Spaniel Lover

I'd like to thank the original poster for taking the time to post this. It prompted me to check the current promotional rates against what I've got booked for back-to-back cruises next year. Turns out that the current promotion is at $100 per person less than when I booked. Two people, two cruises back-to-back... that's a savings of $400.

I just called Carnival and they were very pleasant about changing things over to the new lower rate. It was easy.

So thanks to the original poster who saved me $400. I appreciate that!

We took the finch out on the balcony to see what would happen. I ended up making a move that accidentally scared it... and it flew out behind the ship and then turned around and came back towards some other cabins at the aft. I never saw it again after that. I assume it rested for a while, somewhere on the ship.

I cruised on the Carnival Spirit right after they added the "Green Thunder" waterslide in 2012. It's a vertical-drop waterslide where you start by standing inside a tube... and then the floor drops out from underneath you. It's the scariest and fastest waterslide on any cruise ship in the world.

I shot some video of the Green Thunder waterslide, did a little editing, posted it to YouTube... and promptly forgot all about it. It was just another in a series of cruise ship videos I've posted over the years. Most of them just get a few thousand views.

Imagine my surprise when the video went viral on YouTube! I think the first time I checked to see how the video was doing (a month or two after posting it) it had two million views! Since then, it has continued to be recommended and shared... and as of today it has been viewed over 22 MILLION times! It is not only the most viewed YouTube video about a Carnival cruise... it is actually the most viewed YouTube video about cruise ships, period.

Check it out at

I don't personally care for the closed-in feeling of the aft pool area on this class ship. I loved the wide-open aft pool on Miracle.

I understand what you're saying... but there are two big advantages to the design of the aft pool area on the Conquest-class versus the Spirit-class.

The first advantage is that the aft-pool area on the Conquest-class is somewhat wind protected. Like you said... it's a bit closed in... and on a windy day at sea, this offers some wind protection. Everyone correctly points out that the Conquest does not have a Serenity retreat at the front of the ship like the other Conquest-class ships do. However, on a windy day at sea... conditions are bad up front at Serenity and much better by the aft pool. Also, you get a lot of noise spilling into Serenity from the mid-ship pool area. Things tend to actually be more serene at the aft pool.

The other problem with the Spirit-class (which is not a problem on the Conquest-class) is the fact that they will not open and close the sliding dome over the pool when the ship is in motion. So, if the weather is good when the ship is in port but then turns bad during your sea day... you're out of luck on the Spirit class. They will not close the dome. On the Conquest class, with the dome over the aft pool, they can and will open or close the dome as needed to match the weather conditions. It doesn't matter whether the ship is in motion or not.

Here's a photo of the aft pool area on the Carnival Conquest with a nasty downpour occurring outside. Total paradise inside!

You can read my full review of the Carnival Conquest here... and it includes many photos and videos I shot on the ship and on various shore excursions.

The Grand Bahamas shipyard is actually a very interesting story!

Believe it or not... it is jointly owned by Carnival Corp (40%), Royal Caribbean (40%), and the Grand Bahama Port Authority (20%). Yes, that's right... arch-rivals Carnival and Royal Caribbean are co-owners! Isn't that interesting?

In case you think I'm making that up... you can read about it here. There's also another interesting article about the shipyard here.

And if you ever take a cruise that stops at Freeport... bring some binoculars and you can get a first-hand look at the shipyard yourself.

Not to Hi-jack the thread, but if this is true and they send the ships to dry dock, will dry dock be in Italy where they "freshen" up the ships?

Carnival Corp. is a co-owner of the Grand Bahamas ship yard... so that is where most Carnival ships go when they need work done. It keeps the money within the corporation that way.

The search feature on Cruise Critic is your best friend. Look up towards the top of the page, click on the thing that says SEARCH and search the entire cruise critic forum (not just the Carnival section) for the word Chankanaab. You will find enough threads about Chankanaab to keep you reading for HOURS!

I enjoyed it a lot on my recent cruise on the Carnival Conquest. It's a really nice beach, plus there's a swimming pool... and a restaurant and bar. Roaming waiters will bring food or beverages right to your lounger. I also totally loved the fact that there was no need to bring cash or credit cards... all you need is your sail and sign card to pay for food or beverages. It is all charged to your onboard account.

