this has become a "thing" when we fly together, which I might add is actually not very often.

They offered us some cheese and crackers and we had two more glasses of wine. I had the cheese (Scott is a cheese-a-phobe) although I didn’t really make a dent in it, there was tons of it!

And Scott had the fruit and crackers and the chocolates so it all worked out.

The flight was pretty non-eventful and took about 2 hours 15 minutes. Someone may or may not have napped along the way. The jet lag and time difference really messed with him for most of the trip.

We landed in Orlando at about 7 o'clock and went down and picked up our luggage from baggage claim. We were staying at the Hyatt for the night, it is so convenient and easy. We had already done the online check in when I got the email inviting us to do it, but we needed to grab the form to have our luggage picked up from our room so we had to stop at the front desk anyway. If you didn’t need to do that you could get your key from a machine set off to the side. It looked very interesting and probably would have been fun to try! We made our way to our room for the night. The Hyatt has some very long hallways!

We took some photographs and chilled out for a bit.

The hotel had some construction going on, so they left complimentary ear plugs in the room. We didn't notice any noise from it. There was some general noise early on but once the airport got quiet, we didn't hear anything.

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By this time we decided that we were pretty tired. I guess the 4 am start got the best of us. We had a major should we/shouldn’t we session over whether we wanted to go and eat, but in the end we decided we were just going to stay in the room as we weren’t really hungry.

Being extremely boring on our first night we were in bed by 9 pm. I got caught up on the forecast again. Hurricane Harvey was being reported to come in north of Corpus Christi as a category 3 and they were warning that it would be a devastating storm for Texas and especially the Houston area. Where we lived was being forecast to get at least 24 inches of rain over the weekend. I was desperately hoping that everything would be good at home. It was a weird feeling knowing that something catastrophic could be happening and we wouldn’t be there. Scott got caught up on life in general on Facebook seeing as he had only just got back from the Middle East. I also tried to find a spot that might work for breakfast as the hotel breakfast is pricey. Chick-Fil-A seemed to be hitting all the right marks so the plan was to go there in the morning.

Coming up - Embarkation.

 

[ukintheus]

That's awesome logic for booking a suite! Excited to follow along on your once in a lifetime adventure.

There was logic in there somewhere! Thanks for following along.

 

[tennesseemo]

Looking forward to hearing about this cruise, I don't think we have talked about it, just how things were in Houston!! Ready, steady, ...

 

[bcwife76]

Woohoo signing on!!!!

And no, I haven't started my Alaskan trip report yet And might not for another week or two at least

BTW, we had Hristo for Palo brunch and dinner (he was lovely!!!!) but saw Susannah and I smiled every time I saw her (she must've though I was nuts ) Maybe we'll have her next time on the Wonder (but like I said, Hristo was completely wonderful as well!!)

So.....concierge eh? Never say never Cannot wait to read more!

 

[ukintheus]

Looking forward to hearing about this cruise, I don't think we have talked about it, just how things were in Houston!! Ready, steady, ...

Yes, life got a bit complicated. I have the photos ready for part one of day 2 so hope to get that done tomorrow.

Woohoo signing on!!!!

And no, I haven't started my Alaskan trip report yet And might not for another week or two at least

BTW, we had Hristo for Palo brunch and dinner (he was lovely!!!!) but saw Susannah and I smiled every time I saw her (she must've though I was nuts ) Maybe we'll have her next time on the Wonder (but like I said, Hristo was completely wonderful as well!!)

So.....concierge eh? Never say never Cannot wait to read more!

I am soooo glad you are going to do a trip report though! Can't wait to hear all about it, let me know once you get it started. I'm sure Susana thought you were being friendly all of them are good on the Wonder I think, I'm sure Hristo was great too. Yes, the concierge trip. LOL. It was nice to experience it once.

 

[ukintheus]

The last 16 hours since I updated have consisted of losing an indoor cat who did a Houdini act through the garage just as it got dark (luckily he came out of the woods to me about an hour and a half later - this is NOT the same cat that killed all my Disney Christmas ornaments btw), DH being called at all hours in the night because of a work crisis, major internet and TV addiction watching Hurricane Irma play out in Florida, burning my hand while cooking breakfast and managing to spill an entire pan of spaghetti in the garbage disposal when I drained the noodles. Time to get on and re-live some vacation fun!!! Next installment coming up.

