8 Day Carnival Conquest - 31 Mar - 8 Apr

After reading numerous cruise reviews on this site, and enjoying many of them and learning so much from other cruisers, I decided I will try my best to review acruise.

About us…DH and I are Army veterans, with deployments to some crappy places, along with numerous nights sleeping in the field, eating rations and out of kitchen trailers. So needless to say, we are pretty darn happy to have a clean bed and decent food!

My husband and I became “addicted” to cruising in 2013, starting with Carnival Liberty. We have done 9 cruises in 5 years, 8 with Carnival, 1 with NCL, with Carnival Horizon booked for Dec 2018. We like Carnival for many reasons, and have never been turned off by any one thing. Sometimes I think we get bored with the familiarity of Carnival, but we have never left a cruise disappointed. They provide a great cruise, for a great price and that’s why we keep coming back.

We picked this cruise for the Ports and date,and not necessarily for the ship. We have sailed on the Conquest before and knew what to expect. The ship was as I remembered it with some updates that were great (Guy’s). They updated the room décor which was nicer than the beige/pink that I remember. But overall, I think it’s in pretty good shape for one of the older ships!

31 Mar - Embarkation Day (Port Everglades):

We had selected an arrival time for 12:30-1pm. This was the first time that I have seen this being strictly enforced. It almost seemed a little chaotic, which was a surprise to us. We did get on the ship within our time slot and had lunch by 1.

-Princess Cay

Well I would like to be able to tell you about Princess Cay, and how beautiful it was. However, as another reviewer said. The tender process was out of this world! We have learned over several cruises to wait out the mad rush to get off the ship in ports especially tendering. General boarding was started 3 hours later at 12, and the line was still at Deck 3. So needless to say, we did not disembark. We were not overly disappointed to miss this one, we still had Grand Turk!

-Grand Turk

A great beach day! Disembarking is a breeze here. Found a spot fairly easily on the beach a few rows back and felt quite comfortable leaving our towels and bag on our loungers to swim and grab drinks at Margarittaville. Close enough to enjoy the music and watch a few wave riders. We have been to Grand Turk at least 4 times and this is not the port to waste your money on an excursion. Unless you are a diver,snorkeller. I like this port because you don’t have to spend any money at all if you don’t want to. And the ship is conveniently parked right in front of you!

I leave in 2 1/2 weeks and am loving all these Conquest reviews. Can't wait to hear the rest!

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-SeaDay

When we first started to cruise, it was all about the ports and I couldn’t imagine having too many sea days. But I have to say, this is the part that we really have come to enjoy. Carnival does a pretty good job with activities going on somewhere and there really is no rush to be anywhere….unless you intend on baking in the sun all day..LOL.

Then you better rush and get that lounger!! We are early risers, and by 7 am the Lido deck loungers were 100% claimed by towels. Not many people, but tons of towels! No sweat for us, because we know that there are hundreds of loungers everywhere and when we are good and ready, we always find a couple. Because eventually someone gets tired of being there for 4 hours and vacates a lounger or two.

We grabbed a great breakfast in the aft dining room, walked around the ship,caught some sports updates in the Sports bar and eventually made our way to Deck 10 to look for loungers. Fortunately we found one and then another one, so we just move one to the other and we were set.

IMO, I do wish Carnival would do better with tagging empty loungers. It sure is disappointing to see one person sitting amongst 12 “reserved” loungers at 7 am. I feel bad for whoever drew the short straw on that one!! If Carnival would be consistent in this department, I’m sure overall satisfaction would improve. We don’t sweat it anymore, we wait them out and eventually that poor baked soul picks up and leaves.

-Curacao

A very unique island and a great place for some walking and shopping. I’m sure there are ton of things you could do here. But for us, we like to explore on our own and this is one of the rare Caribbean islands that I would say is pretty safe to do so. There’s a Starbucks very close to the dock, so it’s a good stop to catch up on any emails and such.

-Aruba

Another unique island! We grabbed a colourful open air tour bus right off the ship for $20/person. It gave us a tour of the island to the only points of interest that this island has, which are the same points of interest that you can pay 3x more for with a ship excursion. The tour operator was pretty informative and we were pretty satisfied with the 4 full hours for $20 which included an hour at Palm Beach. Do your research on the Cruise Critic Ports of Call boards, there are so many good tips there!

