Cruises are usually stereotyped as the kind of vacation endeavour mainly undertaken by the older folks, which I think is a largely accurate description. I’m probably the anomaly to that stereotype though, as the prospect of going on a cruise has never failed to delight me ever since I can remember. So when my mom-in-law brought up the idea of trying out Dream Cruises, I jumped on the opportunity!
As the cruise was setting sail on a Friday evening, my husband and I packed minimally as we had to make our way down straight after work. When we arrived at the check-in area, there was little to no queue, making the process quick and easy.
We sailed on the Genting Dream, a ship that is a whopping 335m in length with 18 decks and over 1600 staterooms, much bigger compared to the Star Cruises and Royal Caribbean cruise ships I’ve been on. I was genuinely concerned about the potential snaking queues and the space crunch in the walkways, but surprisingly, the crowd situation turned out better than I expected.
The room situation, however, can definitely be described as claustrophobically “space-saving”. Upon entering our Balcony Stateroom, I could immediately feel how cramped the space was. I don’t know the exact dimensions but it sure felt like a tighter squeeze than the rooms on the other cruise ships I’ve been on. The sofa was also lacklustre as it appeared to be stained with black and grey patches, making me terribly hesitant to sit on it. I eventually gained some peace of mind by covering the sofa with pool towels, much to my husband’s amusement.
On the bright side, the bathroom was really well-maintained, everything looked modern and spotless. The hot water came on pretty quickly as well. I was thankful that the bed was comfortable and the sheets smelled fresh. And the balcony! Nothing beats having a private (albeit tiny) balcony to enjoy the sea view with the warm sun on your face and wind in your hair.
The first thing we did after putting down our stuff in the room was have dinner at the lower Dream Dining Room on Deck 7. We were served a full course Chinese set menu meal that tasted really delicious. Unfortunately because of their use of shellfish ingredients, my husband had a minor scare when his bottom lip started itching and developing a rash. Nothing serious, but we didn’t dine here after that (awww…).
My mom-in-law mentioned that the upper Dream Dining Room on Deck 8 served yummy dim sum in the mornings too. Sadly, we didn’t manage to wake up early enough to try that out.
We proceeded up to the The Lido serving an international buffet on Deck 16 for our second round of dinner bites (I mean, a cruise vacation means non-stop feasting right?). The soft-serve ice cream machines here seemed to be a hit with both kids and adults. There was a dedicated and pretty extensive Halal section, Indian section and Indian Vegetarian section, compared to the usual overwhelming majority of Western and Chinese cuisine. The good part was that the Indian dishes were flavourful and tasted substantial, the bad part was that most dishes from the other sections weren’t seasoned very well and tasted bland. Many of the soups and sauces were majorly diluted, and the pastas were severely undercooked. On the first night, there was also a barbecue section that was set up next to the pool area. I remember that section smelling heavenly, and we saw many plates crammed with huge barbecued prawns.
Surprisingly, The Lido wasn’t overly crowded given that it is the international buffet restaurant of the ship. Guests were generally courteous to one another instead of rushing and pushing to get to the food, and we didn’t have to wait very long to get a table. Service staff were quick to clear the finished plates and wipe down the tables as well. Overall, it was an unexpectedly pleasant experience.
The three restaurants mentioned so far are entirely inclusive (free-to-eat). However, what made the dining experience less than satisfactory was the fact that there was no real all-day dining here. All these restaurants had specific service hours, outside of which there was no food available. They did try to circumvent this by opening a small outdoor section of The Lido but the food they served there were mostly fried finger food (no, thank you).
There are many other food and drink options onboard the ship in the form of specialty restaurants and bars. These places are not inclusive and additional payment is required to dine here. We didn’t try any of these restaurants on this trip as there wasn’t anything in particular that we fancied enough to fork out extra money for.
Once our tummies were satisfied, we went to catch the main performance show, SONIO, at the Zodiac Theatre. The troublesome thing was that we had to wait in line for quite a while at the Box Office on Deck 6 in order to pre-book our tickets for this show and the show that was on tomorrow. Anyway, the entire production seemed rather disjointed, resembling a variety show with unrelated individual acts taking turns to perform instead of a coherently themed performance. If you didn’t get tickets for this show, you wouldn’t have missed out on much.
After the performance show, we set out to explore the rest of the ship. We started from the lowest deck we had access to and slowly worked our way to the upper decks. This has always been my favourite thing to do on a cruise, going around discovering hidden nooks and crannies that no one else frequents. Most areas were empty-ish (which was, again, a pleasant surprise), allowing us to wander freely to our hearts’ content. Maybe everyone was busy lucking out at the casino or playing Bingo to win the hefty grand prize.
When we were done roaming about most of the decks on this huge vessel, we headed back to our room to retire for the night. I spent a good deal of time perusing the Dream Weekender brochure that had the list of activities and events happening around the ship, and came up with a rough plan on how to spend the next day (:
Dania Experiences 