Neither my husband, Don, nor I had ever taken a cruise, and we decided it would be the easiest and most relaxing honeymoon we could plan. We were right! Our first cruise was a success, but for a few simple reasons we are interested in trying some other lines. But anyway, on to the good stuff about Carnival.

Embarkation: It seems that we arrived at the pier at around 2:30, which must have been when everyone else had decided to arrive. In spite of the crowds, we were on the ship in over an hour. Since we were prepared with our Funpass, ID’s, and Sail and Sign registration IN HAND, we proceeded quickly, and probably would’ve been through even sooner had our fellow passengers had their acts together!

Cabin: Ours was on Riviera deck, #1301, the lowest floor for passengers. Our cabin had a large window with a sill which became my husband’s favorite perch to curl up in and read or watch the water. I thought our cabin was very comfortable, although small, and the space was maximized so that we could unpack and spread out all of our stuff. I never felt cramped in our room. Our steward amazed us with how we could leave and return 45 minutes later, and discover that he’d remade the bed, refilled our ice bucket, and given us fresh towels. The engine noise was nothing like what I was expecting… I barely even heard it; it was a low hum, similar to our air conditioner. The negatives about our room: our room was always freezing, and I suspect the thermostat was either broken or just for appearances. The in-room movies were the pits! I thought I’d read somewhere that Carnival had first-run movies, and there were none anywhere on the ship. Of the ten or so movies they offered, I’d only heard of one. I realize that most people don’t go on cruises to sit around and watch movies, but at times we liked to get away from people and hang out in our cabin, and at that point an entertaining flick would’ve been welcome. The other downside to our cabin was the loud banging noise that we would hear at sporadic intervals. It sounded like something heavy and metal had gotten loose and would beat against something else when the ship moved a certain way. This noise woke us up every single night! I asked our steward about it and if it could be corrected, and he said it was probably a lifeboat. I had a hard time believing that a lifeboat 3 decks up could beat itself against the ship that loudly and a staff member not take notice of it and fix it.

Dining: We enjoyed dinner each night in the Monet for the 8 pm seating. One thing I was mildly anxious about was our tablemates. What if they were miserable? Not to worry for us, we loved ours! We met each night with another couple in their twenties who were great to visit with and made our meal an enjoyable event. They were also staying on Riviera deck, which made me wonder if Carnival attempted to match tablemates by deck and/or age. If so, I thank them, if not, then it was a great coincidence for us! Our waiters were very competent and we thought dinner was excellent each night. We especially enjoyed it when the staff would get up and dance toward the end of the meal. Lunch in the Monet was a lot better than anything we had in the Cezanne buffet, but I understand why a lot of people chose not to go to the Monet for breakfast and lunch. At lunch, we were seated with whoever was in line in front of or behind us, and if you are not an incredibly social person then all of that introducing and small talk can be tiring! When we had breakfast, we either ordered room service then night before, or went to the Cezanne buffet. The breakfast food was a nice selection but was average as far as taste goes. We do highly recommend the pizza station. Don and I ate about 4-5 times/day. Be careful at the chocolate buffet at the end of the week; we made ourselves sick and spent most of the day Saturday sleeping on deck to recover! Overall, we really enjoyed the dining and would go again just for the food!

Entertainment/Activities: This is the part where I was mildly disappointed. I consider myself to have fairly diverse interests and am generally NEVER bored, but I was surprised by how little we actually got involved in the activities on the ship.

The after-dinner shows: We went to the first Vegas-style show, “Formidable”, and it was OK. I don’t mean to be critical, but I really have seen better dancing from our local high school. I guess my expectations were a little higher considering that these dancers are actually getting paid! We did love the magic show with Deja. I highly recommend that; it was very high energy with great music. At the second dance show, “Point and Click”, we lasted about 10 minutes before we both got bored and left. We didn’t go to any comedy shows since they’re usually sorta raunchy and we weren’t interested in that. Unfortunately, we were worn out after a day in Cozumel, so we missed the talent show.

Scheduled activities: Maybe my expectations were too high once again; I’m not sure since I haven’t cruised before. I was imagining there would be more classes, games, and tournaments, something all day long for everyone. I would’ve loved to attend some art or jewelry-making classes, compete in tournaments for different games like pool, ping-pong, or basketball, play trivia, participate in smaller group games, etc. There were trivia contests held a few times at 10 am when we were usually at breakfast, and the group games were always large-scale affairs held at the huge pool area or in the auditorium. I would’ve loved playing if they’d limited some of the games to sign-ups so they wouldn’t be such a huge crowd. There were about 3 dance classes held, which I didn’t think was nearly enough. The art auctions would’ve been interesting if we weren’t broke from the wedding, had liked the art, and wanted to pay extra to have it shipped. We had planned to play bingo fairly often until we got onboard and realized that it costs $10-$20 each game. Never mind! We only played once since neither one of us is a fan of throwing money away. The spa had a nice selection of services but it was 2-3x what I pay for the same thing in Tennessee, so I didn’t visit it. Since we don’t drink, go clubbing, or gamble much, we were pretty much on our own in the evenings if we didn’t attend a show. Thankfully, the drinkers weren’t all that annoying! I’d heard that Carnival was more for the partying set and I can vouch for that being true. Even our tablemates, who were your typical twenty-something occasional partiers, were wishing for something else to do. I guess the moral I learned from this story is: you will never be bored on a Carnival cruise if you want to spend hundreds of extra dollars on the bar, casino, spa, art auctions, and bingo. That’s what they promote and focus their attention on. If you want to spend your money that way, then you’re all set. If you weren’t planning on blowing your cash once onboard, then bring lots of books!