 

[ukintheus]

Friday, August 25th - Embarkation

We didn't have a very good night of sleep. For some reason I woke up at 2 AM and decided that I was wide-awake, I think I finally fell back asleep at about 5 AM and got about an hour and a half. Somehow that always happens, I keep telling myself before we leave that only xxx more days and I can sleep in, and then when I can, I don't!

Finally got this screen on my DCL app.

We got ready and switched a few things up in our suitcases. We had packed wine in our checked luggage and needed to switch it to our carry on. I had bought these Wine Diapers from Amazon and they worked really well. They protect the bottle, but more importantly, they absorb 750 ml of liquid IF the bottle breaks in transit. The only drawback is that it does weigh your checked luggage quite a bit, but we were still under the limit with 3 bottles packed.

Having got our repacking done we slapped the DCL luggage tag onto our one suitcase and left it in the room to go and grab some breakfast. I always have that doubt in the back of my mind about the Hyatt luggage transfer service. There’s something about just leaving it in your room that feels weird! I also had to send a quick text to my brother as today was his birthday. I thought he was supposed to be out of town, but due to the hurricane he didn’t go, so I could have called…ooops!

We stuck with our decision on Chick-Fil-A for breakfast as it was a reasonably fast option. They didn’t have the complete menu available like they do in typical restaurants but we both went with the sausage and egg biscuit and a coffee. I was charged with making the coffees “just right” and failed miserably!! I didn’t recognize that the creamer they had was the same one that we have found on DCL and we don’t like it at all. It’s nasty and we are by no means coffee snobs!! I guess technically we could be creamer snobs though....your call on that, ha ha! So, the coffee was basically undrinkable and we both had to pitch them. Scott went and grabbed another one from McDonalds who had normal creamer and all was right with the world again. I gave up and settled on water.

We did a quick call to the ATM as we had forgotten to grab cash before we left Houston (do you get the sense we were desperately NOT ready for this trip!) and then back to the room to grab our carry on luggage and head down to the DCL desk. We got there at about 8:50 am and the crowd wasn’t too bad. We were checked in immediately and told we would be on the 3rd bus, Mickey Mouse.

They have changed the bus procedure since we last went out of Port Canaveral and have made it much more Disneyfied with everyone being told what to do and when! Last time it was a bit of a free-for-all, which we all know is NOT the Disney way! Ha ha.

There are signs that show you where the check in area is.

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There was lots of room to sit and wait. The line for the first bus is in the background at about 9 am. There was a lady sitting in the seating group in front of us who was SO stressed – she was making ME nervous! I hope she managed to relax and enjoy the rest of her trip compared to the stress she was imposing on herself that morning. She literally RAN to the restroom and back, not a jog mind you, a full blown run. It was 9:15 am. I think DCL should seriously think about having Drink of the Day available here!

We were called for boarding fairly quickly. When we checked in we were told to go to the “special” boarding line for concierge guests which has a red carpet, you can see it in the photo above. We were then walked onto the bus first at about 9:25 am.

It didn’t take long to load everyone else up and we were pulling away from the airport at 9:40 am.

There was a family sitting across from us that had a little girl probably about 5 years old. She was SOOO excited, it was really cute. She chattered on and gave a narrative about everything she could see out of the window. It was really sweet and definitely gave that special feeling that somehow only DCL seems to do. Awww....

We watched the video off and on in between checking Facebook and catching up with people at home about the Hurricane. So far, so good at home with just some rain. I have to say that I still love that Disney short movie where Goofy gets his big screen TV – it’s a classic and never gets old.

In no time at all we could see the Dream off to our left.

We all followed instructions dutifully and followed the correct line into the terminal. We got through security quickly and were soon upstairs and walking towards the concierge check in area by 10:30 am.

We don’t get the ears in Galveston, they are very cool.

