Conquest Review: Eastern Itinerary, July 24 - 31

[Border Granny]

There have been so many wonderful reviews written about the Conquest, that I decided to mainly focus on things that either I haven't particularly seen addressed on here, or I have seen questions about, or that were just particularly outstanding or different. I did not take a huge amount of pictures, and there have been so many great pictures of the Conquest on here already, but I will post a few as we go along of things I'll talk about.

 

First a little background....I am 62 (next month), my husband is 67 and retired (I am still employed), and we sailed with our daughter, son-in-law and grandson (7 years old), and our son-in-law's parents, and one of his brothers, sister-in-law, and their 3 year old son. We live in South Texas, and drove up to my sister's to stay for the night, near Galveston. My daughter and I have watched the Conquest webcam most Sundays morning, and wanted to see her turn around in person and dock, so she, my husband and I made the trek down to Galveston early Sunday morning to watch the show. She is the biggest ship I have been on, so she looked really big sailing toward us that morning. We could tell pretty quickly though as she passed the off shore museum, that she wasn't going to turn, and we were very disappointed. We learned that there was a medical emergency onboard, so she didn't take the time to turn, but we were none the less just excited to be there and to be boarding her in a few hours, so we were happy to see her come in.

 

 

[Border Granny]

We had all made reservations to park at Galveston Park and Cruise....I must tell you, I read about this place on CC and I am so glad I did. It was easy as pie to make reservations online, someone from each family got dropped at the terminal with the luggage, and the other one make the short trip across the street to the garage. It literally is across the street from the exit of the terminal. We parked inside one of the buildings, and we just drove up the alley and showed the receipt I had printed out, and they directed us to the building with an attendant in there to help direct us to park. Next thing I knew a fellow in a golf cart drove up, and he helped us put our carry ons in the cart and off we went back down the alley and took us to the street, then we walked across the street back to the terminal. To me, this was much easier than waiting for the shuttles. The process getting the car from there was exactly the reverse and just as easy, we were literally on the road in less than 15 minutes from the time we walked out of the terminal. But, more on debarkation later.

 

Our son-in-law's parents had VIP boarding since they had a suite, and the rest of us were regular boarding. We were in the terminal around 10:30-10:45 (sorry, in the excitement of getting to the ship I forgot to check times). There were really no lines at this point, people were moving very steadily along. Let me explain something about my husband's physical condition, and mine, which will play into a couple of impressions we had about some of the activities we did. He has severe arthritis in his ankles, making it difficult to walk at times, and he limps all the time because of this. I have bad knees and also limp, so even though we are still pretty active, long uninterrupted walks, stairs and ramps are not our favorite things. When we got to the top of the escalator, we were met by a very friendly Carnival employee, who asked my husband "how are you doing today?", and his answer was great (he doesn't like to give into his arthritis so doesn't make a big deal about it), but I guess the gentleman saw him limping, and told us just to go on through the VIP line. Since of course it was much shorter than the regular security line, we were happy to follow his instructions.

 

Going through security was painless and fast, and we then headed to get our sail and sign card, and that took all of 5 minutes (maybe), it was super fast. We started walking to our area to sit and wait for boarding, and there were quite a few people already, but we would still be in the first zone after VIP. Again, one of the Carnival employees said "why don't you too just go on over to the chairs under the windows and do VIP boarding" Again, we weren't going to turn that down, so off we went. We had to wait just a little bit because there were three wedding parties they were rounding up, so we sat and talked with the "in-laws" who were there with us since they had a suite. Soon the wedding parties passed, and we were headed onboard. We took our time and let people pass if they wanted to (see previous reference to not liking ramps) but after our leisurely stroll on the passenger gangway, we were onboard. We waited in the lobby for the rest of our group, and by 11:30 we were off to find food.

 

We found a couple of large booths at the buffet, and some went through the buffet and some of us went to get fish and chips, figured this would be the time to try it while it wasn't that crowded yet, and it didn't disappoint. We bought our obligatory funship special, and my daughter and I left the rest of the group to go prowl around the ship a little bit. She and I had sailed together on a couple of mother daughter cruises on the Esctasy (which we love), and we like to get a look at things before the ship gets too crowded. I have seen so many great pictures of the Conquest on here that I almost felt like I had been there before.

