Summary: Our family of four left for our cruise on the Carnival Conquest on July 23, 2006. My husband and I are in our 30s, and we have a 10 year old daughter and a 9 year old son. This was our 4th cruise, but our first on the Conquest. Our overall rating of the cruise is 10 out of 10! We had a wonderful time! I read a lot of reviews prior to our cruise, and they helped so much. However, I didnt read many reviews written by people with kids near my childrens age so wanted to share our experience here.

Embarkation: We live about 20 miles from Galveston, so were able to get a ride to and from the cruise terminal. (Parking seemed plentiful, just didnt see a reason to leave our car there all week if we didnt need to&) We arrived at the terminal around noon, and delivered our bags to a porter, who asked us to take anything with us wed need before 5:00 pm. We didnt need anything (we thought) other than what was in our carry-on bag so we proceeded inside. The security line and sail and sign lines looked really long, but moved along nicely. We were through both lines in approximately one hour. Then, we were sent to another line. The waiting area with chairs was full so they were lining up cruise passengers along the edges of the room. We waited here another half hour or so, and then finally began boarding the ship. (This line didnt move too fast because of everyone stopping for their embarkation photos.) Overall not a terrible experience, but expect some waiting. Ship: We stepped onto the ship at level three into the atrium / lobby bar area.

Weve cruised before but this is the largest ship weve been on and we were impressed. We made our way around to the glass elevators and proceeded to the 8th level to see if our room was ready. (They told us to wait until 2:00pm, but it was about 1:45pm by this time so we decided to see if the room was ready and it was.) Read more