Good things about the activities that we enjoyed: the gym and walking track, the shuffleboard on deck 11 (we tried to teach ourselves!), deck 3 - great place to nap and read. The video arcade with air hockey tables was lots of fun, especially the Ms. PacMan game for the 80‘s children we were. We were also thankful for the library with board games and cards, but if it had been open more than 2 hours a day, we would’ve utilized it a lot more! They had a great selection of board games, all in very good condition.

Ports of call:
Montego Bay, Jamaica: I had read from other reviewers that this was their least favorite port, and I could understand those reasons. Don and I weren’t expecting much from Jamaica, but we did have a lot of fun. We bypassed all of the Carnival shore excursions and did our own thing for both ports. We contracted with Barrett Adventures for a tour to YS Falls, lunch, and a safari boat ride on the Black River. Barrett Adventures is run by a husband and wife, Errol and Carolyn Barrett. Carolyn met us at the port and took us to Errol who was waiting for us in his minivan, and off we went! People in Jamaica drive on the “wrong” side of the road, pass whenever they want to, at whatever speed they want, dodging whatever people happen to be standing/walking in the road (which the roads themselves were horrible!). I am SO glad that we chose not to drive ourselves! Errol took us through the countryside to YS Falls, which was so beautiful and perfect. We swam in a pool at the base of the falls, and some hunky Jamaican men lifted me onto a rope swing that dropped me in closer to the falls. The best part was… we had the pools to ourselves for about half an hour, until one other couple joined us. After this, we drove to Black River for lunch at this small restaurant with excellent local food, served family-style at the table. We then took a pontoon ride up Black River to see the wildlife, but unfortunately we didn’t see much because it began to rain, plus the recent hurricane had scattered many of the trees and nests. I would wholeheartedly recommend Barrett Adventures to anyone visiting Jamaica who doesn’t like the “herd mentality” of most other tours. If Barrett isn’t already booked, you can choose what you want to see, and the most that will be with you are the others in the van. We knew we definitely didn’t want to do Dunn’s River Falls, which is apparently what most people go see when they visit Jamaica. Way too crowded! We got to ask Errol all kinds of questions about the way of life in Jamaica, whic

h is what I’m interested in learning about when I travel. He stopped and bought us fresh coconut and sugar cane on the way back. I would definitely advise everyone to TAKE A TOUR WITH SOMEONE FOR JAMAICA! Had we not done that, we probably would’ve sprinted back to the ship! Jamaica overall was run-down and dirty in appearance, with everyone checking you out wanting your money. It is not the safest place, but if you use your head you can still have a good time.

Grand Cayman: Our ship didn’t stop there because they were still attempting to recover from Hurricane Ivan. Instead, we got our other port hours slightly extended, and also a $25 per person shipboard credit. I still would rather have gone to Grand Cayman, but they sure didn’t need a bunch of cruisers in the way when they’re trying to get their lives back together. On to…

Cozumel: We really enjoyed Cozumel. Again avoiding the Carnival shore excursions, we rented a convertible Tracker from the Alamo counter near the taxi line at the port, and off we went! We didn’t know where exactly we were going, but we took off driving away from downtown San Miguel and along the shore. We stopped at a beach-clubby place several miles down the road; I wish I could remember the name! They had a sign that said they had snorkeling, so we turned in. As we walked in and checked out the beach, a man came up to ask and asked if we wanted to go snorkeling, so we agreed to the tune of $30 per person, walked with him to get our equipment, and waded into the water to get on the boat. Once again, this trip was only me, my husband, the snorkeling tour guide “Tiger”, and the boat driver, Felipe. The four of us took off into the ocean toward several other boats who were also snorkeling at the reefs, and the ride out there was a blast with the salsa music, sun shining, salt spray… ahhh! Don, Tiger, and I jumped into the water, and the three of us began snorkeling, with Tiger occasionally grabbing me by the hand to point out fish or diving down to scare a sting ray. We had a terrific time, and while riding on the boat on the way back to the beach, we passed a larger boat with a crowd of people. I couldn’t help but be glad that we had, once again, our own personal trip! After this, we continued driving down the road and stopped to eat at a restaurant on the beach called “Playa Bonita”, where we had amazing nachos and grilled chicken, and enjoyed our lunch on the beach with a swim afterward. We continued driving around the island and did some shopping in San Miguel before returning on the ship. It was fun to shop downtown, but I felt like I was seeing the same thing over and over after walking down the first block. We did feel comfortable in Cozumel and would definitely visit it again.

Other random notes:
- If you don’t want to be surrounded by kids, go in the fall. We hardly noticed any! Of course, in the fall you run the risk of dealing with hurricanes, but it was totally worth it to have avoided all of the noise of kids.

- Unless you absolutely can’t live without your sodas, avoid the Fountain Fun card. We felt like the $40 per person charge for a week’s worth of Coke was ludicrous. The 3 times we craved Coke, we bought small bottles at the bar and split them. The rest of time, we were fine with water, juice, or tea.

- When we booked our cruise through Travelocity, we were asked if we were celebrating a special occasion. We specified that it was our honeymoon. We were surprised that there was no notice of that taken by the Carnival staff. From friends who had taken cruises, I thought we’d have a cake or flowers or at least a table to ourselves, but Carnival did not initiate anything. Maybe it is not in their policy?

- The ship was extremely clean. That was a pleasant surprise… they EXCEEDED my expectations!

- I have never seen so many people work so hard. The crew impressed me with their work ethic and enthusiasm.

Overall: We really didn’t have anything to compare Carnival to, so as first-time cruisers we were going to have fun no matter what! It’s not that Carnival’s not a terrific cruise line; they just might not be the perfect one for us. I really enjoyed the cruise and would cruise the Carnival Conquest again, but only after I’d tried a few other cruise lines and itineraries first.