 

At 1:30 the cabins were ready, so we all went our separate ways to find our home for the next week. We had a balcony on the Empress deck, #7411, and I will post a few pictures of the cabin since I was never able to find any pictures of this cabin before we sailed. We had plenty of room, lots of closet space, the bathroom was great with all the shelves, it was perfect.

 

Our cabin steward was Marguarita, and we called her the Stealth Ninja steward because we didn't see her much, but she was very friendly every time we did, and no matter how many times we were in and out of our cabin, we could tell she had been there while we were gone and tidied up...she was amazing.

 

I am also going to post pictures of the safe....it is NOT the kind that you key in a passcode, like I thought most of them now are. It was the old fashioned kind that you have to swipe a credit card or something with a magnetic strip. I had a credit card that I used and it did not damage it, but just in case you are worried about that, bring an old card or gift card to use.

 

Muster drill was a little before four, was out on the deck by the lifeboats but we waited long enough to go that we weren't in the back.....pretty painless and of course without life jackets now, so we were done and back on our balcony by sailaway (we didn't get away till about 4:30).

 

Our table was a 10 top (so we didn't have anyone but our group sitting with us) and was at the very back of the Monet dining room, so we had a great view of the wake, could not have been a better location. Our head waiter was Divina, and she was marvelous. After the first night she and her staff knew our preferences (some wanted two shrimp cocktails every night, others wanted two ice creams with the warm chololate melting cake, etc). She and her team were amazing, and very warm and friendly.

 

After dinner we skipped the show and went to the casino.....that will be a common thread throughout out cruise. My husband and I both love casinos, and it's very simple to get around in there and not have to prowl from one end of the ship to the other. Since we were very far aft, we didn't venture to the front of the ship very often.

 

Our first impressions and experiences were great, everyone was extremely friendly, things happened very quickly without a lot of waiting, and everything was living up to our expectations.....and best of all, we were on vacation!

 

Here are a few pics of the cabin....I'll post first sea day tomorrow. Hope I"m not boring anyone!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And everyone seems to want to know what's in the basket in the bathroom, so here you go (there was also a razor

but my husband had already used that by the time I remembered to take a picture of the basket)

 

[boaterette]

You are not boring me at all. You sound like my type of cruiser. Food and casino.

The only way to travel. Thanks for posting. I am looking forward to more.

[erewhon]

Thank you for your posting and photos.

Looking forward to the next installment.

[Scrapenthusiast]

I'm enjoying your review! Can't wait to read more. Excited to see the ship I'll be on in a few weeks!:D

[Katmarha]

Enjoying your review so far. I loved the Conquest!

[VikkiGarcia]

Please keep it coming!

Sailing Conquest at Christmas. Trying to get all the insight on the ship.

[bromero]

I am sailing on the Conquest for the first time on Nov 27th this year. can't wait to read/see the rest. Lovin the pics!

[Border Granny]

Thanks everyone for reading, and please ask any questions you have.

 

I want to digress just a moment and talk about the Players Club and Casino perks. There has been a lot of discussion on CC that I read before the cruise about the Players Club Bon Voyage packages, and the Drinks Are On Us program. I emailed the Players Club before we sailed, and was told I would get the premium package. That turned out to be Champagne and chocolate covered strawberries in the cabin on embarkation, and two cards telling me I would receive four free drink coupons and a $15 photo coupon in the dining room that night. As far as the Drinks Are On Us program, my husband and I both made the 1500 point target by 2pm the next day, so all drinks in the casino from that point on were free. The bar wait staff were very good about coming around very frequently and checking on us, and after a couple of days they all knew what we wanted. And, we made the 1500 points on the penny slots.

 

Now, on to the first sea day. We ordered coffee every morning from room service. We are early risers so we enjoyed drinking our coffee on the balcony and watching the sun come up. We kept puttering around in the cabin for a while and decided we didn't need breakfast, we would just eat an early lunch, so we headed over to the casino. We played for a while, and signed up for the slot tournament. Our daughter also played in the tournament. I was on the leader board for a while, and my daughter outscored me. We left to go eat lunch, ate in the MDR, and then wandered back to the casino, and our daughter had made the finals! The finals were fun, lots of cheering, and our daughter won. The picture is of her and Denver, the casino host.

