We have wanted to cruise on the Carnival Conquest for several years, since our old friend Captain Francesco La Fauci commanded her; however, her home-ports prior to this season had been either Galveston or New Orleans, not very convenient to us, living in South Florida. Now that the Conquest is sailing from Miami we booked this cruise hoping to sail with Capt. La Fauci, but we were disappointed when we learned that our friend had been transferred to the Carnival Legend. Instead, through a happy circumstance, we found on this ship another friendly acquaintance of ours, Captain Claudio Cupisti, whom we had met first on the Carnival Pride and then again on the Legend.

EMBARKATION

Since the departure was on Sunday, the trip from our house in Boca Raton to the port of Miami took only 45 minutes, arriving at 11:45 am. After leaving our luggage curbside, we proceeded on our motorized wheel chairs with a walker/rollator to the entrance for disabled passengers. After 15 minutes waiting for assistance, we were taken to the Captain’s Lounge where our check-in was done and then waited for another 30 minutes for assistance. It seems that those crew members assigned to aid the wheelchair passengers were not yet available or completely forgot about us! The actual boarding process was quick, but again we encountered an unnecessarily steep gangway, thus we had to fold away the wheelchair pedals in order to prevent getting stuck and/or breaking the pedals. Some liners have improved embarkation for wheel chairs by utilizing less steep gangways. We hope that Carnival will try soon to solve this problem. We were aboard and in our cabin by 1:15 pm. Read more