NoDayButToday

My husband got one on his birthday, and the same night there was one addressed to me. My birthday was at the end of the month we were sailing in, and had made no notation anywhere aside from my information on file. Both cards were the $25 off a bottle of wine. It was a nice gesture, but we only used one of the gift cards.

FYI - It is the Breeze doing this itinerary now. Once the Breeze moves to Galveston, then Conquest picks it up I think

Conquest is already doing it too. We just did it in February (but I don't have the fun times anymore).

Probably not. We were there in early February and it was all basketball. They have a Blackhawks jersey hanging in the bar, but no hockey to be found on board.

The blueberry was on the plate next to the bowl the pot de creme was in. It was really good, like Cracker Jack Pudding.

We had a chef with us who was impressed by the execution, it was the only time he was actually impressed by the food (he never actually complained, but he wasn't exactly gushing over the food quality either). He said it could easily be found in any high end restaurant that was trying to take a whimsical take on dessert and enjoyed it more than any other dessert he had on the ship.

Do you have the FunTimes and if so could you post?

I'm sorry, I don't have the fun times. I tried to save them, but I think they got lost in the packing shuffle and ended up in the trash by mistake.

Glad to see the continuation, Christmas on a cruise ship was my family's tradition for years, it's nice to see that much of that experience is still the same.

And I promise, you do get used to Christmas with palm trees. I haven't seen snow in about 5 years now, and I still don't really miss it. Out Christmas tradition looks much like yours because it isn't my holiday either (and my husband isn't religious), ours is just less cold :)

 

I’ve never met anyone who has claimed that Grand Turk is their favorite island. We’ve been there at least half a dozen times and, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice island. It’s just…lacking of things to do.

 

 

It isn't my favorite island either, it's nice, and a good beach day...but it's just a beach. However, it was the favorite stop for my husband and a couple friends on our last cruise because they are ocean people. They spent so much time snorkeling and looking at fish and loving that crystal clear water. And as a glasses wearer who can't see much without them, I can appreciate that because even I was able to see a lot of beautiful fish from the surface without having to take my glasses off and swap for my prescription dive mask.

My DH & I will definitely try at least one. We also will try whatever other lunch offerings the Conquest has to offer. So much food, so little time :eek:

On the Conquest go for the fish and chips! We love Blue Iguana, and are less than impressed by Guys, but fish and chips got us at least half the time for lunch. I even went and got my 1 burger from Guys, without their fries because the fries are not great, and then went to fish and chips for their fresh fries. So good. Plus the food was always super fresh there, never got cold or soggy anything and there were so many empty tables up there because no one ever seems to realize that section exists.

I know I'm in the minority not liking Guys, and thinking that the fries at Guys are worse than the burgers...but just my opinion. I will say the Guys on the Conquest was better than the one on the Pride, but still not worth more than 1 lunch there the entire cruise. I just don't understand the hype.

Random question: Does the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake contain gluten? My best friend is allergic to gluten and I've been talking up the WCMC so I hope it doesn't!

Carnival is VERY accommodating for gluten allergies-and there is a gluten free warm chocolate melting cake!

My sister sailed with us earlier this month and she is gluten intolerant. Have them go to the dining room that is listed as being open for dining concerns the first afternoon and talk to either the maitre d or the hostesses (either can handle the gluten issue). They will notate on their account as being allergic to gluten and will go through the menu for that night with her so she has food she can eat. After that point the waiter will come to the table every night with the next night's menu and they can pre-order the next day's dinner (and they will also ask if there are plans for brunch/breakfast in the dining room). They were able to do many of the dishes gluten free, but most will be without sauces because they use flour as a thickener in many of the sauces. They have good gluten free bread they will bring to the table instead of rolls-the same bread is available in the deli and my sister also had some great French toast made with it for brunch one day. The chef actually made her a bunch of different desserts, sometimes ones that weren't even on the menu for everyone else, she even had a plate of gluten free cookies at her place setting one night when she got to the dining room, they weren't asked for, they just wanted to be nice-she only ended up with the WCMC one night out of 8, and she was told that's the automatic dessert fallback when they don't have any other option.