 

 

She won $500 and the coveted ship on a stick.....we were all very excited!!

 

We played for a little while longer, then went back to the cabin to rest for a while. Neither my husband nor I are ones to just lie down on the bed in the middle of the day, but we got pretty good at it a few days on the ship. Good thing the cruise wasn't any longer than it was or I would never have been able to make it through a day of work, I would need my afternoon little nap!

 

That night was elegant night, and we all talked at our table about how everyone that we saw was very appropriately dressed for the night. One member of our group even said that they saw a man in cutoffs being turned away when they were coming in the dining room. I really could care less what other people wear, but I thought I would report this since there is always so much discussion about this on the boards, and how no one ever dresses up and they let anyone in. At least on this night, everyone was appropriately dressed, and they were enforcing the dress code.

 

The food was good, a couple of our group ordered a second lobster, and we had a very good time at dinner.

 

We went back to the casino for a little while and decided to call it a fairly early night, and headed back to the cabin.

 

A quick word about the activities for the kids....both boys, age 7 and 3, had a blast at Camp Carnival. The little one ended up there most nights during dinner, and our grandson, the 7 year old, spent large parts of his days there. I had planned on watching the boys one night so their parents could go to the steakhouse and have a night without their boys, but they went to Camp Carnival instead.

 

Speaking of kids, there were a lot of them on the ship, as you would expect in July. We saw them playing, having a good time, the teens were hanging out in groups as is normal. We personally never witnessed anything that bothered us. Granted, we did not spend hardly anytime hanging out on the Lido around the pool, so don't know if there were hot tub issues and kids being where they weren't supposed to be, but they were well behaved whenever we saw any of them. One of our group did have a problem at night with them running up and down their hall and knocking on doors all night, so they finally got tired of it and called security, and they were promptly there and talked to the parents and their kids (they knew which cabin they were in) and it didn't happen again.

 

Our cabin was located almost directly across from the aft elevators, and it was a perfect location in that there were very few cabins down the hall from us and hardly any traffic. It was the perfect cabin and would book it again in a heartbeat. We had very calm seas, so we never felt any movement.

 

A word about fellow passengers.....we were very fortunate that we didn't encounter rude, belligerent people that you hear so much about on CC. We must have had the moon and stars align, because of course we saw things that gave us a little pause, but generally speaking, everyone was very friendly, everyone spoke while waiting in line, on the elevators, etc. We were pleased that everyone we encountered were behaving themselves.

 

Here are a couple of pictures from the first couple of days. This is the view from our table each night in the Monet.

 

 

Just about every night we had clouds around so we didn't get to see the sun actually set, but it sure made for some pretty colors.

 

 

Next up, Sea Day 2, and a rescue at sea!

[JeffandMelissa]

Loving the review so far. We sail on the Conquest this Sunday.

Jeff

[TakeMeAway1001]

Thank you for taking the time to write a review, I am looking forward to reading more :)

[aucruiser1980]

Thanks for your review. We will be back on the Conquest in January. We sailed her about 7 years ago, but I was a novice. HA! You seem to enjoy the same things we do.....casino and dining, and casino. HA! I look forward to the rest of your review.:)

[Border Granny]

The time changed the night before, so now we're on EDT. So, after our regular coffee on the balcony, we lazed around for a while and decided to do a late breakfast in the MDR and skip lunch all together. We are going to eat at the steakhouse tonight. We were seated with some very nice people in the Monet (that was the dining room open for breakfast and lunch, which was very convenient for us since it literally was just an elevator ride down from our cabin, not much walking!).

 

Have a nice breakfast experience, however the eggs benedict were overcooked and not enough sauce. But, I managed to eat them (things have to be pretty bad for me not to eat them, I'm on vacation) and was just enjoying a late and leisurely breakfast and the company.

 

We went to the casino for a while (our home away from home), and then to the marriage show. If you've ever been to these, you know they are pretty funny, and of course the old folks (the older couple were in their nineties, so I think even I can refer to them as old), were hilarious. The CD was Paul Stantley, and he was pretty funny, and the older gentleman kept cracking him up. All in all it was a fun way to spend an hour or so.

