Carnival Cruise Lines
Carnival Conquest Cruise Review
Western Caribbean

Chad and Ciji Hays
Age: 23
Occupation: General Manager Alltel
Number of Cruises: 5
Sailing Date: March 16th, 2006

My husband and I just returned from our 1 year anniversary cruise aboard the Conquest. We had a wonderful time and would definitely sail on this ship again.

Embarkation: This was a fairly smooth process. With my husband being a disabled vet, we were able to move through the same line as the VIP guests. We arrived at 12:30 and were on the ship and in our room by 1:45. I felt terrible for everyone else who had to wait in the terrible lines for two and three hours. We have sailed on Royal Caribbean before. The whole process there takes less than 20 minutes.

Rooms: Wow is all that we could think! After sailing on Royal Caribbean as well as smaller Carnival ships, we were presently surprised. We had a spa level (11th floor) ocean view family room. I would recommend this room to anyone as we did not have to pay extra and got floor to ceiling windows in our room. The view was great. I am one of the few people that are picky about my room, but even the bathroom was larger than on previous ships. My husband was even able to take a normal shower, which is not an easy task with him being 6ft 5 in. We had room to move around with a separate sofa, as well as a table and chairs. I was even able to put away all of my clothes in the spacious closets. (This came as a huge surprise to my husband who thought I brought my whole closet with me)

Ship: The ship was magnificent. I didn’t see any signs of ware as previously reported. Carnival is known for its gaudy if not over the top decorations, but these were surprisingly understated. As usual, someone could always be found either painting or patching up the ship at any given time.

Dining: We did the Point on the first formal night, which I was told was a huge mistake, but turned out to be a great experience. Take caution though, with a seven course meal, one bottle of good wine soon turns into three. With a $30 per person price tag, and three bottles of wine, you soon spend close to $200 on dinner. The presentation however can not be beat, and we really enjoyed ourselves. We had dinner every other night in the Renoir dining room. The food was good here too, but take my advice and go to the Point on one of the last nights, or you will find yourself comparing everything else to it. Service was exceptional as usual.

Pools: As is always mentioned, the pools/hot tubs were way too crowded with children at all times. I was very lucky in spotting empty chairs every time I wanted to lay out, so this didn’t pose much of a problem.

Ports: Grand Cayman was unbelievably beautiful, Cozumel was as pretty as ever, and Montego Bay is a nasty excuse for a port of call. I am terribly surprised that Carnival would even take the risk of allowing their passengers off the ship in this place. I would recommend never going there unless you are interested in buying drugs, seeing ragged women proposition themselves for food, or being begged into buying cheap souvenirs. I have heard from others that if you pay the taxi drivers at least $100 dollars, they would act as your body guard and chauffeur for the day. But when our driver tried to run over a 10 year old boy because the little boy attempted to wash the man’s car window, we decided we had seen enough.

Overall though, our experience was one of a kind, and with the exception of Montego Bay, I would highly recommend the Conquest

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