The aft pool is adult only and there were never kids there except for by the pizza place. The ship was mostly in great shape, but there were a few spots where there was noticeable wear (dead pixels in the big screen, rusty tiles in the aft pool, cracked window in the monet dining room...). They are actively doing work on the ship to try and keep it looking good, the lido restaurant was being retiled in sections during our cruise in early February.

Our silverware was never on a bare table, unless we placed it there ourselves. When we arrived it was on a napkin, between courses the bread plate makes a very convenient place to rest your silverware without it touching the table.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the water carafes sliding or the condensation. On the Conquest they had holders for the carafes that collected the condensation and prevented them from sliding-and we had some very rough seas.

My one complaint about the American table concept is the new steak knives. They are awful and ridiculously dull. We found it difficult to cut every piece of meat it was provided with, leading us to think the meat was tough-until we actually tasted it. In every case the meat was very tender, the knife was just too dull to cut it, they basically gave us differently shaped butter knives.

Did you or do you use the casino? They often provide birthday cakes and bottles of wine for passengers who frequent their services.

We don't use the casino at all, it definitely wasn't a casino perk. This is a new cruise line perk. It was even signed as from Carnival.

It's been a few years since I've sailed out of Port Everglades, but with self-assist I'm betting you'll be fine. We DIDN'T do self-assist and still left the port around 0930. I wouldn't worry. If there are lines to go through immigration, grab a Porter and you'll go right to the front of the line. Well worth the $10 tip. Definitely don't let it put a damper on your cruise.

No longer true on the porter getting to skip to the front at Port Everglades. Last week we used a porter who told us he would meet us at the front after we made it through customs. He got an 80 minute break to talk with the other guys since we also saw he didn't abandon our luggage to get other tips stacked while he waited on the ridiculous line. Do self assist, it's absolutely your best bet.

My husband celebrated his 30th onboard last week. We did order him a cake for dinner to share with the table, but we also got a card from our room steward in the morning and then in the evening he got a coupon for $25 off a bottle of wine. The really interesting thing is that I did not celebrate my birthday while onboard, but it is at the end of this month. I also received the coupon for a discount on a bottle of wine. It was a nice surprise, I did not get that last year when we celebrated my birthday onboard, so it's definitely a new thing.

Definitely agree on much of the above. The staff was incredible, and we loved many of the live music groups. The talent of the musical groups around the ship were astounding, especially when you look at their performance schedules. It isn't easy on wind player chops or vocal performers. Truly professionals and lots of big crowds to listen to the music.

We had late seating for dining and was pleasantly surprised with how many dressed up both for cruise elegant and for cruise casual. It wasn't that way on our last cruise. I know there is much contention on the American Table menus-our group of 6 enjoyed them very much. And the special needs team was great handling my sister's gluten intolerance. There were frequently dessert surprises for her instead of what they called the "fallback" (gluten free chocolate melting cake), and they surprised her with a huge plate of gluten free cookies one night at the start of dinner. She said the gluten free bread and desserts were some of the better ones she has had anywhere.

I don't think that I will do a full breakdown review of this trip simply because I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I did on the last cruise. I did want to include a few picture of our room though so that if someone googles this room like we did when booking it, they can see the pictures (there were very few available when we were booking).

We booked room 8431, it's an interior room, but one of the few odd sideways oriented inside rooms on the Conquest class ships. It is directly behind the aft elevator, and while the Lido deck is right above it, there is no real traffic or deck chairs above the room itself. No noise from the deck or the elevator. We had ear plugs just in case and never needed them. The location is amazing. It was a short run up or down the stairs to nearly all the places we spent time on the cruise-the only real walk was to get on or off the ship because they used the 0 forward doors.

