Carnival Conquest Review

First cruise, but definitely won't be last.

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Conquest
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kctenad1
First Time Cruiser • Age 40s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Jun 2013
Cabin: Balcony
Traveled with children

This was my family's first cruise. I took great pleasure in reading every review I could find prior to our cruise date so I thought it only fair I take the time to submit one myself. Sorry if I get a little wordy. First and foremost I want to say we had a great time. Of course I had somewhat low expectations due to some of the negative reviews I had read, but I have since decided that for some reason people are more likely to write about what they didn't like than what they did.

Embarkation: We stayed in a hotel across the street from the convention center and decided to walk to the port entrance around 1230 pm. Unfortunately there is no way to go through the convention center so we had to walk around it. I would estimate we had to walk 3-4 blocks. When we first arrived at the entrance I was worried because the line seemed to go on forever, but it moved ridiculously fast and we were on the ship in less than 45 minutes from the time we left the hotel without paying for anything extra (FTTF, etc...). Our room was ready when we got on the ship, and our bags which we had left with the porters, were delivered within a couple of hours.

The Ship: I thought the ship was beautiful. I am not an art fan, but every time I turned around I saw a different painting or some other interesting detail that I hadn't noticed before. I will say my wife commented that she thought the ship was dated based on some of the carpeting and some minor damage to the ship (tables and partitions in the lido restaurant), but I tend to judge things by the overall look so I wouldn't have noticed these imperfections if she hadn't pointed them out. I enjoyed exploring the ship and regularly found quiet places where it felt like you had the ship to yourself. I used the gym twice and thought they made good use of the space. It was crowded in the morning, but much less so from lunch on. As far as drinking is concerned there is a bar almost everywhere. I don't drink a lot, but I made it a mission to try and have at least one drink at every bar on the ship. I don't think I did it but I had fun trying. I prefer cocktails and yes, they are expensive on the ship, but not much more than in any restaurant in America. I liked the fact that they had a drink of the day which was a dollar cheaper so I tried most of the cocktails on the ship. The service was usually fast and they were all delicious and pretty strong in my opinion. Something I didn't know before getting on the ship is you can buy a bottle of almost any booze in the ships main store for fairly close to the price found in a liquor store. Depending on what you drink in some cases the booze was a little cheaper so I don't know why people try to sneak hard alcohol on the ship as I saw in some videos of how to save money. Maybe I missed something. My wife did wish we had brought the 2 bottles of wine that Carnival allows. Apparently wine is much more expensive on the ship, but I don't drink it so I'm not sure.

Cabin Review

Balcony

Cabin 8A

Great balcony, relatively quiet location, great location near everything.

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