We chose this cruise for our grandson's 6th birthday; we got a really good price and have sailed Carnival 4 times before. We were interested to explore the larger Carnival Dream. It really is a large ship but the layout makes it seem cramped in most areas. The pools are EXTREMELY small - 2 of them that only accommodate 17 people each! They looked like "people soup" most of the time. The slides were nice but the water park area for the children was very small as well. We stayed in a room on the first floor with a porthole which was nice, but there were several problems. The room was near the gangway and was extremely noisy. We had a bathtub and a shower but both had drainage problems and had to be repaired. The safe malfunctioned twice and we had to wait for staff to come reopen them. The first night we had to wait almost two hours for a staff member to bring an extension cord for my husband's sleep apnea machine - there was only ONE electrical outlet for U.S. voltage and it was across the room from the bed! The dining room staff were rushed and severely understaffed, consequently dinner often took two hours from appetizers to dessert. Consequently, they had very little time to socialize or entertain. Some of the food was delicious but most of it was just mediocre. Lots of photo opportunities including a fun "props" night but 8x10 photos were a whopping $22.00 each with no offers for "buy 3 get one free" or anything like that. The Camp Ocean was fun for our 6 year old; seemed well staffed and kept the kids active and entertained. The Dr. Seuss character breakfast was very nice and we enjoyed that. Unfortunately they scheduled this at the same time as the Towel Animal Theatre so we had to leave early to catch both. Definitely a downgrade overall from past experiences on Carnival and we will not sail with them again.