Welcome to Day 2 of our experience here on Genting Dream! Alas, it didn’t start out the way I had hoped it would as my husband and I overslept our alarm and just missed the 10am service timing for breakfast (as mentioned in Part 1, the inclusive restaurants only open for full service at specific timings). So we were left stranded, having only fried junk food and muffins to snack on at The Lido’s outdoor area until lunch at 12pm (boo, what happened to all-day dining).
The ship docked near Bintan Island and there was a whole slew of tour offerings for guests to choose from. I’ve never actually disembarked at a cruise destination before because that’s when the ship is at its emptiest (ie. the best time to make use of all the ship’s facilities!).
One of the activities we did was the Justice League Adventure, a treasure-hunt-cum-amazing-race type format where we had to go to different stations around the ship, complete tasks and collect stamps. The activity was clearly targeted at kids, but hey, the prize was a decent-sized blanket with cute DC characters on them, so why not?
Having collected our prize, we then continued exploring the rest of the ship from where we left off yesterday. We even got a glimpse of the private pool exclusively for Palace guests.
At about 3pm, we made our way to the Zodiac Theatre to catch the Verry Christmas show production. Similar to the SONIO performance yesterday, there was no strong overarching theme or storyline, just a bunch of separate (albeit mostly talented) acts strung together.
Right after the show ended, we changed into our swimwear and brought along our sports shoes for the more physical activities on Deck 17 and 18. Time for some fun! We did the high elements ropes course first, which involved us navigating obstacles while operating our own dual pin auto-locking carabiners (very cool mechanism) right at the edge of the ship. The best part was flying across a 35-meter zipline suspended 18 decks above the sea, what a rush! The whipping winds and tall heights as I hung off the side of the ship made it all frighteningly exciting. Wish we could’ve gone for a second round (:
Once we got out of our ropes course gear, we made a beeline for the water slides. There were safety crew members stationed at the top of the slides managing the traffic, and much to my amazement, there was really not that much traffic at all. We didn’t have to wait very long for our turns, which was awesome. Don’t be fooled by the “family” slides, you can actually hit pretty high speeds on those! That satisfied my thrill quota for the day, heh. But not wanting to waste the opportunity, we also tried out the “daredevil” slides, which began with an almost-vertical drop creating the sensation of free-fall (lasting for what felt like an eternity). Now that really knocked the wind out of me, but yay, pat on the back for trying it twice!
My overall rating of the experience: 4 out of 5 stars. One thing that really contributed to this rating was the fact that despite the ship’s enormous capacity, it wasn’t overly crowded with unpleasant waiting times. I loved having that abundant personal space, something you don’t typically get on a huge cruise. Some downsides were the not-really all-day dining, the diluted and bland food, the incoherent performance shows, and the smaller-than-usual cabins. Overall cleanliness, on the other hand, was excellent. Most areas on the ship, importantly the toilets, were very well-maintained. We thoroughly enjoyed the ropes course and the water slides, the zipline flying over the edge of the ship is a definite must-try! All in all, it was a fun and relaxing experience which made for a nice weekend getaway (:
Dania Experiences 