Conquest Return

We just returned from our Carnival Conquest cruise and for the most part we had a good time. Our first stop was in Jamaica, we went to the Sunset Beach resort. This is not a scheduled tour that you can get from the ship. This was really great. It was a 3 minute ride from the dock. It cost $2.00 for the cab ride. Right before we left it started raining. We left went back to the ship and was suppose to depart at 5:00 pm. Well that did not happen. We found out that one of the scheduled tours was stuck on the other side of the island due to the rains washing the streets away. They did not return to the ship until after midnight. This delayed us getting to the Caymen Islands, which by the way is one of our favorites. We only got to spend 5 hours there. We were very upset that they held up a ship with 3000 people for a tour. They could have made arrangements to fly those people to the next island. I felt sorry for those people on the tour but Carnival did not, keep us posted enough on what was going on. All we kept hearing was it will be another 30 minutes.

We felt that they could have done more to help those people get there quicker.

The rest of the islands were great.

The WORST part was debarkation. I live here in New Orleans and I will not take another cruise until they fix this problem. 2 ships were debarking at the same time. So you had at least 6000 people getting off and 6000 people trying to get on. This was a nightmare.:mad: We actually live about 15 minutes away from the terminal and it took us over an hour after we got off the ship to get home! Carnival really needs to step up to the plate and try to fix this.

The ship is very beautiful!

That's too bad about the delay in leaving Jamaica, but weather is something out of their control, and I guess that highlights why it might be beneficial to book a tour through Carnival instead of a private vendor. The ship will wait for any delays from Carnival tours, but not private tours.

At least you were on board and could enjoy the beautiful ship and food and entertainment. :) Those poor people were stuck in the rain, probably tired, cold and hungry. I'm sure they couldn't enjoy Caymans the next day, as they were probably too exhausted to do anything.

I agree with you about the debarkation. Simply horrible. We sent our bags with Rush It, then walked a few blocks to catch the trolley to the French Quarter. Avoided that gargantuan line of people waiting for cabs.

What other ship was in port?

That's a great case for booking excursions through the ship. I can't even imagine how stressed I would be if I had been on that trip and it was a private excursion!! I will have to say that I usually don't book ship excursions but I am second guessing that decision. Thanks for the info. I sail the Conquest in June!

I have never been on a ship where they let all 3000+ off at the same time, madness. Otherwise, once off it was pretty easy, we were in our car at the parchoupawhatever lot by 10:15a and ready for our 14 hour trek home to Illinois - which we did in a little under 13 hours :))

The Jamaica incident was terrible. I later found out the ass. cruise director (english guy forgot his name) was on that excursion, it was the dolphin encounter and dunn river falls and all passengers were stuck on that bus for over 8 hours.

I have mixed feelings on what to do in that situation, should carnival just leave and flown them to GC thus leaving the remaining 3350 passengers with a flawless cruise, or wait, as they did for 50 people and be off schedule 8 hours, get into GC 3+ hours late, have all morning excursions cancelled, and only be in GC for what, 4 1/2 hours tops? with tendering this was a bad call, I expected to miss GC all together (GC always seems to be messed up).

We are 1/3 on GC stops in 3 years.

Thats my rambling for now, will put together a review later - any questions post em and I can try to answer them directly or in more depth.

Scott

I'm a bit surprised to hear that Big Kev was on that excursion. I don't think they would have delayed the ship just for him, I'd like to think that Carnival would respect the "the ship will wait for any excursions booked through Carnival" policy. I'm surprised because I didn't think crew people would want to do excursions, seeing as how they see the same ports week after week.

I know that Todd and company are fairly new to the Conquest (since February or so), so maybe Kev had never gotten around to Dunn's River Falls. I was on the 4/17 Conquest sailing, on our Jamaica day, we got back to the ship by around 1:30. It was heaven. With 90% of the passengers in the port, I felt like we almost had the lido deck to ourselves. No problem finding deck chairs :D and there was no line for the water slide.

I even saw Todd in a deck chair, he settled down with a hat over his head and caught a nap in the sun for a few hours of sleeping and tanning.

I think it was Royal Carribean

What other ship was in port?

