Carnival Dream

To give you some perspective our family has cruised before with Princess and Royal Caribbean. We haven't sailed with Carnival but heard they had a good children's program which was important to us. We saw this cruise and decided to book it.
Embarkation was easy and we were onboard within 20 minutes. Our cabin was ready before 1:30pm which was nice so we could unpack.
The ship is quite beautiful and a larger ship so it took us a while to get familiar with it. We noticed on deck in certain areas you could smell the sewage which wasn't appealing.
The kids liked the kids water play area and slides so that kept them very happy. We however were not very happy with the pools onboard. First of all there are only 2 small pools for all those people. Second they were filled with salt water which I didn't think any cruise ship did. We usually enjoy relaxing in the pool but found we couldn't do that on this trip which was disappointing.
The cabins were livable and had space for all of our belongings. It was nothing fancy but it did the job.
As for the food in the main dining rooms and around the ship it was average at best. The alternate restaurants were good if you are willing to pay to eat there. Though eating there every night would be expensive.
Our kids did enjoy the Camp Carnival and had a lot of fun and made some friends onboard.
I wouldn't sail on the Carnival Dream again as though some of the staff tried hard I think they just corners everywhere and those little things make or break a trip for me. I think I will stick with Princess and RCCL.