Carnival Conquest 2/24/13 Western Caribbean Review and Pictures

[LambKnuckles]

What a GREAT review!!! I love the CONQUEST and sailing out of NOLA has so many fun things to see...

 

Thank you for the time you're taking and all the narrative and photos!!!

[cggurl]

Thanks for the review and looking forward to more! We leave in 5 weeks! We'll have a teenager. Were there a decent amount of kids on the ship? Any suggestions for shady areas on the ship with seating (outdoors)?

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the report!

[KellyJ]

Ok' date=' this is probably the strangest response you're going to get. However... how does your wife pack so that she is able to leave the hangers on, yet not wrinkle her clothing? What's her secret?!

 

Great review, by the way :)[/quote']

 

Here's a tip I learned from my first cruise by leaving clothes on hangers. Cover the first outfit with 1 clear plastic dry cleaner bag. Then take your 2nd outfit on the hanger and put next to the first and cover both with another dry cleaner bag. Continue until you have all of your clothes in clear bags..so TSA can see through them if you are flying. The slick dry cleaner bags between each layer will reduce the amount of wrinkles you get.

 

Take the whole package rubberband the hanger tops together and duct tape the hanger tops to the top of your suitcase so the clothes actually hang in the suitcase since most suitcases now are vertical with the wheels at the bottom.

 

Used this method several times and it works and makes unpacking so much easier. You unstick the tape from the suitcase, take the rubberband off of the hangers and hang them in the closet. Then you can separate each outfit as needed or unpack them all. And you don't have to bring extra hangers or ask for them.

 

Hope this helps.

[Ted&Elle]

Have been enjoying the post. We will be in Montego Bay next week hubby and I had the same idea to just go to Doctor's Cave for the day, were there taxi's outside the port to take you? I know you stated you got on a bus, should I look for any specific area for taxi's?

 

The small buses are the only taxis I saw, even outside the port area. The port is very industrial. It's not how I remember Falmouth at all, although I've forgotten more than I remember from Sep 2001.

 

 

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[Ted&Elle]

So sorry your day ended so badly. We took a private excursion there but my frustration was the time change. I jumped off the tender and ran

Ike a mad women thinking we were late only to find out we had more than an hour. Then it seemed like our excursion was one of the last to leave. Lots of waiting...but my happy memory is laying on the catamaran and listening to the music as we sailed out to SRC. My happy moment. Then of course, the long snaky line back to the tender. That is the only place I don't like to tender.

 

That's another good point about time. There were 3 ships in port, at least one on Central and one on Eastern, which matched Cayman time. The tour operators we spoke to kept jumping back and forth between the times, getting everyone confused in the process.

 

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[BubMunkeyBles]

Enjoying your report!

[CruzerDeb]

Great review! Looking forward to the rest of it. :)

[jerseygirl79]

Excellent review! I'm strongly considering Conquest for my next cruise!

[bayouboy52]

Ok, the real last one for the night. As I re-read my posts, I realize it's possible to think I'm complaining. Since you can't read my tone over the internet, please understand we had a great cruise and would board tomorrow if circumstances allowed. I'm trying to be realistic and report on the good and bad, things I was wondering before the cruise and things I think you might be wondering. Thanks again for the encouraging words. I will try to post more tomorrow when my schedule allows.

Great review! We will be sailing on her April and by the way thank you Sir for your service to our great country, we could'nt enjoy this freedom without Amercians like you.

[deetrayn]

Enjoying your review and pics. Thanks for sharing! :)

[hayesktrm]

Loved your video of the eel. Laughed for a few minutes. Brought back memories as a child of snorkeling in Hawaii and seeing an octopus. I never swam so fast in my life!

[firefly333]

You say Falmouth, but could you mean Ocho Rios where a lot of ships go? Falmouth is just finished being built this year and was new a year or so ago when it was built for Oasis.

 

I too am not thrilled by how they now park Conquest around the corner from Magic and will not allow you to walk (easy walk to me) but insist you shuttle over, so they can get tipped. Its a scam to me. I had trouble one of my cruises with getting on the shuttle in the morning. There was no single file line, but people would push and shove to get on the shuttles. I missed 3 shuttles because I was not willing to be as rough as some other pax holding shuttles for their friends.

 

Someone needs to make a line ... or let us walk. I tried to walk back once, and they stopped us and made us go back and take a shuttle, even though we were 2/3rds of the way to Conquest.

 

Its no fun to share montego bay with Magic who always gets the parking in front.

[Ted&Elle]

You say Falmouth, but could you mean Ocho Rios where a lot of ships go? Falmouth is just finished being built this year and was new a year or so ago when it was built for Oasis.

