Disney Dream ~ February 2011

We booked this cruise for Dan & Janean Zempich. How about that? Dan & Janean Y. booked a cruise for Dan & Janean Z. Could that lead to Disney Magic? It did! Read on and see what happened on the last day of the cruise and you might just believe….MAGIC!!

We booked this cruise for Dan & Janean Zempich. The photos in this review were shared by Dan Zempich.

 

 

Disney Dream Review and Photos. We booked this cruise for Dan & Janean Zempich. How about that? Dan & Janean Y. booked a cruise for Dan & Janean Z. Could that lead to Disney Magic? It did! Read on and see what happened on the last day of the cruise and you might just believe….

The Disney Dream was launched in January 2011. She is the third Disney ship, the newest and the largest cruise ship in the Disney fleet. Her innovative features include virtual portholes for interior staterooms and a water coaster that flies around the ship and out over the sea,

Home base for the Dream is the Port Canaveral cruise terminal - close to Orlando. Her itineraries are out of Port Canaveral and sail to the Bahamas with 3, 4 or 5-night options. The Dream is nearly 1.5 times larger than her sister ships, the Disney Magic and the Disney Wonder. Her gross tonnage is 128,000 tons. She is 1,082 feet long and 121 feet wide and has 1,250 cabins. She hosts 4,000 passengers and over 550 crew (cast) members.

All Disney ships play the "When You Wish Upon a Star" tune on their deep, roaring ship horns. The Dream can also whistle out a total of 6 Disney tunes, which adds to the cruisers' experience at departures and arrivals to port.

The Dream features the first water coaster at sea, named the "AquaDuck". It is a 765-foot water slide that twists out over the ocean and drops 4 vertical decks.She sports a 9-hole miniature golf course, a walking track, and digital sports simulators with virtual game experiences for soccer, tennis, basketball, and golf.

All pools onboard feature fresh water. For kids, you can find Mickey's Slide and 3 other family pools. For adults, the meandering Quiet Cove Pool is available with its swim up bar. There is a large movie screen on the upper deck featuring open air Disney movies and other first run movies for cruise passengers.

Dining rooms on the Dream have a unique Disney "feel". There are 3 dining rooms that rotate, a buffet with visits by Disney characters and other dining/bar options onboard. Main Dining rooms include Animator's Palate, Enchanted Garden and Royal Palace. Each dining room is themed and all feature animation and menus from around the globe.

Comments from Dan & Janean Zempich:: We had a great time on the cruise. The staff was wonderful and the food excellent though the dinner menu of French cuisine wasn't exactly to our tastes we found something each night that was great. The buffet in the Cabanas area where we had breakfast and lunch was absolutely fabulous.

The room we had was very comfortable and quiet. We rode the Aquaduck and it was a lot of fun. They could use a bit bigger hot tub area as sometimes you had to wait a turn to get in.

We had a great time on Castaway Cay. They put on a huge batbecue there so you didn't have to go back on the ship for lunch and it was great.

I snorkeled with the fish and even some jellyfish for over 2 hours and it was a blast. The fireworks on Tuesday night were great as was the Pirates of the Caribbean party that they put on. We saw all the shows at night and they were very well done.

On our last day at sea we just cruised around at 9 knots and spent some of the day in the pool and hot tub and some of it playing Bingo.

We went to the last 2 sessions of the cruise (we had been busy during the other ones) and I won the final Jackpot they had rolled over from all the other sessions it was 1951 dollars which is almost what we paid for the cruise. It was a lot of fun to stand up and yell Bingo and have everyone else go ohhhhh.

We got a late start on our day in Nassau. They had a huge warehouse fire near the dock and the smoke was flowing over the town.

The captain said he was afraid of toxic fumes so for our safety we stayed onboard for several hours past the time we were originally scheduled to disembark. It messed up the glass bottom boat cruise I had booked so I had the option of taking it later in the day for half price or cancelling all together. I opted to cancel it.

We were told by our head server that the Dream is booked solid now for the next 2 years. I guess we got booked just in time.

Overall it was an excellent trip and I would recommend this ship to anyone with or without kids.

We got some great stuff from the Inaugural cruise year and had a wonderful time making memories of our first cruise ever.

Though I wish I had known before hand that they had a Champagne from Tattinger that was made especially for the Dream I would have brought back a bottle. It has a drawing of the ship and 2011 on it. It would have been a great souvenir for my basement bar. I just read about it this past week.