I will say that I didn’t miss the craziness of the mass of humanity you have to fight your way through to board through the ears. Unless DCL have changed the way they manage that and I’m just not aware of it.

The ears are such a nice touch though – shame they don’t have a way to carry them to every port.

Check in was relatively painless, although I did have to give all of our return flight information again, even though I had put it all into our online check in information.

By 10:40 am we were done and were sitting in the concierge waiting area. You get this handy-dandy little note telling you who you are, and where you need to go next.

Ahhh…we made it…time to chill from now on.

Scott went out and took some photographs from the outside area.

And then I saw everyone else out there taking selfies….so when in Rome and all that…except we have squinty eyes from the sun.

A quick shot of the other side of the waiting area with the main terminal waiting behind that glass wall.

And Scott’s “behind the scenes” photo. The backside of the Mickey ear.

Here’s a photo of our balcony for the next 3 nights, I’ve circled it in red but not sure it will show up well.

At just gone 11 am they came to announce that we were boarding and led us off to the ship. No Mickey ear boarding for concierge peeps! Scott snapped this picture as we were walking along.

We skipped the line for photographs as we never buy them, and when I say never, I mean never! HA!!! We have truly never bought one single photo…but never, say never, right?? They held us after the photo line as they weren’t quite ready for boarding but after about 5 minutes we were cleared to board and Scott and I were the first ones on the ship. We didn’t come up with anything funny to be announced, and it felt a bit rushed with everyone herding behind us. The concierge host, PJ, met us straight away and took us and the family behind us to the forward elevator to head up to the concierge lounge.

We found a very comfy table for two that coincidentally happened to be immediately in front of the bar. Shocked?? I know you are!! Ha ha!! One of the two bar tenders looked very familiar to me, and sure enough he had just come off the Wonder and we had met him on our last few cruises. Both of them were from the Wonder, I recognized one and Scott recognized the other – apparently we both bought drinks from different bars!!

The lounge was already beginning to fill up with people.

See how close to the booze we were!

First drinks of the cruise, white wine for him and a sparkling wine for me. You will be surprised to hear that not one Bahama Mama was consumed by me this trip! I am surprised to be writing that!

We met with one of the managers from guest services who was helping out the concierge staff. They go over your itinerary and what you have booked and give you this little folder with all of your information in it. She was very nice and we spent a while chatting with her about her career at DCL.

The food offerings in the lounge were mainly a lot of desserts and few sandwiches that you could get on the pool deck.

We decided to skip it and see what Cabanas had to offer. We had about 3 glasses of wine each though by the time we left – they were very fast to fill our glasses!! Here is the lounge skylight which is part of the concierge sundeck directly above. If that makes sense? And, no, we were not flat on our backs taking this photo. HA!!

At about 12:10 pm we were told that our rooms were already ready, so we decided to go on over and check out our digs for the next few nights.

 

[ukintheus]

Ta da!!! Our sweet suite for the next few nights. I feel like I should be able to insert some sort of drum roll here but this will have to do.

I'm about to give you a fairly detailed look at the room because 1) it was beautiful, and 2) we paid a lot of money for it.

Looking from the door, you are looking into the living room. The two doors on the left and right are closets.

The first door to the left (not shown above) is the entrance to the second bathroom with a toilet, sink and walk in shower.

In the living area there is a desk and a pull down murphy bed in the wall. The shelves to the right of the desk had glasses and an ice bucket as well as some lovely paper hand towels with the concierge monogram on them. This cabin has a connecting door, which is the white door.

TV and lounge chairs.

The fridge was also in the TV cabinet thingy and was stocked with soda and bottled water which they replenished every day. We only drank the water though. We also could get bottled water any time we wanted from the lounge, and we did get quite a lot as we drink a lot of water. Need to keep hydrated from all the alchyhol.

The couch was extremely comfy and pulls out into a bed. It had a velour finish though and you slid on it if you were wearing anything silkyish, which was a little amusing. The dining table is behind it.

Scott took this, it's a bit artsy, but you get the drift. Looking back towards the door.

The bedroom is off the living room/dining room. It has sliding doors that can be completely closed to make it private. We actually used a couple of them to stop the light from coming in in the morning.

