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A First Timer's Conquest Review - 9/28/08

chromey

By chromey,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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chromey

chromey

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Well, I know I have some stiff competition on this one (I’m going up against Host Mach’s “review”), but since this was my first cruise I figured it’d be a nice alternate perspective. I'll try to get pictures included tonight or tomorrow when I have access to them.

 

 

I had been reading up on this cruise a lot before we went. I have a bit of a bad habit of “over researching” things before I do them. I don’t like to go through a drive through of a restaurant I’ve never been to before because I want to thoroughly examine the menu. Anyhow, I came across cruise critic a few months ago and have been following along since then on things to do, things to pack, where to go, etc etc. We’ll get into more of that later. With all the research that I’d done, I was definitely pumped up to go on this cruise when the time was finally near. It also helped that I had a bit of adrenaline flowing because I was getting married the day before the cruise. It was definitely a challenge to get them both planned at the same time, but it was well worth it on both fronts.

 

Finally, the day of the big day before the big day came – our wedding. I knew I had to have everything done before now because we were going to leave immediately after the reception. Luckily I had stayed up the night before until about 1 AM getting all the last minute things packed. On a side note, for those of you who are first time cruisers, you don’t necessarily have to listen to ALL of the items suggested for packing by your fellow Cruise Critic members. There were definitely a few things I packed that I ended up not needing at all, but also several that I did pack that I was glad to have. The over the door shoe hanger thing – brilliant. We had all of our run out the door last minute items in that like sunscreen, sunglasses, tissues (my wife had a cold the first few days), sail & sign cards, camera and a waterproof pouch. I did also bring every seasickness remedy known to man with me. This is because I used to get carsick all the time when I was younger, and I’ve never particularly cared for the motion on a boat on the lake, so I figured better safe than sorry. I took Bonine the first two or three days but quickly found that it wasn’t necessary. I never opened the bottle of ginger capsules or the Sea Bands (anyone need some Sea Bands?). So, back on topic now, the wedding kicked off successfully at 3:00 on the 27th and we were out the door and on our way to Houston by 7:00. We arrived in Houston around 11:00 and stayed at the Alden downtown that evening (pretty noisy place in case you’re curious).

 

The next morning, we were up at 8 and ready to go! All bags were repacked and zip ties were applied with luggage tags. We started driving around 9:30 and got to the terminal around 10:30 (Whataburger on I-10 and 610, thank you for taking 30 minutes to make a taquito and some french fries in the drive through). Getting to the terminal was a little interesting – the directions that the Houston Port Authority provides seemed a little out of the way, so eventually we just ended up following the signs posted along the side of the road. These led us to some railroad construction at Port Rd, so we ended up going a little further down the highway and then turning back around to get back onto Port Rd. That was the only major hiccup in getting to the port. Once we started getting closer, obligatory pictures of the Conquest started being snapped by my wife. She is absolutely MASSIVE (the ship, not my wife). The cruise terminal was dwarfed by the Conquest.

 

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Okay, eyes back on the road. A nice security guard directed us in which direction we needed to go and we pulled up to the porters. Our porter quickly removed all of our bags from the car, we gave him a tip and were quickly directed towards the parking area. The parking attendant happily took our $70 for the week and directed us towards the grass. We walked through the lot and made our way into the terminal.

 

The Bayport terminal overall is pretty nice. I think it is probably too small to accommodate the amount of people that go in and out, but overall isn’t too bad. Getting through customs and checked in with Carnival was a breeze. We were given our Sail & Sign cards and a big tag that said Zone 3. We sat down with everyone else and waited.

