A weekend at sea thawing out after a month of cold. I have to say, my first time on a cruise in what, ten years? was pretty unexpected, and mega fulfilling. I’m not going to say that I nailed the whole how to do a cruise thing best, but I think given the fun we had, I did it pretty damned well. See below for: our recipe for a superb weekend..
– a group that has the capacity to be totally ridiculous
– a willingness to make new friends
– 2-3 day cruise
– ability to source out GOOD DEALZ aka unlimited fine wine, thank you very much!
Lemme elaborate. You see, after my weekend on the Genting Dream, I realised that a cruise holiday is totally different from a normal holiday. When you fly to Phuket for the weekend, for example, you’re looking for a break, yes, but also to see somewhere new, to explore, etcetera. More likely than not you already have an itinerary or something vaguely resembling that. So yes, there is a sense of relaxation, but also a sense of adventure and agenda. Whereas on a cruise, you’re 100% there to relax. The only exploring you’re going to be doing happens within the confines of the (admittedly very large) ship, and there’s really very little that can go off plan when the plan is just to relax. It’s for this same reason that I suggest taking a 2-3 day cruise which can be easily slotted into a weekend – over the 3d2n cruise-to-nowhere we had (literally, the ship sailed out to open waters, then turned around and went back to Singapore), all I did was live my best life at a mega leisurely pace, to the tune of crashing waves and lime-fizzled corona. It was just the right amount of time too, for us to relax and yet disembark at the end of the weekend feeling as though we had not yet exhausted all the permutations of relaxation methods on the ship yet.
We were invited on a girlfriends weekend aboard the Genting Dream from Dream Cruises, so full disclosure, we didn’t have to pay for our trip (except for expenses, which i’ll talk more about later). I know people who have done full on stag parties on cruise trips, and my last cruise experience (>10 years ago?) was a family vacation, so I think as a vessel for holidaying cruises are pretty versatile. See what I did there? Ha, ha. Anyway, I checked the prices and the two night cruise that we did starts at about 400 bucks per person, although we got a nicer room that had a sea view so that goes up to 600/pp. This price doesn’t seem to be super fixed though, because there’s also a bunch of credit card promos I’ve seen for the ship online prior to my trip, and right now if you sail during your birthday month you get 30% off as well as free wifi for the duration of the cruise. I got all my information from the website, so if you want to double confirm the prices for your dates, check here: dreamcruiseline.com/
Anyway! We boarded, checked in to our room, and did a quick ship tour. After which we were free to explore the place and basically relax. Melissa and James were on the ship too, which was a nice surprise, because that totally played into my theory that group cruise trips are the ideal permutation because you can PLAY PING PONG AND GIANT CHESS TOGETHER! Okay, if you laugh at that, then you obviously havent lounged around in your swimsuit with a beer in hand all afternoon while meditating upon whether to move your Queen or Bishop, okay??
A quick aside regarding our room: I was pretty impressed by how similar it was to a hotel room. It was super spacious, which I guess makes sense given that Dream Cruises brands itself as a luxury cruise. The cruise itself is only about a year old, so everything in our room was very new. I was particularly impressed by the fact that there were two USB charging ports next to each side of the bed, because I am practical about what I need and what I need is power!
Also, cant believe there was a bath tub in our room?!?!?!
Note: The bathroom’s tap water is drinkable, and there’s a sign telling you so as well. The cruise provides bottled water per day/room, and anything above that is chargeable, so just refill your bottle at the tap if you need.
Okay, so. On to the rest of the ship!
Amanda and I are particularly proud of how we spotted this great deal. Fine, we didn’t spot it, it was pointed out to us by a bartender on one of the decks when we tried to buy a beer. But whatever. Basically, there was a two day drinks pass available which meant that you could have unlimited selected drinks at any of the ship’s many bars, like coffees, teas, juices, soft drinks, any beer, and the super yummy house red and white wines. I mean, score!! There are several tiers of this drink package, but we got the cheapest because all the higher tiers included like whiskey and gin and all that.. and we’re happy with coffee, beer, and wine. Hoho. That’s 70 bucks each for two days of unlimited drinks, and I say with some sense of pride and amusement that we broke even within the first two hours. Everything after that? We counted as profit.