 

Yes you're right, of course. That's what I mean about 12-year-old memories. Ocho Rios is where we stopped back in 2001.

[Ted&Elle]

Although the ship was docked in Cozumel, we saw hardly any of it. This will mostly be a review of the Tulum excursion and why you might want to consider either skipping it or at least booking through the ship like we did.

 

A quick review for those joining us in progress (at least I think I've already written this):

 

On our 2001 cruise, a small vessel had an emergency between Grand Cayman and Cozumel. Our ship got involved in searching for it, to include turning down the lights and having us all look out from our balconies. It was all very thrilling and I wound up staying outside until about 3 am as I remember. We never found the boat, but someone else did. All the searching caused us to arrive very late to Cozumel since we stayed so far away during the search. RCCL canceled all the excursions and planned to stay only a few hours in port. I remember seeing lots of farmacias and doing a little shopping, including apparently the Cozumel hat I wore on this trip. Point is, we missed our Tulum tour then. Since 2001 we've talked about the excursion that got away and how we were disappointed we'd missed it.

 

Because of this, Elle has always intended to go back to Tulum if we ever visited Cozumel again. It became the "one thing" she asked me for, and I could hardly refuse. I also wanted to go on the trip, provided we didn't have to take the boys. I won't tell the whole Camp Carnival story yet, but suffice it to say the Cruise line said OK in August 2012 and the CC staff said ok when we met them the first night.

 

After the rocky night, we'd forgotten to setup room service. Oh, the humanity! We got dressed and went to breakfast on the Lido deck. I ordered two Blue Iguana Cantina breakfast burritos while Elle got the boys' breakfast from the buffet. She also picked up our special cruise snack, a trick we learned in Rome: bacon croissant sandwiches. The burritos weren't as good as the first time even though all the ingredients were the same. I'm not sure why but neither of us liked it as much as the first time.

 

After breakfast we took the boys to Camp Carnival. Naturally at check-in they acted surprised that we were planning to leave the ship while Mr. Diapers stayed behind. Elle managed to avoid getting mad or whining. She simply stated they had already given us approval and if they were changing their minds they needed to arrange our excursion refund. They conferred and said it would be ok but we HAD TO BE BACK BY 4:30!!! I chuckled when I heard that because I knew there was a better than average chance we'd be the last people on the ship.

 

Our tickets had us wait in the Tolouse Latrec lounge while the earlier excursions were able to leave ahead. Funny that the longest excursion of the day wasn't first off the boat, but that's Carnival's problem not mine :)

 

We were called at about 10 and walked right off the ship. As you can see in the picture below, the cruise lines have their own ferry piers for mainland excursions. No need to get to the public port to make the crossing.

 

 

We walked from the ship down the pier into the shopping area, then kept following signs to the short pier you can see on the left. Carnival had two ferries waiting for passengers. Each said they could hold up to 400+ passengers but ours was not nearly full. I don't know if the other one ever took anyone.

 

 

I should point out the waters seemed a bit rough as we docked. I could see the harbor pilot boat bobbing up and down a lot. On the way in we saw the Magic pulling near the docks then pull away. Later our tour guide told us she almost ran into RCCL Allure of the Seas. Eventually Magic gave up and skipped Cozumel.

 

While waiting for the ferry to leave, they offered us the chance to cancel due to the rough seas. We elected to stay and I'm glad we did. I couldn't help taking tons of pictures of the behemoth next to us. It made the Conquest look small by comparison :)

 

BIG SHIP:

 

 

Not so big looking anymore:

 

 

The ferry to the mainland was rough but not overly so. We walked to the buses and were in seats by 11:00. There were 3 Carnival buses with about 35 people each. It wasn't bad because we barely saw the other groups.

 

As we boarded, our friendly guide Lily went into her spiel, complete with self-deprecating "I don't know English too good." Yeah, right. That lady probably has multiple Master's degrees, and her command of the English language is much better than my Spanish was after living in Spain for 2 years. That's a different story.

 

Anyway, she was enjoyable and seemed to be knowledgeable. She talked about the history of the Yucatan and the peoples who lived there. She explained the Mayan calendar and talked about the history of Tulum and the region.

 

Anyone who's read the Carnival reviews know the tour makes an unadvertised stop to shop and use the bathroom. I have to say I didn't mind the stop too much. I realize it's all one big attempt to get more and more money out of you, but the stop was short enough to not be obnoxious. And, most of us had to go by then, so it was a win-win.

 

Going on to the next post since I have too many images again. See you there.