It felt way more roomy because of the sideways orientation it created some big open floor space and it didn't have that narrow hallway of closets and bathroom door when you first enter the room. The only negative to the room is that the space between the wall and bed is a bit narrow so that may be an issue for some-but I'm not a thin woman and could navigate around the bed without much issue. However, because the room is sideways, the bed is oriented in a way where it rocks side to side with the ship (like balcony rooms) instead of head to toe-like most inside rooms. We would absolutely book this room again. You will see some rainbow hooks on the wall- we bought some very strong magnetic hooks from Amazon since we knew there would be limited surface space in an inside room, but the big empty magnetic wall. We were able to hang a LOT in these hooks without them sliding and it helped keep our room more neat.

Standing by the wall facing the bed

Standing by the door facing the bed, this is the narrowest path in the room-that shelf next to the bed. I could still navigate around it.

I was sitting on the bed for this one. The door to the room is to the left, and that hallway my (confused, lol) husband is standing in is the closets and then the bathroom to the left. You can see some of the open floor space here.

I had a Pandora bracelet stolen by either a crew member or a guest in the room after we left. I forgot the jewelry box with my bracelet and a couple other pieces of jewelry in it in a drawer (totally my fault!). I filed the claim with Carnival and a few weeks later got the call that they had found it and would be shipping it to me. At that time I asked them to check the box for the Pandora bracelet and was told it was in there. When I received the box in the mail I had a jewelry box with all my other jewelry, but no Pandora bracelet. It is possible the person in the office saw jewelry and went "yup, it's there" when it wasn't and someone had already snagged it, or it's possible they pocketed it themselves. I called Carnival after that and told them what happened and was told it "wasn't possible".

Thankfully I had travel insurance. I filed a claim after I got the empty box and was able to replace the entire bracelet.

I just got off the 2/6 sailing. There has been severe delays in the port, the scanning system to get you into the ship kept going down so they would have to stop and reset the system. It was delaying people getting onboard and so they keep having to push muster drill to 4 instead of 3:30 like it is scheduled in the Fun Times, and so we missed sailing away.

Port Everglades was really a disorganized mess, both getting on and off the ship. We were in priority disembarkation group and it took us an hour and 20 minutes just to get through the customs line. I can't imagine what the people in higher groups had to go through if group 1 was already over an hour wait.

The cruise was amazing otherwise, I loved all the staff I encountered and we had a lot of fun onboard. But the stuff port Everglades handled was the worst I have ever experienced for embarkation or debarkation.

Thanx for the offer! We leave on the 28th of this month on Conquest. Wondering if the doors are magnetic for white boards. Any suggestions to make our trip special?! Any must-see shows? Etc?

 

 

 

We are doing the Western Caribbean, so different ports of call for us. Hope your trip was fabulous!

 

 

 

Janet

I didn't try to use magnets on our door, but command strips worked really well for our banner. There were quite a few people that had dry erase boards next to their doors using command strips. We did use magnetic hooks on the wall of our room to hang stuff up in the room. That was actually a huge space saver in our interior room, kept stuff from piling up on the desk or little table.

We had seen the production shows on other cruises so didn't go to any of them (Latin Nights, Divas, Epic Rock). We spent a good amount of time at Alchemy at night-bartenders were great and it's a nice area. The adult pool in the back was typically pretty empty at night so a great place to spend time together. We are also somewhat nerdy and were always able to find a group to play a board game with at night up in the lido buffet area or in the library. Even on our ship, which was an active party cruise due to the Super Bowl, there was always somewhere special we could find to spend time together where we were alone. It's a great ship for that.

So why does customs get so backed up?

They only had 3 customs agents working when we got off the ship. About 30 minutes into the line another few showed up and the line started to actually move. The porter said that's pretty standard, so the port has decided that they just don't care about the volume of people coming through.

I'd love some detail on the disembarkation process. We're doing the same itinerary in April and I have an early flight.

 

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• What time did the ship get back into FLL?
   
  
• What was the order for getting off the ship? Did the self-assist go off before the suite/FTTF group?
   
  
• Was there a Global Entry line to clear customs?
   
  

 

 

 

Thanks for much for sharing your experiences with us! :)

The ship was cleared for self assist by 6:30am, and there was a bright shiny announcement to all cabins to let us know, lol.

