One Year Later: Carnival Conquest 4 Day Cruise to Nassau and Freeport, Bahamas

I am leaving in 19 days for a Western Caribbean Cruise on the Breeze, and will likely write a review, but I wanted some practice, and since a lot of people ask about cruises similar to this, here goes! A bit of background first. My wife and I got married in Las Vegas in July, 2012 and took our honeymoon on a Southern Caribbean cruise on the Victory out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Ever since, we taken a yearly Carnival cruise to celebrate our anniversary. We usually opt for 7 or 8 day cruises, but due to some anticipated changes in employment, last year we booked a 4 day cruise (to save money) to the Bahamas on the Conquest out of Ft. Lauderdale.

Pre-Cruise: We flew in the day before from Detroit via Jetblue and stayed at a hotel overnight. This was our first ever experience with Jetblue, and we were impressed. We had a really good price, and the food/amenities were very good by 1modern "coach" standards. After landing, we worked our way to the baggage return, and found it empty. After waiting for five minutes we realized that the baggage service was already done. We have never seen service so fast! Not sure if that was Jetblue, the airport, or just lucky. Anyway, we found our things, and then made our way the hotel. There we were amazed that you could "see" Miami from where we were, and decided to keep that in mind for the future. We went out for pizza, and then turned in for the night.

Day 1: We took a shuttle to the port, and boarded the Conquest in the early afternoon. We don't really bother with "Faster to the Fun" and are lowly gold only halfway to platinum, but it only took about 45 minutes or so to get on board. Our room was ready upon arrival anyway, so we dropped off our things, and went to get lunch. I was slightly disappointed to find that "Fish and Chips" was no longer present, but it was replaced by a BBQ counter, which was actually decent. I made a sandwich with brisket, bbq sauce, and cole slaw. Despite being fairly busy downstairs, it was practically empty upstairs where the BBQ counter was. After lunch, we went back to the room, properly unpacked ,and then explored. The layout was pretty much identical to Liberty, since they were the same class until the Muster Drill.

We had dinner in the Point Steakhouse and received the free bottle of house wine. As always, the food and service there was amazing. It was not crowded at all that first night, with perhaps 3 other couples present. I had escargot, a salad, the cowboy rib eye, and took my dessert (chocolate sampler) to go. My wife had shrimp cocktail, a salad, surf and turf, and her dessert to go as well. After, we played in the casino for a bit.

Day 2, Nassau: My pre-excursion "ritual" is to have a room service breakfast of smoked salmon. It gives a good source of protein, but doesn't sit too heavy in your stomach when in the water. Except, that it was no longer an option. We had pre-booked a "sail and snorkel" excursion through the cruise line. We had done the same excursion on a previous cruise and had enjoyed it, so we thought we would do it again. This is my second cruise with the underwater camera I had purchased last year. This is the only part of the cruise which did not go well. The excursion operator had an mechanical issue with their boat, and was a few hours late getting started. The operator told us if we wanted a refund that Carnival would provide it, or we could wait for a replacement boat. A rep from Carnival came down to investigate, was visibly upset with the operator, and seemed blindsided by the whole situation. Anyway, eventually a new boat came, and the excursion proceeded as planned, if only a bit late.

Apart from the very rocky start, the snorkeling in Nassau was good. The catamaran took us out to a the reef and we had about an hour in the water. I have snorkeled a few places by now and though there is plenty of live coral around Nassau, it s nowhere close to as dense and diverse as it is in the Western Caribbean. There were plenty of brightly colored fish and different types of coral. I will post some pictures at the end of my review. My pictures have been post-processed with some color correction. They have also been edited for size.

After snorkeling, we visited the Straw Market, just to say we had. It was crowded, and after a few minutes, we decided that we could say "Ok, we have been there," and proceeded to a local bar/restaurant to have conch fritters and a few drinks. We returned to the ship by the mid-afternoon. On the way back to the ship, we saw our honeymoon ship, Carnival Victory sailing away, it it brought back memories! I was going to look for pier-runners, but forgot to. This night was Elegant Night in the main dining room, we enjoyed good food. We do "Your Time Dining" and never waiting more than a few minutes for a table for two. The rest of the evening was spent time in the Art Gallery, Casino, and Dive In movies where we saw "Deadpool," while eating pizza.