The Castaway Club gift was a backpack and some luggage labels - it's on the corner of the bed.

We didn't get a good photo of the backpack, but here's the luggage labels. I have to admit that I give them a less than 50/50 chance of making it through an airport baggage system.

And the master bath that has double sinks, a Jacuzzi tub and separate toilet and walk in shower.

The mirror has a built in TV in the middle of the two sinks. I took full advantage of this when we sailed out of Nassau as I ran a bath, threw in a mickey ear bath bomb that I had been saving since we had visited Basin at the Grand Floridian 2 years ago with my Mum and sister, and watched us sail away on the TV. I may forget that later, which is why I'm writing it now.

Oh, by they way...side note.... as usual I was going to write notes along the way. As usual, I didn't and only did the day we traveled to Orlando. My memory is going to be put to the test on this one for sure!!

Elemis products are in the suite, although I admit that I missed the body lotion from H2O.

Closer up view of the vanity.

Looking back at the tub and the shelves beside it.

Toilet and walk in shower.

More Elemis stuff in the shower.

This was a complimentary gift. It's also one of the options for Platinum members as your cruise gift.

And last, but by no means least, the oversize verandah. The larger size was because we were on the bump out, which you can see in my photo that I posted earlier, but I'll throw it in here again.

So, wow, yes, beautiful room and a HUGE verandah. The suite really was impressive, I have to admit. From the other suites that we could see from our verandah that weren't on the bump, we couldn't see anyone else that had the loungers, so that was a nice perk for having that extra bit of room.

OK, so now you have all had a good look around, and figured out where you are going to stay....on with the show!!

 

[suedon70]

Oh man I'm loving this TR so far! My besties and I will be cruising concierge this coming May in a one bedroom suite! We can't wait!!

 

[ukintheus]

Quick photo of the cruise terminal for good measure.

By now we had spent ages looking at everything and so we decided to walk back to Cabanas and get some lunch. Scott didn't remember this pool at all from either the Dream or the Fantasy. I think the glass is new since the dry dock? This is on Deck 12, overlooking the Cove pool. I did chuckle at our glasses of wine sat next to it though. Thirsty work all this photograph taking!!

The same lounge chairs that were on our verandah were out here.

Wandering along from front to back...the Dream class ships are quite a bit longer than the Classics! You really notice it when you walk all the way from the front to the back, which we did several times.

The pool was already busy, but it was lovely and sunny and everyone was making the most of it.

This bar is tucked away towards the back and is very quiet, but there isn't any shade at this time of day.

We walked down the steps to Deck 11 and came across Vanellopes which is new to us and was added during the dry dock. It's themed from the Wreck It Ralph movie. Oh....my....lord..... Let me tell you, this place smelled absolutely wonderful and I could have inhaled every single bit of sugaryness that they were selling in there. In some ways it did me a favor that they had so much that it was hard to choose, because I never did buy anything....but let me tell you....it would be easy to eat your weight in chocolates here.

Here's the chocolates....they also had a case full of gelato that was equally delicious looking. I'm hungry again just looking at these photos.

Can you smell them??? Imagine chocolate, and chocolate, and sugar and vanilla. That's what it smelled like. I'm sure they were piping the smell in like they do on Main Street at WDW....but let me tell you - it works!!

After drifting through the sea of sugar we found ourselves at Cabanas and took a look at everything on the buffet. It was packed, and it had that first day crazy vibe so we settled on a plate each of mainly seafood.

This was Scott's. I can do hot mussels, but cold ones just don't sound appealing. He said they didn't taste very appealing either.

This was me, mainly seafood but with a lamb chop added. Because it always is so good on DCL.

We didn't get anything else, and we decided it was a bit hectic back in Cabanas so we headed back to our cabin on deck 11. Along the way we passed Cove pool, which was looking a bit steamy....at least in this photo anyway!



The photo above was taken while we were busy buying these little beauties. First beer for Scott, and another shocking revelation, his ONLY beer in a beer mug of the cruise, and glass of Moet Ice for me.

More random photos while we were waiting for said drinks.

