Before I start, a couple of disclosures. The cruise I took on the Disney Magic was the sixth one in my life, and the fifth one with Disney Cruise Line. All my other Disney cruises have been 7-night trips on board the oldest Disney ship, the Magic, and nearly all of my views of what makes a good cruise come from my earlier experiences. Second, I am a member of the Disney Vacation Club, so it should be obvious that I am a serious fan of the Disney hospitality businesses. That being said, I am also a big fan of objectivity, and I have no interest in writing for my fellow travelers anything that is misleading about my experiences in traveling with Disney. I prefer not to sugar-coat my opinions to please Disney... my hope is that if they ever read what I have to say, they will understand that my criticisms are statements of fact, written in hopes that they will see where their products are weak and start looking for ways to improve them.
So... on with the trip.
My wife and I took a 4-night cruise on the Disney Dream to Nassau in May of 2011. I aimed for this date, several months after the initial voyages, because I thought it was a good idea to give the company and the crew some time to work out the kinks that are inevitable when something new like this gets started. We took an ocean view stateroom in the forward section of the second deck, to lowest of 11 decks available to passengers for accommodations and most activities.
The room itself was very nicely done, though somewhat smaller than similar rooms we have used on the Magic. Most of the time, this was not a problem, but since my wife and I are somewhat larger than most folks, there was a fair amount of congestion in the entryway and around the bed. The room was a bit puzzling to figure out at first: we quickly discovered that the electricity was controlled by our key cards, but they kept turning off after about a minute from the time I swiped my card in the reader next to the doorway. After a short time, we discovered the instruction sheet left by the room steward, and learned that the room's electricity operated only while a card was left inserted in the reader. So, that turned out to be a cool safety and energy-saving feature.
While the room is physically smaller than those on the other Disney ships, the major problem we always had with earlier cruises was storage space, particularly storage of luggage. This is no longer a problem, as the queen-sized bed is now placed on a frame that does away with the traditional box springs, giving ample space to store 3 or 4 normal suitcases under the bed. This leaves the closet and the rest of the floor space clear for other uses. In the closet, we found several shelves for storing clothes or other belongings, as well as room to hang shirts, pants and dresses that need to hang up. A safe is provided in the closet, which I have always used to store valuable stuff I won't use while on the ship, like phones, wallets, passports, etc.
Speaking of phones, we discovered 2 cell phones had been provided for the use of the occupants. I expect this would be a useful perk for folks with families that could get easily separated (scattered to the wind?) on such a huge ship. We never tried them out, not seeing any use for them ourselves.
The last part of our living quarters, the one with the most problems, was the split bathrooms. Disney Cruise Line has a step up on other cruise lines in that nearly all their rooms have a pair of bathrooms in each stateroom. Both have sinks in them; one has a toilet and the other has a bath tub/shower. On the Dream, in our room, these rooms were smaller than we have seen in the other ship. The shelf space provided around the sinks may be about the same, but it's hard to say, as there are now 2 or 3 small shelves in each room. On the Magic, each room had one large shelf under the mirrors. The space in question is adequate. However, the worst part of the bathroom area is the shower. To Disney's credit, the tub itself provides a little more room than in the other ships, and the shower curtain is placed on a track that curves away from the edge of the tub, to provide better elbow room as you shower. The real disappointment in there is the water controls.
I am not sure I ever mastered the water and shower controls in our bath. There are two knobs to operate... hot and cold. I THINK the cold-water tap is a simple on/off tap; the more you open it, the more the cold water flows. The real problem is the hot tap. Turn it away from you, and hot water starts to flow into the tub. Turn it toward you, and water starts flowing from the showerhead. I THINK that is how it works... but I only showered once in the 4 nights I was on the ship. I showered elsewhere during the rest of my vacation, because I really didn't want to spend any more time futzing with this ridiculous arrangement. I can't imagine who would design such a simple thing as a shower's water control, and feel it necessary to create a novel new mechanism. Whatever their thought in putting this together this way, it was an abject failure, in my opinion.
A few other interesting observations about the staterooms:
• The staterooms here do not require passengers to insert their key cards in a card reader. Instead, they can enter merely by waving their cards near the reader.
- Our Stateroom door
• There was a fairly common problem that I observed while on the ship: if you walked out of your room, and just let the door swing shut, quite often, the door would not latch. You had to turn back and positively pull the door handle to secure the room.