 

About 2 o'clock I realized I had not made the steakhouse reservations, so I frantically called them to see if we could get in that night, and no problem, we did. So, back to the cabin to rest up a little bit (notice the afternoon rest/nap pattern starting to form here), and then get ready for the steakhouse.

 

Well, the nap didn't exactly happen the way we had planned. We could feel the ship was slowing down, and looked out and we were almost stopped. About that time the CD came over the speaker and said that a small boat had been spotted off our starboard side and the captain would be maneuvering the ship over to it. Well, we were on the starboard side and we had binoculars, so outside to the balcony we went. Turns out there is a boat (of sorts, about the size of a queen sized bed) holding 8 men, paddling like crazy toward the ship. Can you guess we were in the Florida straits? Yep, we were looking at a boat full of Cubans trying to make it to the US. They were all waving and were very excited to see the ship. They paddled and we maneuvered until finally they were able to be brought aboard at the door where the pilot gets on and off. We went to the comedy show that night, and the comedian told us that it wasn't that unusual for cruise ships to pick up Cubans trying to escape in those waters, and that they had been in that boat for 5 days. They were given new t-shirts and food and water, and then the Coast Guard was called and they came and picked them up. It was sad to think that their situation was so desperate that they would even risk trying to make that trip, but I guess it happens all the time.

 

Here's a picture of them getting close to the boat, sorry don't have an expensive camera with a high powered zoom but I think you can see them.

 

 

Well, we didn't get our nap in, but did make it to the steakhouse. It was our experience that all the good things that have been posted about the steakhouse are true. The service was impeccable and the food was absolutely incredible. The steak melted in your mouth, I had the crab cake starter and wanted to lick the bowl it was so good (a step above what is served in the MDR), and the chocolate sampler dessert was death by chocolate. We felt like it was worth every penny.

 

After the steakhouse, we went to the comedy club, then called it an early night. Well actually, I think we did make a short trip to the casino, what a shocker! Tomorrow is Nassau, and we were going to the Blue Lagoon.

[Border Granny]

Loving the review so far. We sail on the Conquest this Sunday.

Jeff

 

Thanks for reading I promise I'll have it finished before you leave on your cruise. Wish I was going back!

[Border Granny]

Thanks for your review. We will be back on the Conquest in January. We sailed her about 7 years ago, but I was a novice. HA! You seem to enjoy the same things we do.....casino and dining, and casino. HA! I look forward to the rest of your review.:)

 

You know, my husband and I like to gamble, we have visited casinos all over the country, and we decided we were going to do what we enjoyed. We are a little past laying out in the sun on the Lido deck and hairy chest contests. We enjoyed hanging out with each other and just leisurely doing as much or as little as we wanted.

[Border Granny]

Thank you for taking the time to write a review, I am looking forward to reading more :)

 

Thanks for hanging in there with me....it's certainly not the usual review chock full of all day and all night activities type of review, but I feel like there may be other folks out there like us that take a more laid back approach to a cruise and might enjoy reading it.

[KrystalWaters]

OMG, this is a great review! I'm not even going on the Conquest but it makes me want to book it. :)

Although, I really want to go on the Breeze next.

[Border Granny]

We rose early and had our coffee on the balcony and watch Nassau appear in the distance. We watched the pilot boat arrive, and we laughed when we saw the boat, comparing it to most of the pilot boats you see in the US. The boat itself was ok, but the ones in Galveston have nice ladders and steps to aid the pilot on and off the boat when they they make their "leap". The Bahamian pilot had a deck hand with a life preserver help him from his boat to the ship and I guess would make sure he didn't fall between the vessels. Obviously they don't have OSHA in the Bahamas!

 

We booked the Blue Lagoon excursion through Carnival. I know we could have done it cheaper not booking through Carnival, but I have read too many reviews about afternoon storms blowing up and and delaying the ferries, and it was worth a few dollars more to us to know that if that happened, the ship was going to wait on us. We went ahead and got the lunch package, it was ten dollars more, but we knew we would have to eat somewhere and it would already be taken care of. The food was a burger, bar-be-qued chicken leg, and peas and rice. Nothing to write home about, but about what we expected.