Here's a photo...

The water is warm, the sand is perfect. However, there are a few rocks in the water... so water shoes will make it a lot more comfortable to wade out in to the water.

Read my full review of this shore excursion at http://www.zimfamilycockers.com/CarnivalConquest.html I discuss this shore excursion about 2/3 of the way down the page.

I'm truly enjoying your review! Thanks for taking the time to post it. I know how much effort that involves.

There's just one thing I have to point out to you...

DAY 3 - BOARDING DAY - Monday Sept 2, 2013

 

I went to the window and I could see a ship turning around in the bay to the far left. It was a CARNIVAL ship!!! It was MY SHIP!!!!

 

I understand your excitement at getting the first glimpse of your ship... but that wasn't your ship! That's a Fantasy-class ship... the one that followed your ship out of the Port of Miami. Notice that it doesn't have any balconies. That wasn't your ship, I'm afraid!

Boarding the Conquest this Sunday. Btw how did you experience the switch from the Breeze to the Conquest? I just came back last Saturday from the Breeze and a week later I'm going on the Conquest.

The Breeze is a much nicer ship, in about a dozen ways. I absolutely loved the Breeze... it's a fantastic ship.

The biggest thing the Breeze has that the Conquest doesn't have is a serenity retreat. That's the one major area where the Conquest is deficient.

The rest of the Conquest-to-Breeze improvements are smaller things... but together they all add up... and when you are on the Breeze, you definitely have the feeling that you are seeing Carnival at its best. Things like the more sophisticated decor will give you an overall feeling of being on a truly great ship.

I guess the easiest way for me to help you visualize it is the contrast the two atriums. The Conquest atrium, with the French Impressionist mural, is a little strange and kind of visually "loud", don't you think? The Breeze atrium... that's just gorgeous and sophisticated.

Conquest atrium

 

 

 



Breeze atrium

All around the ship, the Conquest decor is somewhat Las Vegas while the Breeze decor is so much more soft and sophisticated. Beyond the decor, there are just a bunch of little improvements that all add up to make the Breeze a cut above the rest. Little things like having the Fun Hubs sprinkled throughout the ship so that you can easily get to a computer if you want to do something online but didn't bring a computer... rather than having an Internet cafe that is literally hidden out of the way where almost no one ever sees it. The Breeze also has Jacuzzis sprinkled around in more locations throughout the ship. You can take an elevator to the Serenity deck. There's Jimmy's C-Side BBQ... a Thalassotherapy pool... the 5D Thrill Theatre... the Lanai Promenade that goes all the way around the outside of the ship... better heating and cooling systems in the cabins... just lots and lots of little improvements.

We cruised on the Breeze in April. Take a look at my full review, with photos and videos, by clicking here.

The Conquest has got a lot going for it, and certainly is superior to quite a bit of the rest of the fleet... but the Breeze (and probably the Sunshine, although I won't know for sure for another few months) definitely has it beat!

I think you'll enjoy your cruise on the Conquest a lot... but you'll find yourself making comparisons to the Breeze, and the Breeze will win! We were fortunate to have a much nicer cabin on the Conquest than we did on the Breeze... so for us, our overall experience on the Conquest was actually better than the one we had on the Breeze. But in a head to head comparison, the Breeze is clearly the winner.

loved the review! I read your review of the Breeze to get me ready for our cruise, and it was very helpful! Now, I 'm booked on the Sunshine for next year, can you sail on that ship and do a review so I can be really prepared?!

I just made my final payment today. (For an upcoming Sunshine cruise)

I should have a review posted for you sometime in early January.

My wife doesn't read Cruise Critic, so I can tell you the little secret that she doesn't know about yet... we're booked in one of the two Captain's Suites. I'm not planning on telling her about our accomodations until we open the door to the cabin. All I've told her at this point is that the aft wraps were already booked and unavailable. Hopefully, she'll assume we'll be in a regular balcony cabin... and be more than a little surprised when she sees the spectacular Captain's Suite!

I tried to download the first day of the fun times from New Orleans. Unfortunately its from Miami and dated April 2013. Has anyone else seen this?