• In our corridor, we walked past a few handicap-accessible rooms. They had two peepholes, one at normal eye level, the other positioned lower, at a good height for someone in a wheelchair. These rooms had a different sort of card reader, though I'm not at all sure why. In addition, they had doorbells, which I would guess activated a visual signal for deaf passengers.
• We made a huge mistake in taking a room on deck 2, directly below the stores. We never heard much sound from out in the corridor, or from the rooms on either side of us, but I had a real hard time sleeping through the night because of the incessant banging, rolling, and what sounded like jack hammering that filtered down from the stores above us all hours of the night. I was literally awakened by heavy banging at 3 and 4 AM almost every night. What they could have been doing, I have no clue, because the appearance of the stores never changed the entire time we were there.
General appearance
When we boarded the ship, we entered on deck 3, in the central atrium. This room that towers three decks in the center of the ship is the pride and joy of the ship. And rightfully so. The first thing that catches the eye is the glorious chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The sparkling, glowing beauty of the sight simply has never been reproduced to my satisfaction by any digital image.
- The Chandelier: Not a good enough photo
The room overall is filled with pale tan marble, and carpeted in many places with deep red and blue coverings. A grand staircase leads up to deck 4 and one leads down to deck 2, where it lets out into the hallway leading to the Enchanted Garden dining room. More about that later.
There are friezes in several places around this room, bringing to mind many classic Disney movies. The banisters all have scrollwork that puts one in mind of Disney's "hidden Mickeys," but if there are any, I never really found any there. The only drawback of the design of the main atrium is that in one end, there are two steps leading up to a hallway that runs about 100 meters. At one point of our first day there, we were walking along the hallway toward the atrium. I came to the area where the hallway leads into the atrium, and saw that there were steps there, but the shadings of the marble made the steps nearly invisible to a casual glance. There were a couple of handrails at very wide intervals along the length of the steps, but oddly, there was no handrail at the wall itself. I turned to warn my wife of the optical illusion, but I was too late, she stepped off into thin air, stumbled into the atrium, and nearly fell. I'm not sure why Disney engineers never thought to put somewhat better visual clues in the area, but I expect they will see a good list of falls and near falls there. There are steps up from the atrium into the entrance of the Royal Palace restaurant that have edges trimmed in white lights as visual aids. They really need to do the same elsewhere in this room.
Moving forward from the atrium on deck 3, you enter the shopping district. The area looks very nice, like some upscale malls I have seen, with wood trim that puts me in mind of scenes from movies like "It's a Wonderful Life." Moving a little further forward, you enter the Walt Disney Theater. This theater is a large, beautiful space for putting on stage productions and headline acts. It spans two decks and holds a little less than half the complete contingent of guests that can sail on the ship.
Other places that we glimpsed during our visit were the District, on the 4th deck aft, with several different bars and areas for partying, generally set aside only for adults. None of the events they held in this area interested us during the trip, so we mostly ignored these places. What we DID see looked very professionally done, though, so I expect partygoers would have a very good time there.
On decks 4 and 5, there are entrances to the Buena Vista Theater. Unlike the Walt Disney theater, this space, designed for showing movies digitally and in 3-D, has no balcony. Instead, the entrances give access to different parts of the stadium seating, making it so that one doesn't have to climb very far to get in or out of a seat. Once again, a very nice touch, in a classically designed theater setting.
The last major design feature of the ship is the sun decks. Decks 11 and 12 are a major attraction all through the cruise. Deck 11 holds the casual dining venues, the pools, the huge screen attached to the back side of the fore funnel (called Funnel-Vision) and the entrances for the concierge zone and the spas. Deck 12 provides shade for deck 11, holds at least 2 bars, the upper level of the spas, the sports area, and entrances to lounges built into the false fore funnel. Oh, and one of my favorite bits of fun, the Aqua-Duck water coaster.
As a space for deck parties, the 2-deck area between the fore and aft funnels has some drawbacks. Mainly, it's not really built to accommodate three to four thousand people. But for the sail-away party and the fireworks night, that's about the size of the crowd that shows up, and it is mighty uncomfortable. Unless you get there to stake out a prime spot at the upper deck railing long in advance of the start of festivities. And even then, you get rather crushed by the press of people crowding in behind you.
