I just came back from my first ever cruise on Dream Cruise's World Dream with some friends, and thought I could give my take of the experience. We opted for their Palace Suites, which I will review below too. This is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the facilities as I did not take cool photos of everything.
[Formatting may be all weird as Blogger's formatting tools are wonky]
Palace Suites
Dream Cruise markets this as the 'exclusive, attentive luxury experience that goes beyond expectations'. Does it really do so? Let me break down what you get and what our experience was.
The latest prices / offerings can be found here, and the latest screenshot is below.
In a gist, you pay a little more than a regular cabin, and you get access to many extras that the regular folks don't get, such as extra facilities, extra room space, and extra butler service. I'll just comment on the facilities and butler service.
Extra Facilities
There are certain areas on the ship that are marked out only for Palace guests, such as the Palace dining, Palace pool, etc. I don't know how the food compares against the 'regular' dining area as we didn't dine at the regular area, but I liked that there was a 'private' pool that was separate from the main pool that was more crowded and open.
The butler service seemed like a hit or miss experience. We went with two other couples, and basically one of their butlers seemed to be always around and helped them (and thankfully by extension, us too) settle everything; another butler seemed to never be around; our butler was somewhere in the middle.
Food
The food was quite disappointing. Being my maiden voyage, one key selling point I hear from friends who had gone on cruises before was that you could eat to your heart's content, and the food was usually pretty decent. This was not the case.
Part of the Palace Suites package was that we got to eat at all the specialty restaurants on board. Below is a short breakdown:Steak and Grill @ Marks Best - The wife's steak came way undercooked (was pinkish red when she asked for medium); after sending it back, the outsides were burnt and insides were still pink. The meat was thin and dry. My cod was also pretty meh, and looked like it was in a plate of vomit - which was actually some sort of pasta. The pasta itself wasn't tooooo bad, but just wasn't appetising.
Palace Restaurant - This was the in-house dining that Palace Suites guests could have meals at all times of the day I believe, which includes breakfast, lunch, high-tea, happy hour, dinner, and supper.
First day hi-tea... not bad
The food was average, with some dishes being quite bad (breakfast had a 'mushrooms' side dish to the eggs, which were just plain boiled with no seasoning/sauce. Tasted horrible). The one time we had lunch there, I didn't quite like the duck either. For breakfast, orange juice tasted like diluted punch, and pastries/bread did not taste fresh. Even the coffee tasted too mild and light, didn't pack much of a kick.
My travel companions swear by the supper menu though, claiming that the char kway teow for supper was one of the best they ever had.
Hotpot - There's a ton of ingredients with the hotpot set(one full plate of vegetables and one full plate of meat), but it was really quantity over quality. Half the meat were those frozen processed kind (e.g. sausages, meatballs) and wasn't that great. I drowned the food in the free-flow goma sauce and laoganma to make the meal more appetising.
Silk Road - Chinese restaurant which was average at best - duck portion was really small (picture shows a portion for 2pax) and the sweet salmon was meh.
Teppanyaki - This was hands down the best place we ate at.
The starter dish of live-cooked vegetables was tasty and well-seasoned. Fried rice was a little bland for my liking, could have been a little more salty, but it was still nice. The filet mignon was juicy, soft, and really good. Above all, the live chef (shoutout to Brian) cooking the food was really funny and entertaining. Out of all the food I ate, this was the only one I would actually willingly pay for outside.
Entertainment
Wi-Fi - The complimentary Wi-Fi was HORRENDOUS. I don't care about data speeds, but the connection was never consistent. This was a big problem because our group of 6 had to often rely on Whatsapp to communicate and coordinate (due to the COVID 2pax rule), and often we had awkward radio silence as the connection just kept dropping. There were long stretches on the third day where we just had no Wi-Fi at all. It was horrible.