 

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This is when everything went downhill. The terminal began getting more and more full. We watched the gangway to the ship have constant trickles of people getting off the Conquest. By 12:30, we looked back to the customs check in area and saw a line that was completely stopped and out the door. The only beverage provided were a couple coolers of water, but no food. The chaos continued when a door rolled up near the gangway area. Everyone swelled in that direction only to be quickly told to get back into their seats. The problem here is that apparently the Bayport cruise terminal has no PA or loudspeaker system set up at all. The only communication between the staff and passengers is by word of mouth, and with 2000+ people, word of mouth doesn’t travel very well. Some staff would yell instructions, but as they would continue to move while they did this, you would hear one or two words of their sentence before it tailed off. So, for the most part we had no idea what we were doing and just decided to sit back down until things calmed down a bit. Eventually we got back up after some passengers were boarding and found a line for Zone 3 and got into it. About 1:30 we were finally getting onto the ship. Checking in with our Sail & Sign cards was a breeze and we quickly made our way to our cabin to drop off all of our carry on items and check out the balcony.

 

As many have stated in the past, the room was larger than we had expected. The balcony was the perfect seating area – a little walk out section with two loungers and a small side table. We poured some rum out of one of our rum runners into two glasses and got a coke out of the cooler and had ourselves a break for the first time in about 24 hours. We got up and explored the ship a little bit to see what was available where. We didn’t make it too far and ended up on the Lido deck. This would become our favorite deck for the week for obvious reasons (it’s outside, they have food and drinks and pools). We hung out there until calls were made for the muster drill at around 4:30. We made our way back to the cabin and lined up in our area according to the map on our door. Carnival’s staff was happy to help us find where we needed to be. The drill went by quickly and we were off to ourselves for the remainder of the day. Nothing else major really happened this day as we were both still considerably confused as to where anything was on the ship and didn’t realize where we could get maps (I of course refused to ask anyone solely based on principle). We ended up spending the remainder of the day on the Lido deck sipping on drinks and then went to the Monet restaurant for dinner (more on that tomorrow). After being stuffed with food, we made our way back to the cabin for a nice long night’s sleep (the Carnival bedding is definitely not overrated).

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NMCruiser55

NMCruiser55

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Congratulations on your wedding!

I'm glad you didn't get too upset with the new terminal. Usually there are lines but they move quickly. When you go on your next cruise you will probably notice the difference. ;)

Love the pictures. Please continue. :)

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chromey

chromey

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Congratulations on your wedding!

I'm glad you didn't get too upset with the new terminal. Usually there are lines but they move quickly. When you go on your next cruise you will probably notice the difference. ;)

Love the pictures. Please continue. :)

 

We kept positive about it. It wasn't terrible when we knew that any time we'd be on a cruise ship!

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BrendaB1

BrendaB1

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Great review so far. Waiting to read more.

 

chromey I see you are from Dallas. Feel free to join us over in the Floatway Lounge section of the board on the DFW Area Cruisers thread. Lots of friendly, local cruisers who get together for dinner & drinks a few times a year.

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chromey

chromey

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First and foremost, thank you all for your congratulations. We were blessed to have such a nice wedding and even more blessed to have a great cruise as a honeymoon.

 

We got up pretty early this morning (as would turn out to be the case every morning) because both of us were excited about seeing what had changed outside our balcony. The ocean was a beautiful blue color and the waves were gently crashing along the side of the ship. The motion of the ship cutting through the water made a subtle combination of white and light blue directly below us. I could have stayed and watched this for hours, but we had more pressing things to do! We had filled out the room service card for breakfast the night before, and sure enough, right at 8:00 we got a knock on the door. We sat and enjoyed our mimosas (thanks TA for sending us a bottle of champagne), croissants and cereal. Of course, within an hour we found that this was not nearly enough food and we made our way up to the Lido deck for some breakfast buffet action. The buffet in the mornings was typically the same each day. You had your normal choices of potatoes, eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, cereals, fruits and toast/bagels. There was also a “side” buffet which had croissants and pastries.

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After we were thoroughly stuffed, we made our way back to our cabin, watched the ocean go by a little more and decided it was finally time to take a shower and get ready. We finished up and made our way up to the Sky deck at the front of the ship where we sat in some interesting blue plastic rocking chairs. The view from the front of the ship was fantastic. However, the advisories about wind are very true. I was expecting a little gust, but this was more like if you didn’t try to move forward, you were going to get blown over. So much for brushing my hair this morning.