When I saw that the Dream was going to have a huge water tunnel suspended above deck 12 for the entire area between the two funnels, I was concerned that it would spoil the ambiance of the upper decks, give a sort of crowded feel to one of the few open spaces on the ship. Luckily, this is not the case in practice. The tube certainly is visible over the entire length of the upper decks, but it quickly becomes a background item, easily ignored if you aren't interested in watching it. And really, there's no fun at all in watching it. The fun is in riding. More on that later.
The Dining experience
Disney has a cool innovation to their dining service. There are three major restaurants on the ship, and passengers' parties are assigned seating in a system they call "rotational dining." What happens is that you sign in and get a "Key to the World" card that indicates your assigned table, and shows you a coded set of letters telling you what restaurant you are to dine in on each evening of the cruise. In our case, our cards said "RAEE," telling us that we would dine first in the Royal Palace, then the Animator's Palate, and the last two nights were to be in the Enchanted Garden. We sat each night at the same numbered table, and we were served by the same serving team, who rotated along with us, and allowing us to get to know them as the trip progressed.
Besides these fine restaurants, the Dream has a few other dining options: Cabanas, up on deck 11, Palo and Remy on deck 12, and a set of fast food outlets located near the pools. The dining experience in the main restaurants was the same in each venue, so the only real differences between them were the décor and entertainment. For each, we were given menus with 4 courses and a selection of cocktails. Water was always served in curiously round glasses that I thought indicated a questionable design choice; they appeared to be extremely easy to send rolling and spilling in case the tables got jostled too much, or the ship encountered rather rougher seas than we found in May in the Bahamas. Our serving team consisted of a server and an assistant, with occasional visits from a head server who appeared to be assigned to supervise teams in selected quadrants of the restaurants.
Royal Palace
The Royal Palace restaurant is the most elegant of the ship's main dining rotation. Decorated along the lines of fairy tale castles from Disney cartoon like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and parts of Beauty and the Beast, it exudes a feeling of grandeur. The napkins in our place settings were gold, though the flatware was nothing particularly special.
- Our Royal Palace settings
That's probably not very surprising, considering the wear and tear involved in serving thousands of people every night. There are a variety of table sizes scattered through the place, ranging from a table for 4 to a central round table that appeared to be meant to seat at least 10 or maybe a round dozen diners.
There was no "program" to entertain diners during our seating. Unless you counted having Princess Aurora and Cinderella sweeping through the place on their way to a passenger meet-n-greet.
Animator's Palate
Our next dinner was in Animator's Palate, on deck 3 aft. On the Magic, the most remarkable restaurant is the original Animator's Palate, which has an elaborate program that celebrates cel-based animation all through dinner. On the Dream, the goal was to celebrate CGI animation. So the whole place is decorated with video screens, all showing various stages of the development of the movie "Finding Nemo."
Unfortunately, as dinner gets started, conversations are interrupted by the appearance of Crush the Sea Turtle, who pops up in rather large screens set beside several of the tables, to conduct "Turtle Talk"-like chats with diners. He starts off in one screen, talks for a couple of minutes to ask kids or adults about themselves, then he moves on to annoy some other folks. The volume on his conversations is loud enough to be heard by all in the restaurant, so conversation among table-mates pretty much is impossible.
After a complete circuit of the large screens, Crush finally tapers off with the chit-chat, and he introduces a guessing game where a school of moonfish form shapes... the audience is asked to guess the shapes before they are completed. And when the moonfish aren't forming shapes, characters from "Finding Nemo" are busy swimming along between the screens, and occasionally chatting among themselves, all through the mealtime. Overall, it is a bit annoying for adults, though it seemed to keep the kids interest most of the time.
What REALLY puzzled me was after dinner was finally over, everyone got up to leave, and we noticed that in the apparently solid marble walkways, several tiles had patterns of lights glowing in them: patterns that formed the shapes of DALMATIAN PUPPIES. Why they chose those shapes in a place apparently centered exclusively on "Finding Nemo" is anyone's guess. It was quite jarring to me.
Enchanted Garden
In the aft section of deck 2, quite near our room, in fact, was the Enchanted Garden restaurant. Now this place is absolutely amazing. Disney says its inspiration was from the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. When you walk in, you walk past an iron gate, past illuminated art that depicts a garden in the afternoon sun.
