Everyone on this ship works incredibly hard and I don't in any way want to diminish the behind the scenes efforts that go into making a six-day cruise happen. But Carnival Conquest, hate to say it, you were fair to good on this cruise when just 3 months ago, our cruise on the Victory was great.

It's the little things and they add up. Your dining room staff works incredibly hard and that's where some management could help. The "team waiter" concept isn't working. Our table of four would faithfully show up for early seating at 605, we'd place an order at about 615 and we wouldn't see a main course until about 715. Drink guy didn't stop by our table until 635 and on 2 out of our 6 nights, I found it easier to leave the dining room, take the elevator up to the 9th floor and get a beer there and bring it back to the table! My wife explained why that was: he was justifiably more incented to accomodate the bigger tables of 10 or 12 because one trip to and from the bar netted him more in tips than the one beer would have at our table.

We rarely saw our waiters because they were working so hard accomodating too many tables. Again, don't want to diminish their efforts, but plates would remain on our table for a long time and water glasses wouldn't be filled unless we tried hard to flag someone down. On recent Carnival cruises this year on the Glory and the Victory, we had a chance to chat and connect with our waiter/assistant waiter. Wasn't the case on this cruise as the whole dining room team seemed to be hustling just to serve dinner. Read more