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Our Conquest cruise


DKF97

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We just got off the Conquest Sunday. DH and I have been on just one other cruise, the Elation in March. We were not entirely sure cruising was for us and thought this cruise would push us one way or the other. It really didn't. I don't see us booking another cruise anytime soon, but wouldn't rule it out in the future. This cruise we took our 12 & 14 year old boys. They LOVED it! The one thing I did want to post about was the crew. They were fantastic, we had one issue I wasn't real happy with and I'll get into that, but every crew member we had contact with went out of their way to be friendly and helpful. Our room steward in particular was amazing! His name was Alit, we ran into a few Alit's though. The new eating places were great. My hubby and kids loved Guy's and I LOVED the Blue Iguana, unfortunately it was only open for a couple hours at lunch and a couple at breakfast, but I only had breakfast there once because they use yucky powdered eggs. I loved that the buffet had vegetarian items listed as such on the little labels, I didn't notice that on our first cruise. We also really liked the new pizza. We never stepped foot in the MDR and didn't feel like we were missing anything at all. The extra time to sit on Lido and listen to music or read on our balcony was great. I had read a lot of complaints about not enough live music, so I was really surprised to find live music was all over the place all the time. The only time I noticed a DJ at all was a few times on Lido during parties. We tend to like quiet relaxation, so if there was a DJ we were just passing through and barely noticed. They had two singers on Lido with just acoustic guitars and one of them, Justin Thyme I think was his name, we really liked, the other was ok. The entertainment on our Elation cruise left much to be desired. The new shows on Conquest were much better. Not spectacular, but very much improved. Getting on and off the boat for embarkation, debarkation, and at all of the ports was smooth and easy. Overall we had a great time. I actually saw a smile on my 14 year old’s face a few times! Very rare sighting!

Now for a few bad things that happened. We had HORRIBLE neighbors! We had to leave our balcony several times to get away from them. It was a man, woman, and a young boy, about 4yrs old or so. They spoke to each other like they were speaking to someone 10 rooms away. Their son had that constant moaning whine, I’m sure you’ve heard kids do before. Their way to deal with that was to continuously yell at him to shut up. They slammed every door, cabinet and drawer in the room. Then on Saturday morning about 4am they were yelling and slamming things around, then the sounds were really terrible and we jumped out of bed and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing so I peeked around the balcony divider hoping I was mistaken, but really wished I hadn’t, I can’t unsee that now. He was beating her, while their little boy cried for him to stop. We called security and they came right away, but of course, what are they going to do? The man said they hadn’t been fighting and said they would keep it down. For the next 2 hours they slammed doors and drawers. Luckily, my kids rarely remember things when they wake up in the middle of the night and they haven’t mentioned it so far. The next morning really made me sick, they were sitting out on their balcony talking about how it sucked that they only got 4 hours of sleep. Just a normal Saturday morning I guess. Just turns my stomach, not the best vacation memory.

The other thing that happened was Thursday night. My 14yr old had been complaining all day that he was tired. That evening we were at the family comedy show and he was so exhausted but didn’t want to miss anything. We finally talked him into taking a nap with the promise that we would wake him up by 11pm so he could do something planned with circle c. We ended up waking him at 10:30 because we were going to the adult comedy show. After the show our other son came to tell us that his brother had vomited, so we headed to the room to check on him. He was REALLY sick, he had vomited on the floor in the middle of the room. Now I am a horrible germaphobe and at home I could have taken care of the mess with a variety of cleaning products and tools. Of course, that wasn’t an option, so my wonderful hubby cleaned it up the best he could with towels, then called housekeeping. This was at about 11:45pm. We just figured they could come in and use a spray cleaner and scrub the carpet a little to help with the smell and get rid of the mess of towels. We called them again at 12:15. At 12:45 we called guest services and was told it was after hours, but they would see what they could do. Finally a little after 1am, someone came and took the towels and said they couldn’t do anything else till morning. Not real happy with that, but we were all really tired. That was a miserable night. Our steward cleaned everything really well in the morning and had the carpet shampooed twice. Our son had some really nasty symptoms along with a high fever for about 24 hours, then he was fine. We got off the ship in Cozumel for a little bit while he was sleeping, but just walked around the shops at the port. So we were all a little bummed that we missed going to Chankanaab. Our other son had a fever for a few hours that night, but was otherwise fine. We kept them pretty contained and didn’t let them get their own food for about 24 hours, so hopefully that helped to keep them from spreading it to others. It was the best we could do anyway.

We had a good time, but we really like to explore new places and the amount of time a ship is in port just leaves us feeling like we are missing out. Especially Cozumel, even though we didn’t get to leave the pier area this trip we love the atmosphere and the people. I think our next vacation will be a hotel that isn’t an all inclusive in downtown San Miguel so that we can experience the island the way we really want to.

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I so enjoy reading reviews about all the popular cruiselines. Although I have not cruised Carnival yet, I often hear references to powdered eggs. Is it possible that what people THINK are powdered eggs are actually not. With much experience in the hospitality business, I can tell you that, Marriott for instance, uses precracked and mixed REAL eggs that come in what we think of as milk containers. They are absolutely real and used to provide product uniformity and quality control. There is no waste from acidentally messing up on the eggcracking procedure with shell bits and ends up being a great labor saving way of doing things. Although rather expensive, it ends up being much more cost effective. I wish someone in the know would comment because it always bothers me that anyone is accused of using powdered eggs. Could this be the same thing?

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I so enjoy reading reviews about all the popular cruiselines. Although I have not cruised Carnival yet, I often hear references to powdered eggs. Is it possible that what people THINK are powdered eggs are actually not. With much experience in the hospitality business, I can tell you that, Marriott for instance, uses precracked and mixed REAL eggs that come in what we think of as milk containers. They are absolutely real and used to provide product uniformity and quality control. There is no waste from acidentally messing up on the eggcracking procedure with shell bits and ends up being a great labor saving way of doing things. Although rather expensive, it ends up being much more cost effective. I wish someone in the know would comment because it always bothers me that anyone is accused of using powdered eggs. Could this be the same thing?

 

I've cruised on Carnival exclusively (27 times) and understand what people are talking about regarding the scrambled eggs. They have a strange consistency. Instead of large curds, they are tiny little seed pearl size bits of eggs. I can't imagine what they do to them to get that consistency.

 

I think to replicate them I would scramble the eggs then somehow chop them up in a food processor. Maybe the big vat they are cooked in agitates them to the point of being small crumbles instead of moist curds.

 

I do know they use the liquid egg product you describe at the omlette station and if you ask for fried eggs there they have bowls already prepared with one or two eggs that they pour into the pan.

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They are absolutely powdered eggs. I use liquid eggs at home i know what they are. My husband was in the navy and he absolutely knows what powdered eggs are. At the buffet and at the blue iguana, they use powdered eggs. In the mdr and at the omelet stations they do not.

 

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