Carnival Conquest Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,568 reviews

Key West and Nassau on the Carnival Conquest

Review for the Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Conquest
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stormy_weatherman
First Time Cruiser • Age 30s

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Sail Date: Oct 2013

This was my second cruise, my first cruise in 13 years, and my wife's second cruise, the first was in late 2011. I booked this cruise back in July and anxiously awaited the months to pass like a little child waiting for Christmas morning. Because of this, I was a bit disheartened when our cruise was cut a day short because of Tropical Storm Karen closing the Mississippi River, but I felt that Carnival dealt with the situation in the best way possible. Ultimately we got reimbursed for a day and missed Freeport, but nearly everyone I spoke to said this was nothing to be bummed about, since many people do not have favorable opinions of Freeport. We drove to New Orleans on Sunday, our original embarkation day, and spent the night at the Ramada Inn Metairie. This was a fantastic hotel, allowing us to park our vehicle there for the duration of the cruise, as well as providing transportation to the port on Monday morning, although return transportation was on our own following disembarkation.

We purchased Faster to the Fun, which really came in handy! We arrived at the port around 10:30am and there were already crazy long lines just to get into the terminal, for security, and check-in. Once we had cleared the line to get into the building, Faster to the Fun made security and check-in a breeze. We were on the ship and directly to our stateroom around 11:15am. We were so happy to have bypassed all the lines and really be having fun much faster. By the time we got to the terminal I believe they were handing out Zone 34 cards, so it would have been quite a while without FTTF.

Our room was on the Panorama Deck (10) and was actually a handicapped room with a walkaway view of the observation deck all the way forward on Deck 10. We really enjoyed all of the space we had, and I especially enjoyed just walking around the corner to a deck that practically no one knew about. We saw very few people out there for the duration of our cruise. After checking out our room and dropping off our carry on bags, we went out to explore the ship. This meant we immediately checked out the spa, at my wife's plea. We never used any of their services, but it did look like a very nice facility offering many different services. Following our spa tour we made our way out to the Lido deck poolside and grabbed a burger from Guy's Burger Joint. I cannot say enough about how fantastic this place is! I had a burger every day of the cruise, it was just that good! We walked around some more after lunch and before the safety briefing. The Conquest is a beautiful ship, hard to believe it is eleven years old! Pretty soon we were sailing down the Mississippi River towards the Gulf of Mexico. I must say, if you have never sailed from New Orleans, I highly recommend it. It is such a unique experience to be on a large ship traveling down the river.

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