Day 3, Freeport: We did NOT do our research about Freeport. I recommend anybody going there to study up ahead of time. Freeport is a very industrial type shipyard port, and I think it even has drydock facilities. It is not typically tourist friendly, like many Caribbean ports with beaches with lots to do. While it was interesting to see the cranes and vast shipyards operating, the port area had a handful of stores, and a few open-air bars and eateries. I have heard since then, that there are amazing tours, beaches, and snorkeling, but you pretty much have to get an excursion. We did not. I am not complaining because we could have done more research, but if you go to Freeport, I strongly recommend that you get an excursion so you won't be disappointed. We had a few drinks, returned on board and continued to our normal cruise activities of eating, gambling, and listening to music. For us, Nassau was the goal, and Freeport was the "bonus."

Day 4, At Sea: We slept in. Late. This is not unusual when we are on vacation. We managed to make it to lunch before they closed down. We did take part in the "Sea Day Tea" in the aft dining room. We try to make it to the tea-time each cruise. The snacks are great, though decadent. My favorite is always the smoked-salmon sandwiches. We were surprised that there was an up-charge for the premium teas. That used to not be the case, but it is nominal. I always recommend the tea-time to new cruisers because most people don't consider that it is a full service experience with all sorts of treats. We did our typical activities and use sea days as a "low key" day. We did go to the comedy shows this night. There were two comedians, Anthony Acosta and Thea Vidale. Acosta was pretty funny, but we didn't care too much for Vidale. My favorite comedians on Carnival, from other cruises were Tom Foss and Happy Cole. At the last minute, I decided to try a drink from Alchemy, but was missed last call.

Day 5, Debarkation: We had a later time to disembark. The line was insane! The port had a kiosk if you had nothing to declare, so we tried that kiosk, and circumvented the whole line! From there, we got a cab back to the airport, spent several hours there, and then went home.

Overall: The Conquest was a good ship with excellent friendly staff, as always.The service was fantastic and the food definitely good enough for me. It was an interesting experience after I had read "Cruise Confident," which is eye opening about how hard the staff work and what they put up with. Anyway, the main setting for the book in Conquest, so it was interesting to be familiar with it already. I tend to enjoy the Dream-class ships a bit more, but I have no complaints about the Conquest. Throughout the cruise, I had noticed an empty food station on the aft deck. A few days after we returned, I found it it got turned into a "Seafood Shack." Just missed it! One funny anecdote. One night, when we saw a goofy platypus animal made of towels. I joked that "I hope we get a monkey!" to my wife. The next night, there was no animal on our bed, but a monkey hanging from the light fixture! I think our steward overhead me, and obliged! They really do give great service! We did give him an extra $20 at the end of the cruise, on top of whatever he got out of the pre-paid gratuities.

Though I have no major complaints about this cruise (any issues worked out), four days just felt too short.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I just thought that this might be a good chance to share some experiences that others might benefit from if considering one of these super common "four or five day Bahamas" cruises. This was last year, so my memory might get just a bit hazy. I am now looking forward to hopping on the Breeze in 19 days!

Me, in front of the "ride." :cool:

Sergent Major Damsel fish in Nassau, this image is my computer background.

Some colorful live coral in Nassau.

Some colorful fish in Nassau.

My monkey, or maybe a ninja!

If you want any other pictures, please feel free to ask. I didn't realize there was a limit! Oops!

Hi SkyPiglet ~ enjoyed your short informative review of Conquest. I was especially happy to see the picture of the ship with the Escape beside it as I'm going on both in October!!

Look forward to a possible Breeze review as I've been on that ship twice, I liked it so much.

Have a great cruise & thanks for doing this report.

~ Jo ~ :)

Thanks for the reply! There were a lot of ships in Nassau that day. Besides Conquest, Carnival had Victory docked there (our honeymoon and first cruise ship), and then there was Norwegian Escape and MSC Divina. ANyways, Breeze is our favorite and we are so excited to be going back on board in a few weeks! :)

This is a nice preview of the next one to come. Enjoy your cruise!