 

 

Nassau is a very pretty port to pull into....the buildings that you can see from the dock look like postcards.

 

We didn't meet up with our excursion on the dock until 10:30.....we had a fair hike just to get off the pier between the ships to the main walkway, and then a pretty long (let me emphasize pretty long) walk all the way to the last dock, at Festival Plaza, and then walked all the way through the Plaza, and then back outside, past the straw market, to finally where the ferries and glass bottom boats are docked. It was at least a 20 minute walk. As I previously mentioned, my husband and I both have mobility issues, and if we had been told we were going to have to walk that far without stopping at the pace we were walking, I'm not sure we would have booked this excursion. The guy holding the sign took off and kept walking, so you couldn't stop or you would lose the group. But, we finally made it to the ferry, and we were sitting down, so we survived. At least I had read that the ferry would take us directly to the ship on the return trip, so we were going to be ok coming back, right? Well, more on that later.

 

But for now, we're on our way, and our daughter and grandson are with us, so we're planning on having a nice, relaxing day at the lagoon. The trip took about 30 minutes, and we saw some beautiful scenery along the way. Loved the colorful buildings.

 

 

Entrance to Blue Lagoon

 

 

First look at Blue Lagoon

 

 

Swim/Toy area....you can see how shallow the water is.

 

 

The Lagoon was perfect for kids.....they give them a life jacket and can use all the water toys, plus the kayaks, floats, inner tubes, etc. Because the water is so shallow, our 7 year old had no problems playing anywhere he wanted to. We just relaxed on the lounge chairs, there were umbrellas so we had shade, and there were hammocks between the coconut trees. If you wanted something to drink you had to go to the little tiki bar, and stand in line to get it. I like the beaches at Cozumel such as Paradise Beach where you have waiters coming around bringing the drinks to you, but all in all it was an enjoyable afternoon.

 

We left pretty much on time, this time they were using one of the glass bottom boats as a ferry, and we had a guide pointing out what things were on the way back to the ship. Here's a picture of comedian Eddie Murphy's private little island.

 

 

 

More to come on Nassau.

[Border Granny]

We are on our way back to the dock, and as you can see it was a packed day in Nassau, a total of five ships in port. I don't think I have ever seen this many ships in a port at one time.

 

 

As we came around the corner of the last ship, I thought we would pull up to the dock by the Conquest, but no, we kept right on going and went all the way back to the dock where we started. So now we are going to have to make the walk back to the ship. Did I mention how hot it was in Nassau that day? Now it's about 4pm, and while we can at least stop when we wanted to, because at this point we are on our own, but it was still a really long, hot walk back to the ship. I really wanted to do some shopping in the straw market, but it was just too darn hot. If you have been to Cozumel and docked at the new pier, you've seen the pedi cabs they have. I probably would have paid 50 bucks for one that day if they had them there. Someone should really consider starting that business there!

 

Here's a shot of what most of the buildings look like at the dock area.

 

 

We finally made it back to the ship, and went to the cabin and cleaned up and rested until dinner....we had early dining by the way.

 

We went to dinner, then went back to our cabin to watch sailaway from our balcony. We left at 8, and it was beautiful sailing away at twilight from Nassau.

 

Went back to the casino for a while. I believe it was this night that I won the Carnival Player Tote Bag, which is actually pretty nice and I have used it more than once since winning it. Every night at 10pm Denver, the casino host, has three names of people the computer picks at random that are playing at the slots. He is talking on the microphone, and you can hear him all over the casino, but you can't really tell where he is unless he happens to in your line of sight. So I'm playing away and he walks up and taps you on the shoulder, I about jumped off the chair, I had no idea he was anywhere close to me! He doesn't say your name until he grabs your hand and takes you up to a wheel to spin. There are various money amounts, up to a hundred dollars, and then things like tote bags, caps, t shirts, etc. Well, I spun and won a tote bag, no money. But it was fun, and got a pretty nice tote bag.

 

After that we went back to the cabin, and tomorrow we will be in Freeport!

