I have been very busy since the end of the Carnival Conquest journey so I am a bit tardy in my wrapup. I know you were on the edge of your seat…
Highlights:
- Robbie, the Cruise Director. He was fun, always upbeat and the guy can dance. A very good cruise director.
- The Conquest Rockband. They weren’t quite as good as the Luminosa Rockband, but they were pretty darn good.
- The other musicians – solo and duo acts – were also quite good. Kudos to the person who booked the musical acts on this ship.
- Dining room staff – always courteous, prompt and responsive.
- The itinerary. Eight ports in 14 days, including two ports (Antigua and Barbados) that were new to me.
- The coffee. Usually the coffee in the buffet is tolerable at best. On the Conquest it was actually quite good.
- The dining room menus and food. With the exception of “Mexico Night” when there was nothing on the menu that was recognizable or tasty, the menu choices and the food were very good. The star, in my opinion, was the short ribs. Teriffic.
- Our health. We didn’t get to the gym much (i.e., once) but we stayed healthy throughout. We were told, near the end of the cruise, that dozens of passengers were ill. Probably the flu. But not us.
Lowlights:
- The sound guy. I have never even thought about the sound guy in the theater on any other ship, but this guy was hard to ignore. He over-amplified everything, to the point of distortion, and cranked up the bass so high that the ship vibrated. We walked out of 3 shows because he ruined them. He should be fired.
- The show cast. We had one song-and-dance show the first night of the cruise. And no others. I don’t know if the cast was sick or if some other calamity befell them, but I have never been on a cruise where the cast simply disappeared from view. Very strange.
- The laundry service. We sent our laundry out one time and it was returned with nasty spots on several items. We had to send them back to be redone. It is bad when the laundry is returned more dirty that when it was sent out.
- The lemonade and iced tea. These are usually our go-to drinks in the buffet but on the Conquest they were just terrible. Very weak. New machines were being used and perhaps they just needed tweaking because the drinks did get better as the cruise progressed. But even at the end they were worse than usual.
- The in-cabin television. The Carnival TV is generally not very good (though they do provide TCM so I had something to watch). But the live TV was inoperative for 4 days, leaving us with nothing to watch. Well, we shouldn’t be in the cabin anyway, right?
- The casino. I guess the casino itself was fine but wasn’t very kind to us.
My favorite ports were Curacoa and Grenada, two islands that I like very much. The new ports – Antigua and Barbados – were disappointments.
A good cruise, overall.