We sailed May 10th on an Eastern Caribbean itinerary which took us to St. Martin, St. Kitts, San Juan, and Grand Turk.
We've sailed before with Carnival on the Pride and the Dream, and were blown away the cleanliness, level of service, and attention to detail Carnival provided on these cruises. I've never understood when I read reviews that stated otherwise, until this cruise. I don't know if the decline in quality is only on the conquest or if it's fleet wide but it was noticeable. Our First issue was with the staggered embarkation that we received 2 calls to our house, 1 call to my cell phone, 1 call to my husband's cell phone and an email about from Carnival the week prior to cruising stating we needed to "come between 12 and 1 for smoother embarkation" . We figured since they were so persistent we should go when they wanted us to even though previously we've gone earlier and had minimal waiting time and been on the ship pretty early. When we arrived at our designated time to Port Everglades there was a lineup out of the building and around the corner of it. We waited a very hot 2.5 hours in line to get on the ship. I've never left from Fort Lauderdale, just Baltimore, Miami, and Port Canaveral, All of these places had a seating area for waiting but at this Port you stand in line the whole time, and maybe this kind of waiting time is normal for this port, but I thought I'd give a heads up.
Our group consisted of my family and my sister's family.We both had balcony rooms and were told upon booking that while the balconies didn't open up to each other the rooms were adjoining. We were also told we would be at the same table for dinner, both when we booked and when my sister called a couple days prior to boarding to confirm. Neither of these thing happened. We spend about 4 hours waiting in line between embarkation, talking to guest services and the Maitre D to straighten these issues out on our first day. The dining room situation got settled but we were told the room situation was a booking issue and we would have to deal with them (we booked through Carnival) and eventually we were offered a voucher for a free drink for the 4 adults. It was a very aggravating start.
Stear clear of this room unless you love the smell of wafting sewage.