 

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We went back down to the Lido deck, had a quick lunch and then made our way outside for the ice sculpting demonstration. I forget the man’s name who did the sculpting, but he was able to make a pretty detailed sculpture in under 20 minutes. We were very impressed! (Can you find Mach in this picture? I think he was stalking us - he's in a lot more pictures than this one!)

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We made our way back to the cabin one last time to watch the ocean go by (did I mention that I love balcony cabins?) and then made our way to Vincent’s for the Cruise Critic meet & greet. We had a great time meeting each other, seeing Mach’s ‘scots, trading some items and just generally having a good time. Ralph and Kyle and one of the comedians (I can’t remember her name right now) visited with us and answered whatever questions we could possibly ask.

 

Of course, it was immediately back to the cabin after that (for some drinks for all of you whose minds are in the gutter!). We sat out on the balcony for a couple hours and watched the sun set. It was yet another picture perfect ending to the day.

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We got ready afterwards and made our way to dinner in the Monet dining room. We were at table 403 which ended up being nice because we just had to walk in the door and our table was right there. Unfortunately, we ended up sitting by ourselves the whole cruise. I think I had in mind that every table was going to be a grand 8 person table and that we would be sitting with at least 4 or 5 other people. Our table was actually just a 4 person booth, so each night we just stared at the other empty side of the booth. The good part about it is that we had the butter to ourselves!

 

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For those of you who have never cruised before, the dining experience was a little different than I had expected. There are several tables in your area (I think we had maybe 5-6 tables in our section) and they are mostly in various sizes. We had one other booth like ours, a two person table and an eight person table in our close proximity. You have a waiter and an assistant waiter for your section. Your assistant waiter will offer you something (non-alcoholic) to drink and come back a few minutes later to offer you a variety of breads. A bar wait staff member will come soon after to see if you want any alcoholic beverages. Finally, your waiter will bring you your menu and let you know what he or she (he in our case) recommends that night. The waiter disappears, your assistant waiter comes back, offers you more bread and refills your glasses, and then the waiter reappears to take your order. You request what you want, wait about 5-10 minutes and then see your assistant waiter bring all the food in on a tray. The waiter will review all of the orders, get the food prepared and deliver it to each person. This is your starter. You eat your food, the waiter gives you a strange look for not eating everything (sorry people, I’m just not used to three course meals and I want to save as much room for my warm chocolate melting cake as I can) and then take your plates. A few minutes later, the same routine happens but with your main course. Again, you eat what you can, the waiter comes back and gives you a strange look, asks if you maybe didn’t like it and then takes the plates. The plates are then replaced with a dessert menu. After a while these aren’t necessary because you just order warm chocolate melting cake every night anyhow.

 

A tip for those of you who are new to cruising – after you eat your dessert, don’t leave. Apparently, a while after dessert is served, the wait staff will perform for you. I knew that they sang on the last day but was not aware that they performed every night. Needless to say, the only time we saw a performance was the last night of the cruise. We also found out that night that we had missed all of the other performances. Oh well, there’s always the next cruise!

 

Well, it looks like our awesome steward, Jhon (yes, that’s how he spells it. I double checked with him to be sure) was busy while we were at dinner! The sheets are turned down, we have a copy of the capers for tomorrow, a couple chocolates and a strange unidentified towel animal. We still don’t really know to this day what it was, but it was the beginning of our towel animal collection for the rest of the cruise. Time for sleep to rest up and get ready for another “fun day at sea”!

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chromey

chromey

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And just for fun, here's a picture from the wedding.

 

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I also forgot to mention on the first day that we thoroughly enjoyed that the sun would set on our side of the ship throughout half of the cruise. Here is a picture from day one of said sunset:

 

2927726220_96d9b5fdd8.jpg?v=0

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Boo810

Boo810

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(Can you find Mach in this picture? I think he was stalking us - he's in a lot more pictures than this one!)

2927726464_80fabe33a2.jpg?v=0

 

Oh Oh pick me. I know which one he is. Oh and by the way you are doing a great job with the review.

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