[todzie]

Awesome review so far Granny!! We're doing this same itinerary leaving this weekend, so we're excited to see all your great pics and hear all about your trip!!

 

 

A question for you regarding the time change you mentioned...does the ship stay on central time as they do for the Western itinerary or is ship time set to Eastern time? This is our 10th time on the Conquest, but we've never done Eastern on this particular ship, so it's something that's never come up for us, lol.

[Border Granny]

Awesome review so far Granny!! We're doing this same itinerary leaving this weekend, so we're excited to see all your great pics and hear all about your trip!!

 

 

A question for you regarding the time change you mentioned...does the ship stay on central time as they do for the Western itinerary or is ship time set to Eastern time? This is our 10th time on the Conquest, but we've never done Eastern on this particular ship, so it's something that's never come up for us, lol.

[/quote

 

The ship actually changes to Eastern time. The CD announces it overhead to set your clocks and watched ahead an hour before you go to bed, and it is also on the Fun Times that night. You stay on EDT until after you leave Key West, and again an announcement is made and it's in the Fun Times. The Last Sea day will be back on CDT. A lot of people complain that there are no clocks in the cabin, but we both wear watches and we bring a little battery powered clock. I did notice, however, that there are digital clocks on the the wall at the back of the stairs by all the elevators, and that was helpful to just double check the time and make sure you are on the correct ship time.

 

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read the review!

[Meyer2]

Wonderful review & pictures!!!! I look forward to the rest of the review. Thanks for sharing with us!

[todzie]

Thanks for the info on the time change!! We've never been on one where they changed times, so we were just curious.

 

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[Border Granny]

We had coffee on the balcony, as usual, and wanted to watch us pull into Freeport. We were up pretty early, and had a pretty sunrise.

 

 

 

 

Everyone on here talks about how industrial a port that Freeport is, and they are correct. There is a big difference from the quaint buildings all around the Nassau port. But, I found parts of it to still be very pretty and different. I haven't seen too many pics on here of the port area, so here are a few pictures as we come in to dock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had no excursion planned. We are just going to take a taxi over to Our Lucaya and look around the shopping area, and visit the casino over there. Our daughter, son-in-law and grandson were going to stay on the ship. Our grandson loves the pool and waterslide, and they thought this would be a good time to have a lazy day to let him enjoy the pool slide without all the crowds and unwind a little bit. Camp Carnival had been keeping the little guy pretty busy so far!

 

We let the crowd get off the ship, and then we left and went to the taxi stand. We passed through a little shopping area with several shops, and they pretty much all had the same kind of souvenir type items. We made it to the taxi stand and saw that is was controlled in that there was a man that assigned you to a van, and boy did they fill it up! The van was smaller than your usual family fan, but had a lot of seats in it that folded so that you could get in the back. By the time we left we had the driver, five adults, and three children. It was a wild 15-20 minute drive, we were all pretty glad to get there in one piece. The driver did not talk at all, only spoke when he pointed out the public beach entrance by the police station, and took us all to the drop off spot at the marketplace.

We decided to check out the casino at the hotel across the street first, so got over there, the hotel and grounds were pretty (as was the whole area there, lots of lush landscaping), but once we got inside, it was a ghost town. There were literally only half a dozen people in there, we stayed about 15 minutes and left. So, back over to the marketplace, and we start browsing around the shops. I was hoping to find some of the straw items that we saw in Nassau, but the shops were either regular type stores and boutiques that you could find in any mall anywhere, or tiny little souvenir shops that had junk compared to what we had seen in Nassau. It was very hot already, and we just weren’t up to schlepping around the whole marketplace, and the thought of just going back to the ship and chilling was sounding better all the time, so we headed back to where the taxi had dropped us off. There were five or six vans parked there, with the drivers just hanging out waiting for fares. Again, it is controlled and there was a gentleman who directed us to have a seat and we would head back to the port shortly. We thought, OK, it was comfortable enough in the shade and we didn’t mind sitting there for a little while. It took a little while for it to dawn on us that there weren’t going to be too many people ready to go back to the dock this early, and we didn’t want to sit there all day! About that time another man walked up, and he was going back to the ship, and he was told to wait also. He asked how much it would cost if he went back by himself, and he was told $35 I believe, so we all decided to give it a little bit longer and we struck up a conversation. By this time it is starting to get hotter, the bench was getting harder, and I was ready to go. So I asked the cab driver how much to take the three of us back, and he said $30. I asked the other passenger if he could handle $10 and he said sure, so off we go. Praise the Lord this van was fairly new and had a working A/C! The driver was friendly and answered questions about the island, and we had a very pleasant drive back to the dock. Not all of the cab drivers in Freeport are like the first one!