We were so amused at our own bargain that we started wondering if the ship would raise prices after we disembarked, citing two azn girls who helped them realise how they might be making a loss on drinks.. But at the same time, we were also impressed by how the bartender happily pointed out this deal when he overheard us discussing what drinks to get. It kind of fit in to our later realisation that all the staff on this ship are mega friendly – at least the ones we ran into. Amanda and I made friends with some of the pool staff (who then delayed closing the particular hot tub we were in, hoho) and she even made plans to play ping pong with one of the other deckhands after he knocked off at ten. And speaking of staff – the ship is full of them. There’s literally personnel at every corner, which I suppose is mainly to enforce safety measures and facilitate check in and out processes, since we didn’t have to queue for a single thing the entire weekend. The Singaporeans in us didn’t know what to do with ourselves!
We spent a majority of the first day roaming the ship and watching the live deck band from the hot tub. This is mainly because the ship only started boarding at 4pm, so when we got on there was just over an hour of sunlight left. After checking in and having dinner, we basically went straight to the pool and didn’t move for 2 hours. It was hilarious, actually, because at some point the ship was leaning heavily on the right, and all the water in the pool swished to that side, leaving me sitting on the shallow end of the pool wondering where all the water had gone. The pool staff actually convinced me that they’d been pranking me by pressing some control system, but halfway through I figured out that it was the ship’s movement. NICE TRY!
Oh – a note on safety. For safety reasons you cant bring alcohol into the pools. And also, the floors around the pool are made of this totally awesome weird material which felt slightly absorbent and bouncy. I couldnt figure out what it was, but amanda and I bounced on it a lot, trying to figure it out. It’s also super anti slip, but the staff are always on hand to wipe up any water so that puddles dont form and lead to accidents. There are seriously a lot of staff, we timed it and if you bring a beer into the tub, you have about two seconds before someone blows a whistle at you. Oh well. At least we know we’re being watched over, safety wise!
After that we headed to the outdoor movie night, which was quite nice – all these day beds in front of a huge screen. However, they were playing Annabel Creation, so after about fifteen minutes we gave up watching and went back to our rooms to turn in. The in-room TV is pretty awesome I think, because unlike in a hotel, it has free movies. The selection isnt huge but I liked the movies that they had on show – the entire harry potter series, some of the star wars films, and I cant really remember what else because I was freaking out over the harry potter and star wars series!! I tried to watch Star Wars Rogue One, but unforch I was too tired from the day of, yknw, relaxing, so I fell asleep. Hoho.
I dont know what to tell you – the next day was spent in a way that can only be described as frolicking in the sun. Perhaps pictures will explain what can only be interpreted one way. See:
Here is the ziplining area, which I also did not try, because of above reasons. You need to wear proper shoes for this, and have proper clothes too, the ship personnel are super serious about safety and dont want you to get roper burns or anything. Anyway, this is the first zipline at sea AND part of the 35m zipline goes out of the ship and over the sea so that’s pretty hard core!
This is Amanda being weird on the sundeck, apparently it gives you a better tan? Who knows.
Here are the butts of Amanda, Melissa, and I, also known as the super basic I’m on a ship! pose.
Here I am, being totally extra under the water slides. Again on safety: no jewellery or handphones or go pros or whatever on the water slide, they dont want you to bump it and hurt yourself, and when you get on the slide you will understand why.
Here is the top view of the ship, which I took from the viewing deck on the 19th floor.
Sorry I just need to also point out that the water slides are intense!! I thought they were for kids because all these children were just flinging themselves down like it was no big deal, but now I realise that is because kids are crazy. There are two types of slides, the longer kind (stripes, on the right) and the shorter ones (solid colours, on the left), and the longer ones actually have a transparent portion that goes out of the ship and over the sea because, yolo, I guess???? And the shorter slides are EXTREMELY STEEP. Look at that purple slide!!! I sat down, looked in, and wanted to chicken out, but couldnt because I did not want to be embarrassed. And then i was like yeah okay, here goes nothing, and pushed off, and gave out a slight oh! squeal, and basically had all the air robbed from me. GOODNESS. THEY SHOULD PUT A WARNING SIGN ON THOSE THINGS: EXTREME THRILL OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
Okay, moment over.
Onwards.
Here is a mini performance area, where they have performances and screen movies. The performances are pretty good, mainly western hits. And then there’s another performance area at the Bar 360 that’s mainly chinese hits. And there was also a pool party during our cruise that was all Bollywood hits. So I’d say they got their audiences pretty thoroughly covered?