Self assists had at least an hour and a half to get off the ship before group one was called, which was around 8:15am. Self assist was called by their floors in 3-4 floor groups. However, the port was an unbelievable mess for customs. We got into line around 8:30 to get off the ship. They kept having to stop the line in the ship to let the customs line clear a bit. Once we got off the ship and got our luggage we got in the longest customs line I have ever seen. The porter told us it would be about 45 minutes. We got in that line at about 9am, and finally walked out of the building around 10:20. We were in group 1. When we were getting on our shuttle at nearly 11 we heard them calling group 16 of 34 groups. We also noticed quite a few people in line with us that had bags with numbers 20 and above, so lots of people just doing whatever they wanted and ignoring directions. If you have an early flight, I would definitely try and self assist.

There was a Global Entry line marked, but I didn't see anyone go through it so I don't know if it wasn't being utilized or if there just wasn't anyone that it applied to when we were there.

I honestly don't know. I didn't ask. That picture was taken on the dive boat, I was just taking sweeping pictures of my entire surroundings while my husband was diving, and while the dive staff was amazing and friendly, and basically the best ever, the boat captain is nicknamed Captain Crabby for a reason. He didn't talk, at all, to me or anyone else on the boat other than the dive master. I do wish I knew now that I'm looking at the picture though.

I can see the Conquest docked on PTZtv. I live in Florida. Today is really nice compared to the other days we have been experiencing. Tomorrow will be rotten. Can you please tell me how the Conquest does in high sea? Thanks, have a wonderful trip.

It has been probably the rockiest cruise we have ever been on. Not dangerous, I haven't seen anyone or anything fall and no one we have encountered has mentioned being truly seasick, but we are very definitely moving around. No denying we are at sea. I did read somewhere that because of the route we are taking it is typically a more rocky itinerary, and it sure didn't disappoint there (I like active seas).

Doing the same itinerary in April.

 

Check out the comedy club, status on the shops, and any neat things to do in San Juan.

 

 

 

have a great cruise!!!

San Juan is a really short day, 7-2. And even shorter when you realize that nothing opened until 9 or 10 San Juan time (1 hour ahead of ship time). We decided to just walk around Old San Juan, find somewhere good to eat, and head back to the ship. Everyone in our group did pretty much exactly that. We covered pretty much all of Old San Juan (plus a stop in the CVS right near the pier for some new insoles for my husband, lol), stopping in shops and local art galleries to take a look, went to Barrachina for lunch and a Pina Colada (they don't start serving food until 11am Puerto Rico time, but the meal was incredible. They also claim to have invented the pina colada and it was good, tastes more like the actual fruit, not as sweet as you are used to, and very heavy on the rum-and it was shockingly only $7 for the drink! We expected way more than that since they pride themselves on it), and walked back to the ship. We also stopped at the Starbucks on the way back to the ship, not for coffee, but because I work for the company and wanted to pick up some stuff that is available in Puerto Rico but not the US (almond syrup!). We ended up having a nice, leisurely day, but be prepared to walk a lot. Old San Juan is very hilly. When my parents came back they complained about it a bit. I'm not in the greatest shape, and I survived, but definitely wear good walking shoes that day.

I'm doing this itinerary in October also and we are thinking about going to Reggae Beach in St. Kitts, I'm hearing good reviews about it. I'd love to hear everything you can share about the ports. Are their any beaches within walking distance at St. Kitts or St. Maarten? I know I'm going to Jack's Shack when in Grand Turk and probably explore San Juan. So I'm looking for beautiful beaches with calm, clear blue water at St. Kitts and St. Maarten.

I don't know about beaches at St Kitts, we didn't explore the port area much. However, in St Maarten, if you take the water taxi ($7 per person buys you an all day use wristband), the first stop is to the beach, and the 2nd stop is at the main shopping area, which also has a beach right there. Our beach dwellers were very happy with that beach, and were also able to bargain the chair guy down to $5 for a chair and umbrella from the $15 he was starting at.