 

When we arrived back to the dock, another ship had docked, so the whole dock area was bustling. Decided there was nothing we couldn’t live without at the shops there, so headed back to our ship. As we got to the gangway, we noticed a man and woman and their luggage being loaded up on a golf cart by a carnival agent, and they weren’t looking happy. My first thought was that they must have had an emergency back home, thus the long faces, and felt sorry for them for whatever troubles they were experiencing. We found out later from our son-in-laws brother, that they were being kicked off the ship. He had just happened to strike up a conversation that afternoon with a man that was traveling with his daughter, and they were traveling with his boss and his daughter. Apparently after leaving Nassau, his boss got very drunk, caused a lot of trouble, and was confined to his cabin under guard by security and told him and his daughter to pack their things, they were being put off the ship in Freeport. So, they really do put people off, but he must have been way out of line for them to do that. I didn’t pay any attention when we walked by them, it was such a brief encounter, that the female could have been his daughter, I just remember thinking they didn’t look happy.

 

We got back on the ship, it’s only a little before 11, so decided to check out the deli since it would open at 11, and that’s where I fell in love with the Ruben sandwich and coleslaw. It would be the first of a few we had the rest of the cruise. It would become our snack of choice, sometimes my husband and I would split one for a little snack. After eating we found our family, and our grandson was having fun in the pool. He played for a little longer and then we sat with them while they got lunch at the grill, and my husband and I grazed a little (as in a hot dog), and then we all had to have ice cream.

 

We decided to play a few games of chicken foot (a domino game) , in the quiet, COOL, buffet area, and later the rest of our group wandered in and out. It was great getting to have time with our family and relax. There is something to be said about hanging out on an almost empty ship on a port day, first time I’ve done it and we enjoyed it.

 

Made it back to the cabin to watch us leave Freeport, and the pilot was very funny when he got back on his boat, everyone was out on their balcony and started clapping and cheering for him, and he put on a little show bowing and waving. I had never seen a pilot do that before.

 

We rested for a while (well probably napped for a little while as has become our habit), and then started thinking about getting ready for dinner, which tonight would be the second elegant night. The rest of our group were going to the steakhouse tonight, so we were going to be by ourselves. We looked at each other and decided we were not really in the mood to get dressed up again, we were in casual clothes and were pretty darned comfortable, plus we were not really hungry enough to eat yet. So, nix the MDR tonight, we’re going to head to the buffet whenever we got hungry. That’s the beauty of a cruise, you have so many dining options, and you can change your plans at the last minute.

 

We eventually got down to the buffet, loaded up our plates, and didn’t feel like we were lacking in any way by missing the MDR tonight. We spent a little time in the casino, then called it an early night. We live on the south Texas gulf coast, so we know hot and humid, but the two days we spent in the Bahamas while in port were really, really hot and humid, so we felt kind of drained and were perfectly content to fall asleep watching whatever was on the TV.

 

Besides, tomorrow was an early port call in Key West, and we were really looking forward to that.

[TakeMeAway1001]

Thanks for hanging in there with me....it's certainly not the usual review chock full of all day and all night activities type of review, but I feel like there may be other folks out there like us that take a more laid back approach to a cruise and might enjoy reading it.

 

I love any review I can find :) Your situation with the small boat reminds me of my first cruise in 2001 where we came upon a small boat with 5 men who had set off from the Caymans to fish three weeks prior, they said two other ships had passed them by. Needless to say they weren't in good shape, one had passed away and the other four were in dire need of medical care. We took them on the ship and transported them back to the Caymans where they were greeted with news and ecstatic family members, it was a very interesting experience to say the least.