- Afternoon at the Garden - it was Pirate Night
The main body of the room looks like a gazebo that is open to the sky above, which glows a soft pink. Hanging from the rafters of the gazebo are lights that glow pink, and are shaped like flowers in various stages of blooming.
You sit down to enjoy your 4-course meal... and as the time there progresses, the glowing panels slowly change colors to the deep blue of early evening. When you walk out, even the illuminated artwork at the entrance has become a night scene. For my taste, Enchanted Garden is the most enjoyable of the three main dining venues on the ship.
- The Garden after dinner
Cabanas
The vast majority of the food served on the ship is served at Cabanas, deck 11 aft. When you walk in, it is a bit intimidating: it looks like about a quarter-mile of buffet. In reality, it is two major buffet lines, broken up into 5 or 6 major serving stations, each offering a different type of food. Most of the seating here is indoors, though there is a somewhat crowded deck outside to the very rear of the ship's deck where people can dine in the open air. Also, several tables are set up for Cabanas diners out on the pool deck. Each table hold salt and pepper shakers and a central holder for napkin-wrapped flatware, which saved passengers from having to hold it on their trays while they're hunting food. Several drink stations scattered through the inner food line area provides access to sodas, coffee, tea and juices. At breakfast, milk is served in cartons, both chocolate and varying levels of low fat and whole.
As a venue for buffet dining, it appears to be designed pretty well for the population of the ship. At breakfast, there were a couple of minor disappointments: first, Cabanas had no station for making omelets. Second, there were no Mickey mouse-shaped waffles. There were several different flavors of pancakes, but if you wanted a waffle.... it was just round.
Adult-only dining
On the Dream, there are two adult-only restaurants: Palo and Remy. The cover charge for dining at Palo is $20 per person; at Remy, it is $75. Other differences are that Palo serves a Northern Italian cuisine, and requests its diners to dress up, but doesn't REQUIRE it; the entire dining experience will take anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours. Remy serves classic French dishes (which is only natural, it being named for the hero of the French-cooking hero of the Pixar movie "Ratatouille"), requires evening gowns and suits, and a meal can last upwards of three hours. We decided to forgo Remy on this cruise, and check out Palo.
The entrances to these two fine restaurants are both on deck 12 aft, with a nice little lounge nestled between them where diners who arrive early for their seating can sit and wait. We only were able to sit and chat for a couple of minutes before our table was ready.
- Our table at Palo
The restaurant itself is gorgeously decorated, with rich, dark wood paneling, crystal light fixtures, and extremely soft, warmly colored fabric upholstery. We were shown to a booth that allowed us to look out over the ocean as night fell.
Our server immediately took our drink orders and provided us with a basket of various breads, and a plate with antipasti, a variety of meats and cheeses for snacking before we started looking over the menus.
Our meal was an extravagant production that included soups, a thin-crust pizza, entrees and a shared plate of mushroom risotto, finally topped off by chocolate souffle and panna cotta. Between courses, we were given small cups of sorbet to cleanse our palates... in short; we were treated to a pretty serious culinary event. My only thought was that if Remy really WAS worth over 3 times what Palo is, it would very likely have killed us.
After we finally were finished, our server offered to let us relax a little out on the restaurant's terrace. We accepted, and were led out to the cozy little deck outside, to sit and begin digesting out meal in peace. Sadly, we discovered that we were seated directly beneath the sports deck, and not 20 feet away from the Goofy putting course.
- Fun with putting
From the sound coming from up there, it appeared that several families with at least 6 or 7 small children were enjoying the facility, and rather crimping our romantic seclusion. Such is life on a ship that carries 4000 passengers, I suppose.
Entertainment
As with any cruise ship, a major effort is made to make sure passengers have lots to do. Unlike most major lines, Disney does not have a casino on board. The space that might have been dedicated to fleecing passengers are instead dedicated to keeping children occupied most of the day, and a good part of the night as well. Most of the non-stateroom space on deck 5 is taken up with the Oceaneers' Club and the Oceaneers' Lab for pre-teens, and the "It's a Small World" nursery... a place that I feel highly ambivalent about. After all, I understand the need for a nursery on board a ship dedicated to family cruising. But the "It's a Small World" theme just grates against my nerves, and I'd have to pity any infant placed in its confines for hours on end while parents are otherwise occupied.