What other ship was in port?

The Norwegian Dream at berth #2 of the Julia Street Terminal.

that may have been it. I really didnt pay attention to the name of the ship. I just know that there were mobs of people getting off and on at the same time.

The Norwegian Dream at berth #2 of the Julia Street Terminal.

We sent our bags with Rush It, then walked a few blocks to catch the trolley to the French Quarter.

What is this "Rush It" of which you speak?? Enquiring first-time cruising minds want to know!

Rush It is a service that will take your bags from you at the port terminal and send them to the airport. You collect your bags from them at the airport. The cost is $20 for two bags, and then a little less incremental for each additional bag. That way, you can spend the entire day in New Orleans without having to lug your bags around all over town.

When you leave the terminal building, they have a stand set up right there. You can't miss them.

We were on the Conquest last week also. I agree with the original poster about them not keeping us informed about what was going on. We were on the last Canopy tour and didn't return until about 5:40. We thought the ship was waiting for us and then we found out there were almost another 200 people stranded. I definitely think the ship should wait for them, but they need to let the rest of the people know what is going on. They told us at 6:00 that we would be leaving in 30 minutes. Then nothing else until around 8:30. The same story, leaving in 30 minutes. We actually left at 12:15 with no further updates. We had a tour scheduled with Nativeway in Grand Cayman, which of course we didn't make. So we ended up booking the Island tour through the ship. All of the stingray tours were full. Oh well, a great reason to have to go back!

Peggy,

Great attitude! Definitely agree that Carnival should have done more to keep guests apprised of the situation, but it is refreshing to hear that you made the best of it & did not let it spoil your vacation-induced buzz.

Left the Conquest on the 24th. The only down fall was leaving the ship, but it was my own fault. I did not go to the talk but watched it on the T.V. I had VIP tags but was not in a rush to get off the ship. The morning we left I planned on taking my time. Over the loud speaker they asked you if you did not need to get off please don't. We took our time, but at about 9:00am our room steward called our room to state that he needed to clean the room. If your in not in a rush, take your time. We went down at about 9:30am & there were many lines. There was no problem with security. The biggest problem is with trying to get a taxi. I found the people in the lines for taxi so rude. It was like they were on their best behavoir while on the ship, but once off, it was like every man for themselves! We could not get over peoples behavior!!! Did you just not have the times of your life!!!

Rush It is a service that will take your bags from you at the port terminal and send them to the airport. You collect your bags from them at the airport. The cost is $20 for two bags, and then a little less incremental for each additional bag. That way, you can spend the entire day in New Orleans without having to lug your bags around all over town.

 

When you leave the terminal building, they have a stand set up right there. You can't miss them.

I used Rush-It, but wasn't happy with the experience, and would not use them a second time.

The guys manning the stand at the terminal didn't understand their own service. They explained the fees correctly ($20 for three bags, $5 for each additional) but couldn't communicate how the pickup at the other end would work.

We had early evening flights, but wanted to arrive at the terminal early to try for an upgrade. So we told them "2:30", and they wrote that on each tag.

Arrive at the airport at 2:40, find our way to the big "Rush-It" sign, turns out there is nobody there; the pickup is at the far end of the luggage carousels, where there isn't actually any Rush-It insignia, just a big FedEx sign. And what also isn't there is... my luggage.

Apparently half the bags were arrived and unloaded and sitting out in the open at the unguarded baggage claim area, the other half are according the the young lady in the office "on the truck". And for the next forty minutes, that is the only answer we and the other dozen people sitting on the carousel (no chairs in the baggage claim area) receive.

I agree that Rush It was a little chaotic but I think it is the way to go if you have an evening or late afternoon flight and want to spend some time in New Orleans. I did find that if you wanted your bags earlier, you needed to tell them your flight was an earlier time. The time they write on the tag is 2 hours before your flight.

I also agree that they do just sit the bags there in the baggage claim, but there is someone from Rush It watching over the bags. You have to go into the Fed Ex office to pay the girl and she stamps paid on your receipt, you show the receipt to the person watching the bags and then take your bags. If there were no one there and it was truly unattended, then you could just walk off with your bags without paying.