[Ted&Elle]

Here's what the stop looked like. Notice how it appears to be authentic Mexican architecture and totally wasn't built especially for the cruise lines to get more of our money.

 

 

We couldn't resist an obsidian souvenir, no doubt lovingly made by hand out of artificial materials in a Chinese labor camp. Sometimes I'm a touch sarcastic if you didn't guess.

 

The stop was short as promised, probably less than 20 minutes. Lily spent the rest of the time telling us the guides are allowed to recommend one souvenir to buy and she totally loves the shop that sells Mayan cartouches. She expounded on the quality of the pieces and how they support the Mayans living in rural Mexico today. She totally didn't mention they were made by--surprise--the same company that has the excursion contract and owns the pit stop. We knew we were getting sold a story but that didn't stop Elle from wanting one. We left our order with the guide and got off the bus.

 

Wouldn't you know Carnival lets Lily make one more tiny recommendation on where to eat the most authentic Mexican food you'll find at the tourist trap outside the ruins. Wouldn't you know the Maya-Ha company just HAPPENS to own a restaurant here too?

 

After that was over we walked around the shops and toward the ruins. If you don't want to make the ~.25 mile walk, they have a little shuttle like the Disney parking lots. If I remember correctly it was $2 (exact change appreciated), but no one on our tour took it.

 

The Tulum ruins are impressive and we really enjoyed our tour. After about 20 minutes inside the ruins, Lily let us explore on our own. She set a 3:00pm departure time with the ability to board the buses by 2:30. That gave us more than an hour and a half to explore. We realized the overcast, cool weather that made for a rocky ferry ride made the Tulum tour perfect. Had it been 90 degrees and sunny, we would have been miserable. I'm not sure it would be as worth it on a hot day like that. You'd definitely need to bring water bottles and maybe frogg toggs around your next to keep you cool. There's basically no shade at Tulum, which is why the reviews all mention there's basically no shade. Here are a few shots of the place:

 

 

The main castle. Elle loves the little crooked building on the left. It was purpose-built to have the summer solstice sunrise shine right through it. Pretty cool without any modern equipment. Maybe the Maya-Ha company was around back then!

 

 

 

 

The beach behind looked gorgeous, something out of a dream.

 

 

There was an area to swim, but today wasn't a swimming day for us. I'm at the picture limit again so will finish in the next post.

[Ted&Elle]

Thanks for the review and looking forward to more! We leave in 5 weeks! We'll have a teenager. Were there a decent amount of kids on the ship? Any suggestions for shady areas on the ship with seating (outdoors)?

 

There were fewer kids than we expected on a Carnival cruise. I'm sure it has to do with the time. Feb 24 is close enough that most kids have just finished Christmas break and are about to have Spring Break. We had lots of folks, some more serious than others, asking Max how he got to skip school. We homeschool him so he was at school right there on the ship!

 

One night Max did the night owl thing until midnight, and I thought it would be fun to take him for late night pizza. There was a group of teenagers wandering the ship in a pack and generally walking on my lawn and not turning the lights off when they left rooms! Sorry, forgot where I was for a second. Elle laughs at me for being an old man lots of times. Anyway, the group looked too large to be from one family, so I'm assuming they made some good cruise buddies. By the way, pizza at 12:30 isn't a great idea for my particular 8-year-old. He should have been asleep.

 

Your second question is hard to answer because there was so much natural shade on our sea days from all the clouds. One morning we read for an hour or so on Deck 12 just outside Camp Carnival next to the kids' outdoor play area. Most people had pulled their deck chairs into the sun, but we stayed under the overhang and had a good time reading. Hope that helps.

[Ted&Elle]

We walked around the ruins until we had our fill and then made our way back towards the bus. The vendors do not hesitate to walk right up to your personal space and try to sell you something. We don't have a problem saying no thanks and walking on when we don't want something, but others find the vendors excessively pushy.

 

Elle bought a small Mayan calendar for $6 after haggling down from $12. She gets a lot of practice at garage sales in Arkansas. We stopped by to pick up our cartouche and then returned to the bus. They had a bottled water, bag of chips and moon pie (how authentic!) for each passenger. Considering the cost of the tour, I thought the provisions were pretty lame, but we planned ahead:

 

 

Laugh if you want, but bacon croissants got us through Rome if You Want To on our Med cruise.

 

Our fellow cruisers were pleasantly prompt, and the bus pulled away on time. We didn't stop on the way back and parked near the pier. After asking for tips for herself and the driver (separate please, we don't really like each other), we boarded the ferry. It was pretty choppy and felt like it was slower to me, but the overall ride wasn't bad. On the way I got to nerd out for a couple who didn't know much about the Allure. I was telling them about the 2-story cabins with grand pianos and all.