By the time we got back to our cabin our suitcase had been delivered and so we decided to make a quick trip to the laundry room to iron Scott's shirts that had about a million creases in them despite being packed very carefully. The laundry room was on Deck 9 almost directly below us, so it was a short trip down the stairs. My plan was to use both ironing boards but another guy came in right as we got there so Scott did most of it and I finished it off.

Back up to the cabin and the skies were starting to look a little grey.

We decided to change into bathing suits anyway and we made use of our verandah for a little while

More squinty eyes from me.

We also went up and took a quick look at the concierge sundeck while we had bathing suits on but we didn't have long before muster so this is the only photo you get.

It's the lemon water and iced tea that was offered. More of the sundeck coming up later after muster.

OK, wrapping this up for today.

Coming up - Muster, evening and I don't remember what else.

 

[ukintheus]

Oh man I'm loving this TR so far! My besties and I will be cruising concierge this coming May in a one bedroom suite! We can't wait!!

It would be a great room to share with friends. I bet you will have a blast!! The Murphy bed and couch can be separated by a privacy curtain, and the master closes off completely. The two bathrooms give you plenty of room to get ready.

 

[AussieDisneyfans]

So glad for another trip report from you - really enjoyed all your others. Glad to hear that you weren't affected too much with Hurricane Harvey, we saw the footage on the news here in Australia. Hurricane Irma looks fierce, feeling for all those in the affected areas. Concierge looks amazing, what a great last minute decision- looks like reading other peoples trip reports can be costly it seems! My daughter and I were on the Dream last year, I also survived on the sweet smells from Vanellopes! Looking forward to more.

 

[bcwife76]

Oh my goodness, that room is gorgeous! I'm really really not sure I could go back to sailing 'normal' if I ever had a concierge room......

but then again, ANY room on a Disney ship is a good room as long as you are ON a Disney ship It's just that....well.....some are nicer than others......

Glad to see you are keeping the drink traditions alive, but only one beer for Scott??

 

[ukintheus]

So glad for another trip report from you - really enjoyed all your others. Glad to hear that you weren't affected too much with Hurricane Harvey, we saw the footage on the news here in Australia. Hurricane Irma looks fierce, feeling for all those in the affected areas. Concierge looks amazing, what a great last minute decision- looks like reading other peoples trip reports can be costly it seems! My daughter and I were on the Dream last year, I also survived on the sweet smells from Vanellopes! Looking forward to more.

I have decided that reading trip reports can definitely be a costly affair! Ha ha. Thanks for following along.

Oh my goodness, that room is gorgeous! I'm really really not sure I could go back to sailing 'normal' if I ever had a concierge room......

but then again, ANY room on a Disney ship is a good room as long as you are ON a Disney ship It's just that....well.....some are nicer than others......

Glad to see you are keeping the drink traditions alive, but only one beer for Scott??

The room was gorgeous, no doubt about that. But I agree that any room is a good room, and honestly it didn't really make a huge difference to the enjoyment of the cruise. We can be in an standard inside and have a good time. 3 days is a really short cruise, we found we missed doing a lot of things.

 

[accio]

Hi Jenny,

I'm really enjoying your trip report! I'm tentatively planning (fingers crossed) the same three-night itinerary on the Dream next February, so your information and photos have been valuable

Keep up the great work!

 

[ukintheus]

Continuing on from where I left off as apparently we did have more photos of the sun deck! It was nice and very shady with lots of comfy places to sit. We had a good snoop around.

There were two doors on either side that took you straight out to Deck 13 and Satellite Falls. This was probably our favorite feature of the location as we didn’t use the sun deck at all. If you like to people watch or just watch the world in general, the sun deck is completely enclosed so there is nothing to see other than the few people in there. There was also a family who used the hot tub as the kids pool. I get it, it was easy to get to and the kids had the thing to themselves, but it's not very appealing to try and force your way into a hot tub with two little girls shrieking and having a ball, we would have felt like real kill-joys, so we passed on the hot tub every time we went by it. We decided to go out and sit at Satellite Falls for a little while and take a look from the front of the ship.

