What to Expect on a Cruise to Nowhere with Kids: Dream Cruises Review

Not travelling abroad for the holidays and looking for something different from the usual staycation? Here’s our review of a family stay onboard the World Dream from Dream Cruises

Thanks to the pandemic we don’t think we have ever seen as much of Singapore or explored as many staycations as we have these past two years! If you are bored of the usual staycays but don’t feel quite ready to take a VTL vacation – what are your options for holiday fun? We review the ‘cruise to nowhere’ World Dream from Dream Cruises to give you an idea of what to expect if you book this trip (spoiler: there’s everything from waterslides to a rope course, live entertainment, laser shows and more), plus read on for our tips including how to score the best cruise price tickets via Klook!

Jump to:
What we loved about the cruise to nowhere
Dream Cruises accommodation
What to do on your cruise to nowhere
Restaurants
Dream Cruises review: is a cruise to nowhere worth it?

What we loved about the Dream Cruises trip

For the kids, just the fact that this was their first time ever on a cruise was enough to get them beyond excited. Everything was amazing to them, jaw-dropping in fact. Even if you are in two minds about going on a cruise to nowhere yourself, don’t underestimate how impressive it is in the eyes of a child, to be on such a massive ship where you can sleep on board and wake up to ocean views every morning. They will be awestruck and that was really enough to put a big smile on my face. After all, we were doing this for the most part, for the kids.

Dream Cruises accommodation

The room was pretty standard (featuring a queen-size bed, large sofa, flat-screen TV) with the bonus of a balcony where you could watch the ocean. Quite small, but that was to be expected. What we loved was how they set it up for our kids. When we walked in, we thought to ourselves, how will a crib fit here? We called housekeeping for help, and when they finished setting it up, we were so impressed that we all gasped simultaneously. They had a built-in “bunk bed” setup that was invisible to the eye unless you knew how to open it up. And that created so much space for our luggage and the crib. Fantastic design!
If you are looking for something more palatial with more space, check out the Palace Suites which include a queen bed, sofa bed and a luxury bathroom with a bathtub.

What to do on your cruise to nowhere

Here are some of the highlights of what we did while we were on our cruise to nowhere to give you an idea of how many activities are on offer – and most of them are free!

1. Exploring the ship: We booked a 3D2N trip and we didn’t actually cover all the floors – the cruise is huge! Most of the floors were for cabins, but still, just walking around the ship exploring every nook was pretty fun for the kids. 

2. Enjoying the pool! I would advise the pool time slot to be the FIRST thing you book the moment you board the ship. It will be worth it. TIP: You can only book one slot per day. But if, at 8am of that day, there are still free slots available, you can go on and book a second slot. Because of this booking system, the pool isn’t crowded at all. Surina our 10-year-old loved the jacuzzi.

3. Thrill-seeking water slides! Our 10-year-old enjoyed the six different slides in the waterslide park on the World Dream tremendously. She must have gone about 10 times over and over. She made papa go with her. And she made me go with her. I’ll be honest – I think, wait I KNOW I’ll never do the one with the vertical drop again. Nor the one with the “basin”. Not for the faint-hearted. But if you are young at heart, this one was so much fun! 

4. Little Dreamers Kids Club: The age range for this Kids Club is pretty wide: 2-12 yrs old. So both our kids could enjoy it. There was no need to book a slot as the cruise was not very busy with families (more the older crowd). We spent an hour there and could have easily stayed longer had we not had to leave for our early lunch booking. Marco, our 3-year-old, loved the car tracks and dinosaurs while Surina, enjoyed the dollhouse and playing snakes & ladders with mom (her first time!). 

5. Rock climbing, mini golf, rope course and basketball court: if you are feeling active there’s a full-sized basketball court, a mini-golf area that kids will love and even a rock-climbing wall to scale. There’s also a rooftop rope course where you can navigate through different obstacles and end off by ziplining over the ocean! We didn’t have time to fit in any of these activities as on our check out day all activities and restaurants were closed.

6. Live shows: There are quite a few show options on the ship so definitely choose at least one to watch (some are targeted to adults only so ask ahead). We opted to see the magician Vincent Vignaud in his VISION show. SUPER entertaining and impressive. TIP: The seats open up for booking every hour or so. So if you log in and find it fully booked, all is not lost. Just log in again an hour later and try to book again. 

7. Themed events! Themed events change on every cruise. On our cruise it was the Markets of the World that had different stalls selling foods from different countries. You have to buy coupons of a minimum value of $25 to attend these but you’ll for sure find something to spend your coupons on! 

8. Movie nights: In-room movies on demand for no extra charge – tiny ears perked up at that. We’re super strict about bedtime and TV at home, so we decided to let the kids indulge in movie nights every night. We were truly pampered with on-demand movies at no extra cost. For those with later bedtimes you could check out the free cinema screenings at the indoor or outdoor movie theatre!

9. ESC Experience Lab: This is the only activity from those listed above where you have to pay extra. There’s a whole room dedicated to Virtual Reality experiences – most may be a little scary for kids, but our 10-year-old was happy to try the roller coaster one ($15 per person), which you can design yourself btw! 

10. Arcade: Arcades are never something we usually visit, so while us adults were not so keen on them (more on that later) it felt really fun for the kids to try their luck winning stuffed toys (for these slot machines you need to use your own cash of course!).

Restaurants onboard Dream Cruises

There are three free restaurants to choose from where dining is included in your package. On the first evening, we went to one of the free buffets but after trying this once, we opted to go to the paid restaurants (where a top-up amount is needed). We highly recommend the two we chose for lunch and dinner the following day.
– Prime Steakhouse by Mark Best was so accommodating to the kids and their steaks were perfectly cooked.
– The aptly named Hotpot restaurant was good too and service was fantastic. Even though we had to split into two tables of two, they were happy to allow us to order one family set and even helped us to evenly split it between the two tables. Major thumbs up for that as we know several restaurants in Singapore that refuse to do that!
– Breakfast in bed! We got to choose between an Asian or Western set, and received a bento box of breakfast that we ate in the comfort of our room.
Of special mention onboard our cruise was the excellent service all around – staff had clearly been super well trained in the best customer service standards!

What we liked less

I think you can tell if you’ve made it this far, that we had a pretty good time as a family. There were however some areas that let the experience down a bit. There is a gigantic bingo screen in the middle of the main lobby which affected the overall aesthetics and vibe, and slot machines line many of the hallways. As such this cruise is very popular with those who like to play bingo, slot machines and gamble. This meant that there were less families around, which on the flip side meant no queuing or less busy kids’ activities (kids room, water slides and other experiences).

Dream Cruises review: is a cruise to nowhere worth it?

For something really different, we would say give the cruise to nowhere a go! If you are looking at staycation prices at a hotel in Singapore you’ll need to add on lunch, dinner, kids’ activities and if you then throw in theatre shows, you’re looking at spending a fortune for a few nights! With the cruise to nowhere you’ll have activities included in your package so everything’s on-site meaning you’ll get so much more packed into your stay than you would if you were shuttling to different activities across the island.

We hope this Dream Cruises review has helped you! If you are ready to book your cruise on Dream Cruises, Klook is currently offering two and three-night cruises on board Dream Cruises from $315/pax!

Happy holidays!