 

 

The guy in the yellow shirt paid a LOT more for his cruise than anyone on Carnival!

 

As we stepped off the ferry, I noticed it was 4:45, 15 minutes later than the last time on the ship. I wasn't worried since we booked through Carnival, and I don't consider our group runners either. Heck, we walked a leisurely pace and there were still people over on the ferry pier as we approached the Conquest.

 

We boarded and went straight to Camp Carnival for the boys. Jack did fine, having been changed 8 times in 7 hours if I heard them correctly. We went to our cabin and straight to the deck outside to watch what we thought would be our departure. As we waited I took a bunch more pictures of the Allure.

 

We waited until we couldn't stand it anymore, and the ship still hadn't left. From our cabin it looked like everyone from our ferry was on board and the dock workers outside the Conquest loaded up in a golf cart and left. I didn't see what was keeping us in port, but we needed to get to dinner. We decided to take Jack and Max with us to dinner, although for the life of me I can't remember why we brought Jack Attack. At the end of the meal, the staff (including the Maitre d') did a dance for us, with Max wearing Gede's wig and Jack dancing beside our table. It was a lot of fun for the boys. I don't remember now what we did after dinner. Funny how fast memories fade. I think we must have gone to bed too early because I was up around 2, unable to sleep. I wandered the decks for a bit before deciding a walk might put me back to bed. I walked a mile around the track, and it was pretty windy the whole time. After I finished I tried to check out the front decks, but they were closed for wind. I went to the buffet area to find a drink, but I think I found a chink in Carnival's armor. At 3 am I couldn't find a single working drink station. Some of them seemed to be having troubles, and that lasted into the next morning when most of the coffee machines were down.

[Ted&Elle]

We got up late today and headed for breakfast in our shorts and t-shirts. We made it through the meal then went right back to the cabin for warmer clothes. I was bummed to be putting on my "go home" jeans a day early, but I didn't have a choice. We tooled around with the boys until Camp Carnival time. After dropping them off we walked outside because we saw sun one direction and rain the other. As we watched the rain approaching us, the wind really picked up. There is an outdoor kids' play area with lots of Little Tikes-type toys and slides. The wind started lifting them up, and a big piece flew over the divider onto the deck. I brought it inside to tell CC someone needed to strap the toys down, but they were already frantically making a call. We went back to watch and saw a Little Tikes car fly over the divider. Just as Elle brought it inside a CC worker came yelling "Come back inside! Don't try to rescue the toys!" I'm sure he was worried we'd get hurt--the suing kind of hurt--if we stayed out there. Within an hour, the doors were locked and stayed that way even when the wind died down.

 

We watched from inside until some crewmembers came and tried to lash down the toys. We wandered through the ship's store and bought some t-shirts for the boys. 2 for $20 didn't seem a bad price to us. We went back to the cabin to straighten up all our junk, and then I took my pictures and video you can see on the Conquest Captain Suites thread. In the room, we saw that we'd been given #7 debarkation tickets. The Carnival Suites don't have many perks, other than the huge cabin, but they are supposed to have Priority Debarkation according to the upsell email I received and several statements in Carnival's FAQs. I wouldn't have cared either way if we lived closer, but I was counting on getting off right away so we could start the 8-hour drive home. I went to Guest Services where the friendly agent initially acted like I was out of luck and then finally agreed to "do me a favor" and give me the #1 tags that should have gone with the suite, despite my paltry blue card status. Little things like this bug me because Carnival should train its staff more consistently and it cheapens what little special experience we had by forcing us to ask for the extras. Not a big deal overall since we got what we needed.

 

Since the outside was so inhospitable, everything inside was crowded. We found an empty seat on deck 5 and did the daily sudoku and other puzzles offered by the ship. I thought it was funny that one of the questions was about where the 2004 Olympics would be held. Really? They can't update the puzzles in more than 9 years? :)

 

For lunch I had my last Guy's Burger of the cruise. I will miss Guy and his burgers, but I won't write much more now because I plan to do one food-post-to-rule-them-all and one Camp Carnival post before I give up computers for the next month.