This is such a great area but I didn’t see any kids using it, maybe they do on longer cruises. By default it should become an adult area I think But maybe it feels a bit closed in down there?

Satellite Falls photo of the Crocs that will never die…I try to get him to wear other shoes but he just loves these around the pool. Oh well…pick your battles, right ladies?

As you can see, the weather had decided to get very overcast and they announced that the Sail Away party would be held inside.

We stayed up at Satellite Falls for a while, the water was way too chilly to get in for us (we are Texas conditioned to nice warm water ) and it rained on us a bit but the lounge chairs we were on were just getting sprinkled on. However it soon turned into full blown rain and we made a run for the concierge sun deck. By this time all of the chair cushions were getting soaked, and so were we, so we made a beeline for our cabin. It was almost time to get ready for muster drill anway.

Muster for us was in the Walt Disney Theater, which was quite a walk down a utility staircase. We started early and there was plenty of seating. Very fortunate to have an indoor muster station given the weather outside.

Once that was over we headed back up the stairs from Deck 3 to Deck 12. It was a hike!! I admit to being completely out of shape and those stairs just about killed us, especially because there was another couple going up the set adjacent to us, and we felt like we couldn’t act like we were all worn out as they looked like it was no problem at all Ha ha!! We about collapsed when we got back to our cabin.

We decided to watch sail away from our Verandah as it was too wet to go up to our preferred location at the front of the ship. It wasn’t long before they cast us off and we pushed away.

The wave goodbye.

I had been keeping in touch with my Mum and sister and they were watching on the Port Canaveral web cam. It took a while before we were in the channel enough for the cam to pick us up as there was another boat blocking the view. They both managed to see us though, we were waving like crazy!

We had rain showers all around us, but it wasn’t actually raining as we sailed out. The gloomy skies don’t make for very pretty pictures though.

Another not-so-pretty Casino ship, this was identical to the one closer to Fishlips.

We had never noticed the RV park here but we don’t sail from Port Canaveral very often.

A very pleasant grey/green color…

These kids were still being very enthusiastic about waving…so cute.

Slowly making our way out past the jetties.

The pilot did his thing….didn’t actually see him, just saw the boat hovering around.

Once we were out past the jetties, I turned my phone onto wifi/airplane mode for the DCL app to work.

We hung around in the room and on the verandah watching the sea roll beneath us….so relaxing…ahhh.

Scott was getting tired and we both decided to take a 5 minute snooze. We put the TV on for the news, which we usually avoid like the plague but we wanted to keep up with what was going on. Scott soon fell into a very deep sleep, that jet lag is a killer. After about an hour I had to wake him up, although I know he could probably have slept all night.

Tonight we had dinner reservations in Palo so we had to get ready for that and make ourselves look reasonably presentable. I can’t believe we didn’t take one single photo of us dressed up. Ugg! We went into the lounge at about 7 pm for a glass of wine. They had all kinds of goodies laid out, but as we were about to leave for dinner we didn’t have anything. The concierge hosts were very friendly and helpful, they would come and chat with you when you were in there.

I am assuming most people were still at dinner on first seating because the lounge was empty. It was a perfect time to take some photographs, so here you are!

Our dinner reservation for Palo was at 7:30 pm. We left at about 7:25 pm and walked, and walked, and walked. Because it was still misting we had to walk down to deck 10 and then along the entire ship from front to back and then back up to Deck 12. I think we were a little late even, it seemed to take quite a while. Anyway, we got seated quickly and settled in for a nice cozy meal.

It was just about to get dark but there was no real sunset to be seen. I guess because of all the clouds or maybe we were on the wrong side of the ship.

 

[ukintheus]

Our server was Mary, and for the life of me I can’t remember where she was from now, but she was super sweet and had only been working in Palo for two weeks. She had been in the main dining room prior to being moved. We soon got her loosened up. The Palo manager was also new to Disney, he had come from Seabourne if memory is serving me right, and had been there about a month. He was from Italy and was very nice as well. We forgot to take photographs of the appetizers, I had the calamari and Scott had the scallops off the main menu. The funny thing is that Scott was completely thrown off from not having Susana serving us – he never usually even looks at the appetizers as she always just brings him something. He struggled with picking something and in the end I asked for the scallops for him! First world problems for sure!

