Carnival Conquest Review

Carnival Conquest

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Carnival Conquest
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SLIM
First Time Cruiser • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Apr 2008

I was always curious if there were any differences between two of the major cruise line players in the industry. It seems I can now express my opinion as to what I experienced as I just completed my first Carnival cruise compared to two previous with Royal Caribbean. The day before embarkation we drove from Tulsa, OK to Galveston, TX and stayed the night so we could overcome any potential mishaps and simply wake up and go to the terminal and get on the ship. We arrived at the terminal at about 12:30 P.M. to find ourselves stuck in an hour long WAIT just to make it through security...an announcement was made which apologized for the WAIT something about a 90 day crew change and visa verifications or something to that effect so at least they acknowledged the long WAIT times. I was somewhat understanding at this point until after passing through security we turned the corner and found ourselves stuck in yet another long line resulting in another hour long WAIT to actually check-in and board the ship (maybe some on-board credit would have made things better). Overall it appeared the screening and check-in staff was not sufficient for the guests coming onboard. The previous cruises with RC amounted to essentially no wait times and simply a walk up and exchange of required documents and such, for the most part it was like a 10-15 minute process.

Finally we made it through and immediately on the ship we were bombarded with drink offers, while I like a stiff drink to loosen things up it seemed there was a little too much aggressive selling of drinks. I probably declined drink offers at least 10 times in the first 30 minutes onboard the ship...it just seemed a little tiresome after a two hour WAIT, I thought about writing my drinking preference on my forehead at one point. Additionally I reflected and thought who looks forward to paying $4 plus 15% gratuity for a Bud Light (a domestic beer going for $5-$6 a six-pack), other non-special drinks seem to start at $6.95 plus 15% gratuity. (See my comments about gratuity later...) Even if you buy beer in a bucket no discount is applied which I thought was another chapter in the "Let's nickel and dime these folks to death" book. In order to be fair, I voiced the same complaints to RC about their drink prices, both are relatively high and seem to be an act of price gouging.

We made it to our room, for the most part I found little difference in the rooms between Carnival and RC (we've had nothing but interior rooms on all our cruises)...the first thing that I noticed was the absence of a small couch on Carnival, it was nothing huge but a difference. My wife was quick to frequently remind me that the hair dryer in the room wasn't getting the job done (to put it nicely) because it required you to hold the button down which made it hard for styling of hair (perhaps it's a fire hazard, not sure but probably should have brought our own). Overall the ship was very well kept and clean, I am not sure I ever really found my way around...compared to RC I found the Carnival Conquest to be much more darker with less views of the sea and such. Maneuvering through the ship many times involved going through blank wood panel corridors, some decks do not go all the way through so you usually find that out the hard way. I am no ship expert, but it seemed the Conquest rocked quite a bit more than that of RC when in the same sea conditions, the lower level main dining hall (Monet) was located in the back of the ship and felt like it was directly above the propellers or engines because it resulted in a noticeable vibration, not sure if there was something out of balance or not but it would seem that wasn't the best place for a dining hall.

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