Darn it! My mistake. Some bad html on my part. Unfortunately, due to the way CruiseCritic doesn't let you go back and edit your posts after someone has replied to them, I can't fix the links in my original post. But, I can at least post the correct links here.

The links for the Fun Times on day 1 and day 3 are incorrect. Here's the corrected links to the Fun Times:

While I'm here, I might as well post one additional piece of information... the locations of self-serve laundry and ironing rooms on the Carnival Conquest. There are six of them, and they are located:

It's a good idea to locate these cabins on the deck plans, and to make sure you do not book a cabin in that immediate vicinity. Noise and foot traffic in and out of the self-serve laundry facilities can be annoying to people in the nearby cabins.

You can connect to the "Fun Hub" at no charge. This is what's known as an "Intranet" site... not an Internet site. In other words, it is hosted by servers on the ship... so you only need to connect via wi-fi, you don't need to purchase any Internet time.

On the FunHub, you can view things like the Fun Times newsletter, the weather forecast, the menus, and things like that. When you're on a Carnival ship, just go to funhub.cclfunhub.com

From home, if you go to that address, you will only get a news article that explains a little bit about what the FunHub concept is.

If you want to connect to regular Internet sites, you have to purchase some Internet time.

If the wi-fi signal is weak or poor, you can't get a good connection to anything... the FunHub, or the Internet.

If the wi-fi signal is good, but the (MTN communications) satellite Internet connection is poor (as it often is on any cruise ship) the FunHub will work just fine, but you'll have trouble connecting to regular Internet sites... like Google, Facebook, etc.

Most of the photos were taken with a Canon Digital Rebel T5i. A few were taken with a little waterproof Olympus camera that fits in my pocket... so I carry it with me on days when I need to travel light.

If you'd like to learn about the Canon Digital Rebel T5i camera, or see some other examples of what it can do, head on over to this page on my web site.

One last thing... and then I'm finally done!

Prior to the cruise, we spent two nights at the Drury Inn and Suites in New Orleans. Here's the gorgeous view of downtown New Orleans from their roof...

The day before the cruise, we had the entire day to explore New Orleans. We visited the French Quarter, the Riverwalk, the Aquarium, and the IMAX theatre.

If you'd like to see a bunch of pictures of the Drury Inn... as well as a bunch of pictures (and a few videos) from the day we spent exploring New Orleans, click here.

We had a GREAT cruise on the Carnival Conquest, so I've saved a few gripes for the end of my review so that you don't get the wrong idea. Keeping in mind how great almost everything was on this cruise, I'll just point out a few minor things I noticed about maintenance. It seemed like the Conquest staff had decided to look the other way about a few maintenance issues. Here's a couple of minor things I noticed...

Strangely, one level up, on the Panorama deck, they had what looked like brand new loungers.

Maybe they were working on replacing them all and just hadn't done the ones on Lido deck yet.

 

 



It looked like they had put primer on these spots, but forgot to follow up with white paint.

I pointed this out to our cabin steward in hopes that they would fix it before the next set of guests came aboard.

She said she had already requested that it be done, and that it would happen the day we got off the ship.

I was also really surprised to see how bad the condition of the Seaside Theatre screen was. There were a LOT of pad pixels on that screen. For me, being spoiled at home by a couple of really nice HD televisions... I don't think I could have sat out there on deck and watched the Seaside Theatre screen with as many bad pixels as it had. I should have gotten a picture of it, but I forgot.

There is one other negative thing I have to point out about the Carnival Conquest... the fact that it's one of only two ships in the entire Carnival fleet that does not have a Serenity retreat. Even the oldest ships in the fleet, the Fantasy-class vessels, have Serenity areas! How they managed to never get around to it on the Carnival Conquest is a mystery to me. The only other ship in the same situation is the Carnival Triumph... no Serenity retreat there either! I bet that the very next time these two ships go in to dry dock, this will be rectified. However, as far as I know, there is no dry dock currently scheduled for the Carnival Conquest (or the Triumph, for that matter) in 2013 or 2014.

In all fairness, we had a great cruise and I have to stress that there were far more positives than negatives.