We got a portion of the Portobello mushroom to share although we only ate half of it.

Next up was the palate cleanser.

I got the rack of lamb, it was delicious as always.

It came with this cute little saucepan of au jus on the side….so dinky!

Scott got the ahi tuna, and said it was very good.

For dessert we tried the Limoncello Tart and an Almond soufflé. We barely put a dent in them but they were delicious!

Mary also brought me a strawberry and basil sorbet to try, as we had been talking to her about how much we love basil stuff.

We were done at about 10 pm and Mary walked us back to our room! We’ve never had that before, maybe she thought we wouldn’t find our way. Actually, she carried the half bottle of wine we still had left – so that’s probably more likely the reason. Scott was fading fast by this point, I could tell that he was just SOOOO tired that he was barely functioning.

We took some quick photos of the turtle we’d been left on the bed…very cute.

The navigator and other marketing pieces were also sitting waiting for us. I gave it a cursory glance once I got into bed to see what the movie times were for tomorrow.

And then I forced Scott to take this very unflattering photograph – HA! As we hadn’t taken a single one of the two of us all evening. His eyes are almost closed, and I have no make up on. Lovely. But we were wearing the robes provided which were super soft and comfy. They’d be too hot for us in Houston, but they were nice to have for the cruise.

Coming up: Nassau (although we stayed on the ship) and Pirate Night/Remy

 

[ukintheus]

Saturday, August 26th - Nassau

Today we were in Nassau and were due to dock at about 9:00 am with all ashore at 9:30 am.

I had to say that the bed was super comfy and the duvet seemed a bit heavier than the one in a regular stateroom. We had the AC turned down as low as it would go, and so we kept the duvet on most of the night. One of the doors that slides to close off the bedroom had an annoying rattle but Scott fixed it with a napkin. This morning though they started banging and working (I’m thinking on the deck above us) at about 7:15 am!! UGGG!! That was a tad annoying…at least wait until 8:00 am.

So having being awoken by a mouse with a hammer, I got up about 7:30 am and went to take a look outside. Nothing going on out there other than a nice and peaceful morning…aside from the banging, which ironically had now stopped.

Scott got up and we were both in dire need of that first cup of coffee so we went off to see how the coffee machine worked in the lounge. The side door to the lounge was directly across from our cabin so it was really convenient to just pop back and forth. This morning there was hardly anybody in there, so we decided to grab a quick bite. The choices were boxed cereal and muesli, smoked salmon and other cold cuts, along with rolls, bagels, croissants etc. There was also some cut up fruit as well as whole fruits and yogurts and milk.

Scott made two sandwich type things with a couple of small brioche rolls and some turkey and I had some muesli. The coffee machine took some figuring out as there were various settings but in the end I figured out that I needed a latte with an extra shot of milk, it was nice to have but the coffee that you get in Cove that someone else makes for you is better in my opinion. Probably the “someone else makes for you” is the key there!

People started filling the lounge and so we decided to take a coffee with us to sit on the verandah.

Ahhhh…..now you’re talking…although I see by this photo I hadn’t figured my coffee out yet. That’s way darker than I like to drink it.

By now we were approaching Nassau and so we sat outside and watched our progress into the harbor. It was a beautiful day. There had been a tropical depression off the coast of the Bahamas the few days before our cruise, and so the forecast all week before we left Houston had been for a lot of rain pretty much every day, but so far we were doing fairly well.

Scott snapped photographs as we approached.

It was a first for us that they didn’t turn the ship around, but pulled straight into the pier, nose first. The Norwegian Sky was already there. She’s got some interesting propeller blades on her deck.

There were lots of people already off and some excursions already leaving from other ships. We were kept entertained for a while by the seagulls stealing people’s food off the back deck of the Norwegian Sky. It’s amazing the little things that keep you busy. LOL We would watch people come out and put their tray down, then go back to either get something, or help another family member and the seagulls would swoop down and start eating their food, and then the person would come back to the table to find their breakfast mostly gone!