I realize that I haven’t reviewed the ship too much here, but I’m open to questions. What I can say for sure, is that this is a good clean ship. I would sail on her again! Carnival does a good job all around (food, staff, entertainment). We’ve enjoyed every ship we have been on, some may be a little more worn than others, but the staff has always been great to us and the food options are plentiful. The part of cruising that we truly enjoy is that we have met some great people on every cruise.

So in closing, I will leave you with some tips that “we” have learned along the way.

• This is not the time to be on a diet! Have the Guy’s burger! It really is that good!
  
• Try the breakfast/brunch in the Aft dining room, they do a good job there and it’s a nice break from the buffet line.
  
• Explore the ship, there are some pretty neat tucked away areas that will surprise you.
  
• If you have any issue in your room, don’t be afraid to approach your room steward, they will do everything in their power to fix it. These folks bust their butts to make you happy.
  
• Try a movie under the stars on the Lido one night. It’s like a good old fashioned drive in movie!
  
• Catch at least one or two of the comedians shows throughout the cruise, Carnival has done a pretty good job with this, some better than others but it’s pretty decent!
  
• Don’t sweat it if you can’t make it to everything. It’s close to impossible to do it all. Save it for the next cruise!!
  
• And…you are totally on vacation so enjoy it and don’t blame the cruise line for the weather!
  

Great review! Hearing about the tender situation for Princess Cays makes me glad that I booked a cabana. That way my mom, my sister and I will have a seat on the tender[emoji15]

We’ve cruised on Conquest a number of times and love it! Thanks for writing your review!

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Thanks for the informative review.

JK, we were on that cruise as well. For anyone on their first cruise, this was the calmest 8 days I can remember. We saw whales and dolphin from our balcony. The ship was clean. Matt was a pretty good cruise director. The Steakhouse, twice and the Chef's table were both outstanding. YTD was fast seated immediately around 8:30 with May, what a sweetheart. We also stayed aboard on Princess Cay. The Serenity Deck was empty and very enjoyable.

Great review! We're sailing on Conquest May 19 and it's our first time cruising. I am a little worried about it being an "older" ship. I know you said it was in great shape, but did you notice anything that was outdated or lacking? Anything that seemed dirty or just old? For our first cruise, we didn't want to spend a ton on a new ship, so just testing the waters here! Thanks!

Great review! We were on the 6 night sailing from April 8th until April 14th, the week right after you.

We agree 100% that this was a very clean and fun ship!! I dont care how old she is, it was great.

Guys Burgers are a must have! I ate so many burgers that week that I cant even think about eating one still yet!

My wife isnt a steak eater by any means, but she absolutely loved the 14 ounce NY Strip in the Steakhouse. As did I! Was one of the better, juicy steaks i have ever eaten. Worth every penny.

Mat did phenomenal. Excellent, fun cruise director.

We had an early excursion for Half Moon Cay, so our tendering experience was great.

We would definetly cruise this ship again, and are actually looking at booking her out of Miami in 2020. We are scheduled for the Horizon early 2019.

We were on the week before you and we had one or two days of some rough seas. Glad you had nice smooth sailing.

Almost all of the chairs were taken very early on our cruise also. But I did notice the timer stickers on some right by the pool. but they didn't seem to do any of the other chairs/loungers.

I missed reading about tender issues on your cruise. We got an early tender ticket (no line to get it) at the alchemy bar and we had no issues for our tender to half moon cay. They filled the entire boat but everything went smoothly. Not sure how it was later i the day.

Nice review. I have wonderful memories of the Conquest.

Thanks for posting.

Great review! We're sailing on Conquest May 19 and it's our first time cruising. I am a little worried about it being an "older" ship. I know you said it was in great shape, but did you notice anything that was outdated or lacking? Anything that seemed dirty or just old? For our first cruise, we didn't want to spend a ton on a new ship, so just testing the waters here! Thanks!

The staff do a great job keeping this ship in shape!

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Great review! Hearing about the tender situation for Princess Cays makes me glad that I booked a cabana. That way my mom, my sister and I will have a seat on the tender[emoji15]

We’ve cruised on Conquest a number of times and love it! Thanks for writing your review!

 

 

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I know it's a pain in the neck, but any chance of posting the FUN TIMES. We will be doing the same ports with the Conquest in March, 2019 and am in the planning stages.

We also are going next year in March. Trying to do some planning for excursions.

Thank you for the review! I’m doing this exact itinerary next March. Can’t wait!!

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