Have a great trip! I'm doing the same itinerary in 25 days! Hoping for great weather and calm seas [emoji16]. It's our first cruise. Please keep us posted on how the seas are and the weather. Thanks! Enjoy!

I said it earlier too, but the seas have been somewhat rough, but not too bad. If you are unsure if you will be sick, bring some Dramamine to be safe. I haven't needed mine, others in my group have but felt just fine after they took it.

We lucked out on the weather so much. The weather reports the week before we left were predicting rain in every port. We had a few short bursts in St Maarten, but then it was clear and in the mid-80s. St Kitts was clear the entire day and mid-80s. Puerto Rico, clear and high 80s, it was a warm day but still breezy. Grand Turk was supposed to be the mother of all thunderstorms all day based on the weather report the day before. We had a bad burst of rain when we first docked-and that was it. Clear skies, low 80s, never saw another drop of rain. I feel bad for anyone who booked a snorkel excursion though, all snorkeling excursions were canceled when they had the bad rain, and then the day ended up being beautiful.

Doing this itinerary in October and struggling with what to do in St. Kitt. Any info when you return would be great!

We had a great time with Dive St Kitts, but their office was a bit disorganized (our reservation was fine, but they had lost someone else's reservation from our ship and had to scramble for alternate arrangements).

My parents and sister both went with ship excursions. My parents went on the ATV excursions with a beach stop and loved it, said the island was amazing and it was one of the best excursions they have ever done. Both have bad backs and said it wasn't too bumpy or crazy and they felt fine afterwards. My sister and her boyfriend chose to do the ship excursion to the fort and garden area. It was their favorite part of the entire trip. They said the group wasn't too big, they learned a lot, and the sites were amazing.

Hope that helps, we were all sort of stumped at what to do in St Kitts, but we all ended up loving our day there. The island is incredibly beautiful, mountains everywhere and the water is an amazing deep shade of blue I haven't seen elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Congrats on your trip so far and thanks for using your time and data for us back here in reality.

 

 

 

My only real complaint from a cruise was the piano player we had a few years ago on the Freedom, so I am wondering who the piano player is on Conquest as we will be on her in a couple of months. Also am review of the comedy club and frequency of comedians would be appreciated.

 

 

 

Enjoy the cruise and have a D.O.D. for me.

 

 

 

-F-

The piano player currently onboard is called Tommy G. He's ok. We went the first night buy weren't overly impressed. He has been playing to about a half full bar every night though. He's a good player and an okay vocalist.

The comedian's the first two nights were Geetchie Guy and Steve Burr. Guy was pretty funny, he reminded me a bit of a Mitch Hedburg or Mitch Fatel-dry delivery, one liner type comedy with some pretty good jokes. Almost everyone in our group liked him a lot. Steve Burr was really funny to the 4 or 5 people in the front row that he spent the entire set interacting with. Not as funny for the rest of the crowd though and he didn't do the planned set listed in the fun times, just the audience interaction.

The second 2 comedians were Chas Elstner and Louis Johnson Jr. Chas Elstner was awful. He is a sound effect comedian, and he was overly vulgar (and I don't mind vulgarity-but it didn't end in a funny payoff, so just really unnecessary), and he was overtly racist. We actually left after about 10 minutes (but others in our group said it was the same for the entire set). I got the impression that he was maybe generally a cleaner comedian who felt the need to do a dirty set for the 18+ shows, or maybe I'm just hoping that isn't his entire shtick. We haven't been to see Louis. We were sort of soured on the comedy club after Chas (and a disconcerting experience my husband had where he saw the comedy club manager, Curly, in the restroom pre-show and he didn't wash his hands after using the restroom and then immediately went on stage to touch the mike and shake the hand of the comedian, we were all a little grossed out by that).

We have had a fantastic time, and definitely enjoyed those drinks of the day though! I don't want it to sound like the entertainment was bad, because the entertainment staff is great. We've spent a lot of time at night in the areas with live musicians dancing and Josh and his staff work very hard to make sure there is something for everyone going on.

The wifi isn't always amazing at times and some of the pictures are showing up broken. If they are actually broken I will re-upload when I get home.