There are three main stage shows that play on the Dream's Walt Disney Theater: "The Golden Mickeys," "Villains Tonight," and "Believe."
"The Golden Mickeys" is a show that appears to be run on all Disney ships. My first experience with it, I thought it would get rather stale pretty quickly. The format is straightforward: the ship is presenting Oscar-like awards for various general categories of characters you see in Disney movies. When I agreed to accompany my wife to the show on this cruise, I was expecting to see pretty much the same stuff as I had on our first cruise five years ago. And it opened the same, with stage performers accosting kids on the way into the theater, and interviewing them as if they were celebrities. But when they got the show really rolling, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had modified the show to include material from more recent movies, like "Tangled," "Bolt" and "Toy Story."
For "Villains Tonight," my wife and I decided to try experiencing the show in a different manner: by watching it in our stateroom. The room TV, we discovered, had more than just a few broadcast channels and ship information. It had a channel dedicated to showing the stage shows for those who couldn't make it to the theater for whatever reason. Considering we had seen the show live on the Disney Magic less than a year before, we thought it might be cool to try this out and see how it was.
What we saw was a standard performance, recorded live some time in the past and edited into a very smooth TV production by the Disney producers. It wasn't the same as a live performance... we missed out on that night's ad libs and audience reaction, for instance. But we also missed out on hearing toddlers have end-of-day meltdowns, having people climb over us to get to empty seats, and all the other little annoyances that come with "real" theater. It was a decent trade-off, I guess. Though seeing it on a 22-inch screen just wasn't the same.
The show itself is cool. It centers on Hades and his life right after being defeated by Hercules. Apparently, the Fates have bad news: Hades is seen by the "powers that be" as being weak and ineffectual as Lord of the Underworld. If he can't step up the evil, he will be evicted from his gig. So he sends out for all the villains he knows to help fill his "evilometer." Some rather clever and fun shenanigans ensue, accompanied by visits from quite an array of Disney cartoon villains.
Finally, there was an afternoon matinee performance of "Believe." This was easily the weakest of the shows. The premise is a favorite for Disney writers: getting someone who is a skeptic to toss aside doubts and believe in fairy tales and pixie dust. In this particular case, it's a horticulturist who is trying in vain to get a rare flower to bloom before some representatives from some society arrives to see the marvel he has found.
His daughter suggests enlisting the help of Tinkerbell and the garden fairies... which is rejected with scorn by the science-minded adult. Enter the Genie from Aladdin, and a series of rather disjointed scenes copied at random from several Disney movies parades across the stage. It seemed all cobbled together and pointless to me. "Disney Dreams" is a far better production for the Magic... but I guess you can't have perfection every time out of the gate.
Getting back to the TV in the stateroom: other reviews have mentioned a paucity of broadcast channels on the TV, and I fully agree. Giving passengers nothing to watch except Disney-owned channels is not a very good idea, I think. They could add at least a smattering of other cable channels, and not harm their bottom line all that badly, I should think. One big plus was the on-demand offerings they had available free. Again, it was exclusively Disney material, but it sure beat the heck out of having to choose between ESPN's world poker championships and Phinneas and Ferb.
Fireworks
The main event that I had been waiting for on this cruise was Pirate Night. One night of each Disney cruise, Pirate Night starts at dinner. Everyone gets to dress up in pirate costumes (and believe me, some folks come on board with costumes that are good enough for movies) and gather on the upper decks for a nightlong pirate party. On the Magic and Wonder, the pirate deck party goes along smoothly until Captain Hook hijacks Goofy, Chip and Dale and several other mainline Disney characters. He takes over for a little while, until Mickey come zip-lining across the deck to rescue the ship. The script at that point has a slightly awkward segue into the fireworks show, launched from the rear of the ship.
On the Dream, things run differently. The party takes place in two phases, broken apart by about 2.5 hours of what can best be described as PIRATE MUZAK. They even shut down the Aqua Duck "for safety purposes" while they set up the fireworks display. At 10:30, after everyone is gathered to the deck and bored to tears with having to watch pirate children chasing each other across the covered pools, they FINALLY get things cranked up. A bit. Captain Jack Sparrow drops to the deck from the top of the fore funnel, and gets chased from one side of the deck to the other by other pirates and/or angry wenches. Then for some reason that I didn't quite catch, fireworks start firing.