Casino - I'm only interested in the physical table games, and not the slots machines / digital games, so I will only comment on those. The minimum bet was $50 for certain games (e.g. baccarat), and $100 for most, and it was kinda disappointing that they pegged it so high. I'm not sure if it's covid-related and they wanted to keep play sessions shorter, but I wish they had lower budget options. Kinda sad that they didn't have a poker table too. The games were largely blackjack variants and chinese gambling games (e.g. da xiao, pai gow), all capped at 2 pax per table, which does dampen the atmosphere a bit.
VISION - This was a magic show by a French magician that was pretty good! I thought he made the most of the COVID restrictions where it's harder to have audience interactions, though I wish he had a greater variety of tricks - several of them were repeated in idea (i.e. forced choice). He was a good performer though, so he gave us an entertaining show (regardless of whether we could figure out the tricks)
FAITH - Shipwrecked buff dude, acrobats, pirates doing flips, ballet dancing, hot topless males, aerial ring/cloth tricks, cross-dressing 'witch' (who looked more like a clown) talking to an angel and a demon, trampoline stunts.
If the above sentence sounded disjointed and confusing, that was exactly how this show felt. It felt like they had a talented crew of performers who could do certain things, and they just tried to string them together and slap on some storyline which didn't make sense. I never thought that an acrobatic /circus show needed coherence to be good (I'm probably spoilt as my previous experiences were Cirque du Soleil / Vegas shows) but I left this show scratching my head wondering what I just watched.
Ropes Obstacle Course - This was pretty fun - you are clipped into a safety harness and have to navigate a rope obstacle course that's a few metres up in the air. The obstacles weren't overly difficult to navigate, with the hardest being a rope wall at the end that requires you to clear a tricky gap sideways - but being that high up and walking on shaky and/or small platforms IS quite thrilling and fun. The course climaxes in a zipline over the sea back to the starting point, which is a great adrenaline rush.
Water slides - There are 5 adult water slides, and they are pretty good. Without spoiling anything, expect to twist and turn and zip down REALLY fast. I always ended up a little dizzy at the end of each slide and needed a moment or two to compose myself.
Bingo - There were multiple games of bingo throughout the cruise, each 'escalating' in a their 'jackpot' prize ($28,888 to $68,888). We went for at least 3 out of 6 of them, and there were no winners of the jackpot prize in any of those sessions, which originally led us to suspect that the game may be rigged.
Basically how it works is you pay $30 to get 3 cards with 24 random numbers each, and they will call out numbers from 1 - 75 'at random', one at a time. If a called number also appears on your card, you can mark it by punching it out (the numbers are perforated slightly). To win the jackpot, you need to hit all 24 numbers on a single card by the 40th call.
In all 3 games I witnessed, no one came close - I think the earliest anyone took to hit all 24 numbers was around the 60th call? That person wins a consolation prize of about $300 - given their minimum participants of 10 and maximum of 40, and most games were full, they basically make $900 each bingo session, providing they don't pay out their jackpot.
So assuming no one wins the jackpot prize, you are paying $30 to win $300 with a 1 in 40 chance of winning - negative EV! Not worth.
EV = Expected Value
2.5% chance to win $300 vs 97.5% chance to lose $30
$7.50-$29.25 = -$21.75
I was curious so I dug deeper, and realised that it was probably not rigged, just that the chances of getting a 'complete cover' (i.e. all 24 numbers on your card is called) by the 40th ball is really infinitesimal... ridiculously small:
The probability of one of the cards being completely covered (all 24 numbers) by the 40th call is 0.000000244%
Other Activities - There were other free activities like origami and stretch classes that you had to book, but they were all limited to 10 pax (due to COVID I suppose) and so most ended up being fully booked. And nothing was really spectacular or sounded like a 'must-try'.
Overall Experience
Given I had the impression that food was the best thing on a cruise, I was severely let down when out of all the food I ate, I probably only really liked one of them (Teppanyaki). The rope course and water slides were fun, but I wish their booking infrastructure for activities would improve. Being more of a 'do-activities' person, I was somewhat bored by the 2nd day after trying almost everything. Maybe my expectations were too high and people usually just... chill and do nothing much on a cruise [then what's the point?]? I only know that this was not much of a dream cruise for me, and I will not be returning.
