Background --- The Conquest was our seventh cruise with Carnival and our eleventh overall. We have also cruised on the Disney Magic when our sons were growing up. The Conquest is the second in her class that we've been on. We did a New Year's Eve cruise on the Liberty two years ago.

Getting on the ship -- We bought Faster to the Fun and from what I saw in Ft. Lauderdale, it was a good thing. There seemed to be long lines to get on, but we weren't in line long enough to see if things were moving fast for everyone.

The room -- We were fortunate enough to get and aft-wrap balcony room on the port side, deck six (6452). We had one of these on the Liberty also and it was our own little piece of heaven for 8 days. The room seemed a bit larger than I remembered. The windows were in a different place than the eighth deck wrap around that we had two years ago, but it was essentially the same room. One trick we found out on the deck was to stack the chairs on top of each other so we could sit and see over the railing better. The air conditioning worked great (we actually had to turn it down a couple of times) and we never heard noise from the bar below us. For those of you who like to hear the ocean.... the door to the balcony stayed open by itself when you opened it up all the way. Yup, that balcony really made the ship seem like our own private yacht at times. Read more