Late night menu! Just had to put this here because I made a mental note of it (i love soya bean milk) and wanted to come.. however I showed up at 230am when the special menu was over :(( So this photo is in memory of my non-soya-bean-moment. Melissa had the $2 porridge though, and said it was GREAT.
Here’s one of the shows we caught on our second night. It’s called The Voyage of a Lover’s Dream. It’s basically an acrobatics show loosely tied together with a storyline, although I’d call it more a thematic show than anything else. The idea is that an astronaut and mermaid fall in love, aka the sky meets the sea, aka the Genting Dream. Get it??? Haha. I think it’s their origin story but basically the entire show is fancy acrobatics that are extremely intense. This show is free to watch, just make sure you reserve a seat first.
Here we are posing for a photo. After this we had to scramble out of the tub to actually drink the wine, due to aforementioned pool rules.
Fun times. So that was day two, basically, and we stayed up till 3am – Amanda just could not stop playing ping pong with every single person she met, stranger or not, and I went swimming then headed off to look for a sauna. Then we reconvened for drinks and chit chatted for awhile before falling asleep. The next morning we woke up for breakfast then had to disembark in Singapore already! So it was literally a weekend trip – which I can imagine works pretty well for corporate adults/ families, since this place is also a wonderland for children.
Final points to note:
– I dont think I would pay for wifi because no ship in the world is going to have strong wifi in the middle of the ocean. At least, not to my knowledge. So if your cruise package includes free wifi (like the birthday one), then good for you. Otherwise, I’d say just take the chance to disconnect and unwind! If you really need to contact your other friends on the ship, the Dream Cruises app (which I suggest you download before getting on the ship) has an in-app chatting function so you can contact other people on the ship. You can use the app for other things too, like keeping track of your bookings and the day’s schedule on the ship
– When in doubt, always choose the chinese restaurant! It’s included in the list of free restaurants. Maybe I’m biased because I think Chinese food is the bomb, but it’s really quite a good one. It’s not buffet style, it’s more like a set meal you get, and the dim sum breakfast we had was pretty yum. Really nice setting too.
– If you like having a drink with your meal and the option of having it anytime from morning till, well, 3am, get the select drinks package. 70SGD for 2 days is super worth it for unlimited drinks, and if you frequent restaurants and bars in Singapore, you’ll agree! The house wines they serve are pretty good too, and light enough for easy drinking, so its not like they serve bad stuff on the cheap packages. Overall I think this is fab and would super recommend this haha.
– Electronics like travel irons, multiplugs, etcetera, are not allowed on the ship. I think its because they’re all subject to Marine safety standards. My hair curler was fine though.. Anyway, just be safe, and dont bring it unless you absolutely need it. All staterooms have a kettle and hairdryer anyway!
– There are extra activities you can pay for, like bowling, karaoke, arcade games, and a spa. But I do think that for a 3D2N cruise, there are more than enough free activities to occupy your time. Perhaps if we’d stayed longer we might have tried it out, but as it was, I think we didn’t even have enough time to finish the free activities!
– In the middle of the afternoon they hold free dance classes on the pool deck. This is actually pretty cute, they teach latin dance and all that, and a lot of the older folk on the ship join this enthusiastically, which is nice.
– Another thing you can do is head to Zouk – they actually have a Zouk nightclub on board. But I only just peeked in. Tts really not my scene, and I think its funny to dance with people youre going to share a ship with for the next couple of days. So ping pong and giant chess it is!
– The ship is huge, 19 decks in total, and it was running at full capacity when we were on it. Despite this, it never felt over crowded, so that’s nice. There’s definitely a healthy number of people everywhere you go, but it’s not overwhelming, probably because the ship has so many spread out things to do.
– I really think the best things to do on a cruise is be on a cruise, so if I were to do it again, I’d probably still pick the weekend cruise to nowhere. I basically like being at sea, and I think if I wanted to get to a destination I would just fly there – when a ship docks, they’re bound to the laws of the land, which means that many things on the ship probably would close while the ship was docked. So my preference is still purely spending time at sea, in a group.
Lastly: the ship is mega grammable.
Haha! What a weekend. Thanks for having us, Genting Dream! Till next time.
Dream Cruises:
www.dreamcruiseline.com/en-sg
x
Jem