In the meantime there was a Carnival ship that was right behind us and was turning to dock.

I can’t make up my mind if we enjoy Nassau or not. We stay on the ship a lot of the time, and especially because this was such a short cruise, we were treating this as an “at sea” day type thing. We are thinking next time we will get off though. It’s one of the stops on the Bahamian cruises out of Galveston, so we’ve done it a few times and we've had a good time when we do get off.

Anyway, here’s some shots from our verandah, I must have got my camera out as well.

By now it was almost 9:15 am and they were pretty much ready to start letting people off the ship.

We decided it was time to go and get lazy for the day, so we got ready and went up to Satellite Falls. It was really convenient to get there from our cabin, I did love that. The Carnival Victory was almost in place, and as you can see there was also a Royal Caribbean ship in port that day.

There was hardly anybody up at Satellite Falls. I did try and see if the water felt any warmer, but it didn’t. I thought it might be us being wimps, but I saw others come up and dip a toe in and hastily step away...there were some that got in though. My guess is they are from more northern states, they are definitely a hardier bunch when it comes to "cool" water.

So by 9:40 am we had managed to get ourselves back into a lying down position – this holiday is going great!

We both did some reading and some people watching. I had managed to burn through the free wifi they give you for staying concierge and so had to purchase another package. I was keeping in touch with quite a few people from home, but I also forgot to turn off my location services thingy, and it sucked all of the data in about 3 minutes! Ugg!!

A couple wandered by, I think they were from South America, and she was very pretty. Her husband wanted her to pose in front of Satellite Falls for a photo, which became a mammoth ordeal in him getting her in exactly the right spot and she was getting embarrassed – such fun to watch other people!!!

I popped back into the concierge sundeck and grabbed some waters and a diet coke. I never drink diet coke – but it was there and it was “FREE” HA HA!! We had some trouble with our key cards getting access into the sundeck, sometimes it took a lot of tries to get it to work and you felt like you were trying to do something you weren't supposed to.

Satellite Falls really is one of my favorite places and it was so nice to have it on the Dream as opposed to the lounge chair thingy they had before. It’s so quiet and there is a restroom pretty close. Just a perfect place to relax. One of the waiters had come around and asked us if we wanted anything to drink and we had declined the first time. You have to decline the first time so it’s not obvious that you drink a lot. But next time he asked… oh morning special Mimosa, how I’ve missed you!!!

They were doing some maintenance work to the wood so these guys were up there working but they didn’t make much noise at all. I did wonder if they were the culprits of the early(ish) wake up call though.

Just before noon we decided we’d had enough lounging around and that it was probably time to eat again. We went to change out of our bathing suits and took a quick look at the news from home. Yesterday, Hurricane Harvey had made landfall between Aransas Pass and Rockport and my brother has a house literally a few miles south of there, so I had been texting family to see if there was any news on his home but it was too early to get any information. For anyone that doesn’t live in a hurricane zone, the most frustrating thing about a hurricane is that the best thing is to evacuate, but then you have to wait until communication is back up and running before you can get any news at all. It’s very frustrating. As predicted, Harvey was hanging around in Texas and dumping huge amounts of rain. Friends and neighbors assured us via text that all was good at our house, so we knew at least our house was OK.

Cabanas seemed to be calling our name so we went off in search of something yummy to eat. The pool wasn’t too crazy seeing as we were in port, but there are definitely a lot of people who don’t get off the ship.

This was lunch for me, some roast beef and veggies and some non-healthy salads, which are the best kind.

Scott got sushi to begin with.

And then this…

I got a little bit of the stir fry beef because it looked good, but I didn’t get a photograph of it. Oh well….calories don’t count if you don’t photograph it.

I told Scott I wanted to go out the other side of Cabanas on the pretext of just walking down a different side of the ship, but really it was because of this… We both got a cone each, it’s sooo good!

Here’s some art on the stairway for you to look at while we walk back upstairs to our cabin.

Oh, hey, seeing as we are back at the cabin, I know I didn’t mention that we had a door bell!!! How cool is that!

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