We had been told that the Dream's fireworks would be far better than those on the older ships, because rockets would be firing from BOTH ends of the ship. On this voyage, I was not impressed. The rockets from the aft were OK... about what I was used to. The rockets from the fore launch point looked to me to be like maybe 5 simple flares. I hope they had some technical glitch that prevented them from giving a more spectacular show. I won't know any time soon, I guess.
Pools/water entertainment
There are three pools on the Dream for passengers. Mickey's pool is directly in front of the aft funnel, and is rather shallow and set up for smaller children to enjoy with their parents. There is a nice half-tube slide for kids ONLY to ride into the pool (I got yanked away from the steps leading up to it when I mistakenly tried to walk up them to get to deck 12) and seemed to be well liked by those who used it. Unlike the Mickey pool on the Dream and Wonder, this pool can be covered over to provide more deck space for parities. On our cruise, it was not covered over during the sail-away party, but it was covered up night.
Donald's pool is at the opposite end of the area between funnels, directly under the Funnelvision screen. It is set up for families with older children to enjoy, and the water there is about 5 ft deep. I never tried getting into the water there, as the pool was always nearly full of people whenever I was around. Not that I mind sharing pools with other folks, mind you, but it was a bit too crowded for my liking.
- Mickey and Donald pools in the day
The third pool, one that I never saw with more than one or two people in it, was the Quiet Cove pool. This pool is one of (for me and apparently most other folks that I saw) a rather big disappointment. The Quiet Cove, set between the fore funnel and the spa/concierge area, is ostensibly set aside for adult use only. The pool features a "swim-up bar," and the surrounding area has lots of shade and comfortable seating. I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of a swim-up bar, but on this ship, the bar was actually set up so that 4 or 5 stools were in the water at ankle depth, in a section of the pool that took up most of the area dedicated to it. In this section, you could walk up to the pool, get a drink, then walk away (again, ankle-deep) to sit at a bench to converse with friends.
A much smaller section of the pool was a circular well about 5 ft deep. There's not much you could do in this section, except stand in water up to your chest or neck and talk. A third section was slightly shallower, and set up as a circular spa, with a bench to sit on and chat. While this might have appealed to a partying crowd, it had zero utility for swimming, or for the adult pool games that my family had enjoyed on the other ships.
- Quiet Cove - a little TOO quiet
All this would not condemn the Quiet Cove, in my mind, if it wasn't for the traffic pattern. There are two paths for passengers to take in coming from or going to the fore lifts: from one side or another, around the very edge of the pool, toward a central entrance to the lifts. Consequently, anyone wanting a quiet time in this "cove" will have a steady stream of families with little kids, tramping through the area, not 3 feet from your "seclusion" away from the kiddie area. This stands in major contrast to the older ships, where foot traffic is moved primarily along the periphery, away from the pool. A pool, I must add, that is far larger and sunnier than this apparent afterthought of a space.
Directly next to Mickey's pool, under the eaves of the funnel, is "Nemo's Reef," a large, enclosed splash zone for toddlers and small children. My wife and I didn't qualify for entrance to this place, but it appeared t be a very cool place for little ones to get into and get soaked by a huge variety of water jets, fountains and other wet novelties. The kids who did go in sure made THEIR approval known. I expect this zone to be seen as a major attraction for families with little ones for a long time to come.
Speaking of wet attractions... there's the Aqua Duck. I had to wait until we had a day at sea to get in line for this one. I had thought, when I first read about it, that it would be a rather tame ride, only a little more daring than your average lazy river ride at water parks everywhere. When I finally got my chance to ride the raft down the flume, I had a neat thrill. The start of the ride is interesting, in that it sends you on a loop that swings out over the ocean about 150 ft below. Sadly, the raft you are required to ride on is so big it effectively blocks the view. But you still know the drop is there. The next section of the ride is the best. You slide down a steep incline to pick up speed. As you do, water that is also picking up speed hits you in the back of the head, so you get a good total soaking, even though you never go under water. The ride goes down one side of the deck between funnels, then you go into a dark tunnel inside the fore funnel (I had hoped there would be a transparent section where you could glimpse the youth club there, but it was not to be...) and then you more calmly float back toward the aft funnel. Another dark passage through the other funnel and you are deposited into a receiving pool, conveniently located near the entrance, in case you want to get back in line immediately.