 

Our last dinner was kind of anticlimactic, although I did enjoy the bacon mac and cheese. I experienced something that didn't happen any other time during the trip: I was too full to eat more! This was a bad sign that fortunately didn't get as bad as I hoped. We left dinner without dessert, planning to buy a piece of strawberry cheese cake if it was out and if I was hungry. I never did get the cheese cake, but it looked good. By the time we picked the boys up from Camp Carnival, our room was almost totally packed. Part of me wanted to have a last hurrah, but I knew we needed to rest before the drive. It was only after we woke up Sunday that I realized there was a Mexican fiesta and chocolate extravaganza late at night. I think we were better off sleeping.

[Ted&Elle]

We were up before the alarms went off and opened the window to see us pulling back into New Orleans. Our immediate reaction was to re-enable our phones, but I didn't feel a burning desire to jump back into reality. I did a quick text message check to ensure nothing critical came in, then let the phone sit there as 100+ emails came in.

 

While doing our final packing, Elle realized she'd forgotten Jack's sweater at CC the night before and she couldn't find her S&S card! I kept reminding her how I lost my card--twice!--on our first cruise, and I was sure it wouldn't be a big deal. We had been told to meet in Renoir at 7:15, so we made our way down the elevators. On the way Elle remembered where she left her S&S card--yay!

 

She headed for guest services while I took the boys and suitcases to Renoir. By then they had already dismissed group 1, and there were people filing off the ship. I thought it was funny to hear a couple in front of me loudly discussing that they were in group 3. "It's not like anyone's going to check," they proclaimed. You know what, they were right! I think Carnival must not bother to enforce the group numbers unless too many people try to rush the exit at once.

 

I spoke with some friendly people in the Renoir dining room while we waited for Elle. Guest services initially told her there was no way the sweater was there, but after she described it they found it right away. All that mess barely cost us any time, and we walked off the ship for the last time at 7:15. We made sure to look back frequently at our home for the previous 7 days.

 

In the terminal it got a little weird for a second then got ok. We cleared customs quickly. I've seen a lot of customs agents in my time, and the one we had was by far the friendliest. At one point we went down an escalator, and at the bottom a stern-looking man pointed to the floor right in front of him like he wanted me right there. I was confused and wondering what kind of extra scrutiny they were about to put us through, but before I reached him a different employee told me to keep moving. Since I was with Max I kept moving as told, but I looked back to see the stern man take Jack from Elle and start walking towards me. Now, besides a tiny bit of truly harmless contraband, we hadn't done a single thing wrong. That didn't stop me from wondering how long we were about to spend in separate little rooms getting interrogated. The stern guy put Jack down next to Elle, smiled bigger than Dallas and went back to his post. He never spoke a word to us.

 

On the way out we had the aforementioned cutting incident at the elevator, but we managed to keep our cool and get to the truck without any major fights. We spent a few minutes admiring the ship--we could see "our" cabin from the garage. Then, we loaded up the bags and started driving. Since we were so early we decided to hit Morning Call again, same as last Sunday. The beignets were just as good, the service was downright bad, not to put too fine a point on it. It was a bit surreal to be in the same place we began our wild vacation, only tireder, quieter, a lot chillier. After the post-beignet brush down, we made our way to the interstate and back towards Arkansas. Remember how I wasn't hungry the night before? I got a full-blown cold and was pretty well whipped. Fortunately Elle felt fine and didn't mind driving most of the way back. She and Max listened to the last few CDs of the last Harry Potter book while I dozed and listened, listened and dozed.

 

So folks, that's mostly it for now. I'm planning to write a short (ha ha ha) post about the food and another about our Camp Carnival experience, then I'll be done. It's hard to believe my replacement's replacement is already enjoying "my" bed on the Conquest, but I'm sure there will be other cruises someday. Thanks for all the kind words, and please ask any questions you have. I'll do my best to answer.

[michelle1836]

great review and pictures!! thanks for sharing

[Layla and Beaux]

Thank you so much for your review. It has been SO helpful and interesting. I am looking forward to your food and CC reviews as well. I appreciate you!:)

[BubMunkeyBles]

Looking forward to your Camp Carnival review. :)

[Crusin Karen]

I hate to see it end. :( Tried looking at your cabin pictures, but they are kind of small and can't see too much, but thanks for sharing. Hope you and Elle and your boys have many more cruises to enjoy! :)

[Ted&Elle]

I hate to see it end. :( Tried looking at your cabin pictures, but they are kind of small and can't see too much, but thanks for sharing. Hope you and Elle and your boys have many more cruises to enjoy! :)

 

Karen,

 

The first set of pictures in the cabin thread were uploaded with Tapatalk and resized by the board. Later in that same thread I posted pictures the same size as this thread with links to full-size images. There's also a 1080p YouTube video of the cabin, albeit with terrible sound. Please let me know if that doesn't help you find the larger images.

 

 

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