I believe this is the only Disney ride that has no store immediately outside the exit. LOL
Overall, I believe that this ship's water attractions (other than Quiet Cove) are top notch and will live up to the expectations of the most ardent of cruisers.
Solving mysteries
There is a game available for passengers of all ages to engage in at any time of the day or night that they want. I could not find it on the cruise line web site, but I recommend it for folks if they find themselves with an hour or so of "down time." It's called the Mid Ship Detective Agency." On the top deck of the central atrium, passengers will find two computerized kiosks. Using a touch screen and cards available from dispensers next to the screen, you can start a hunt through the ship to find a criminal. There are two mysteries to choose from: Recovering stolen art, or finding the villain who kidnapped the Dalmatian puppies.
 
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The card has a sort of block code on one side and a badge on the other. The block code is, of course, the key to the game. Once you are registered, and have chosen your mystery, you are instructed to search the ship for clues. And you are given a fold-out sheet that shows you where clues are to be found on the ship, and a list of suspects.
The cool part of this game (besides the way it leads you to explore pretty much every deck of the ship) is that the clues are hidden in interactive art scattered around the ship. This is one of my favorite technical innovations on the Dream. Most of the art decorating the walls and stairwells of the ship are traditional framed prints or paintings. A good number of them, however, are video screens with motion sensors. When one of these things senses an audience that has stopped to look, they spring into action. Some are stand-alone screens that show (in one case) a scene from "Bambi" that comes to life for about 5 seconds. My favorite that I found was a pair of screens. One had a painting of a fortress with cannons peeking over the edge. Next to it was a painting of a pirate ship. When I stood in front of this tableau, the guns on the fortress fired, and we saw the cannon ball fly over to the other painting and hit the pirate ship. Of course, the pirate ship returned fire. It were cool.
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Getting back to the mystery game... some of this "Enchanted Art" has a Detective Agency emblem on the floor in front of it. The clue sheet gives directions to each of these special art pieces. When you stand in front of the artwork, on the emblem, and hold your card up for the scanner to read your code, a scene from your game is activated.
- My wife plays the game a little.
The clues are given and you are able (after pretty much exploring all of the ship) to narrow down the suspect list to find your culprit. The ship's computer system appears to give different clues at different stations in every game. I suspect that the villain you chase in each instance of the game is chosen randomly, to keep the game fresh for all who play. At any rate, it is a neat way to get around the ship and find new stuff to see. And meet fellow mystery solvers along the way.
Conclusion
As always, the Disney Cruise Line comes through with excellence in nearly all aspects of his hospitality enterprises, and the Dream is no exception. The crew were invariably friendly, alert for opportunities to help people out (I saw one poor fellow on his way to some task getting stopped repeatedly by passengers on the first day, wanting to know where the guest services desk was... he stopped at every request and directed folks the correct way without the slightest hint of annoyance or impatience), and working tirelessly to make the Dream as close to perfect as they could.
Sure, there were still some rough edges to be seen, and I don't think any vacation experience in the world can satisfy every guest's expectations at every point.
Would I go back for another trip on the Dream? I have to say I'm torn on that question. There are lots of very cool things to experience on this ship. I never made it into the Skyline Bar, as I had hoped... nor did my wife and I get around to visiting the spa or fitness center. On the other hand, a couple of features I really did hope to find on the ship -- more spacious shower facilities in the staterooms and a genuine quiet pool area -- were rather disappointing to me. For a short cruise, I expect the plusses would outweigh the minuses. But if we're talking about a full week on board, with a cantankerous shower in the room and at least 2 assigned dinners in Animator's Palate, I'd be somewhat hesitant, especially if there was still a nice cruise available on the Magic or Wonder.
On the other hand, I love to go on cruises to relax, and one of my very favorite places to go for that is the promenade area on deck 4. You can get on a deck chair, in the shade there, sit and watch the ocean slide by in a peaceful setting, only minimally interrupted by your fellow passengers doing pretty much the same as you, or taking advantage of the quarter-mile walking track around the deck. There are plenty of other places to relax if you have a mind to, and here, the Dream really does come through beautifully.
I'll have to play all that by ear, if the chance ever comes my way. Overall, I would have to say that taking a cruise on this beautiful ship would be a great experience for the whole family, so long as you don't expect perfection for every moment on board.