The bottom line: it was a pretty sweet cruise!

Never cruised before? Let me make your first cruise a little easier by giving you a few tips... starting with a list of things that I'd like to suggest you should bring with you on a cruise:

• A multi-outlet power strip. There are only two electrical outlets at the desk in your cabin. That may not be enough if you want to charge multiple electronic devices overnight.
  
• A 6-pack of your favorite beverage, so you don't have to pay ship prices for it. There's a refrigerator in your cabin, so you can keep your beverage cold... and your cabin steward will fill your ice bucket several times a day. Also, think about buying bottles or cans of your favorite soft drinks at the ports you visit. It's better than paying ship prices for it.
  
• Two large plastic drink cups. (One for you, one for your roommate.) The drinking glasses that are provided in the cabins and in the Lido restaurant are frustratingly small! They don't even come close to holding the contents of one can of Coke. We always bring a couple of large plastic drinking cups along with us... to use when drinking our favorite beverage on our balcony, on the Serenity deck, or even at the Lido restaurant. Once I'm comfortable, I don't like having to get up to refill my beverage.
  
• A watch or a travel clock. Activities start at certain times, so you will frequently want to know the current time.
  
• A highlighter pen, to mark activities on the daily schedule that you are interested in.
  
• A small flashlight, so you can stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night without disturbing your roommate by turning on all the lights in the room. It's also a handy thing to have with you in the unlikely event of an emergency.
  
• Your MP3 player, so you can listen to your favorite music while you relax in the sun on deck. I'd also recommend noise-cancelling headphones for use with your MP3 player. There have been many times when I've been trying to relax on The Serenity Deck of a Carnival cruise ship when someone nearby was talking so loudly that all serenity had vanished. Noise-cancelling headphones and your favorite music on your MP3 player will bring the serenity back. Noise-cancelling headphones are also great if you are taking an airline flight to get to and from your cruise. They block out all the engine noise while you are watching the movie or listening to music.
  
• Some $1 and $5 bills. Very handy for tipping the people who handle your luggage on embarkation day, and also for making small purchases in port. Using American money in Caribbean ports is almost never a problem, but using a large bill to make a small purchase can be a problem.
  
• If you're in love with your laptop computer or iPad... be sure to bring it along! There's wi-fi available throughout the ship, even in your cabin. Another good electronic gadget to bring along is a Kindle. There's lots of time on a cruise to do nothing... and having a good book or a Kindle to read is a great way to pass the time.
  
• Some type of deodorizer or air freshener. The bathrooms get a little stinky sometimes. We go to the automotive section at Walmart and buy some of those hanging air freshener things that are designed to hang from the rear view mirror of a car. We hang one or two in our cabin bathroom, and it makes a big difference.
  And I think this last one goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: DON'T FORGET TO BRING A SWIM SUIT!
  

Speaking of swim suits... I'd like to teach you a good trick! When you share a cruise ship with 3000 other passengers, you have to come up with ways to avoid the crowds. I really don't think it's fun to share a Jacuzzi with a bunch of strangers, so I make an effort to get to the Jacuzzis at times when the other passengers won't be there. So, here's a trick that you can use to have a Jacuzzi all to yourself on embarkation day:

Most people pack their swimsuit in their suitcase, which they hand over to a porter on embarkation day so that the suitcase can be delivered to their cabin. And the suitcases generally don't arrive at the cabins until late in the afternoon on embarkation day... which means that most people can't get to their swimsuits on the afternoon of embarkation. And that means that the Jacuzzis and swimming pools are fairly empty on embarkation day. It presents a perfect opportunity! What you might want to do is to wear your swimsuit under your clothes on embarkation day. When you get on board the ship, have some lunch... and then after lunch, strip down to your swim suit and enjoy the hot tubs without anyone else being in them. It works every time, and it's one of the few times during the week that you see the hot tubs without anyone else in them. By the way, before you get in the Jacuzzi, grab a towel up on the Lido deck by the main pool... so that you can dry off when you're all done.

Luckily for us, we don't have to use that trick anymore... ever since they started making the rooms available early on embarkation day for Platinum-level guests. We carry our swimsuits in our carry-ons... and change in to them in our cabin.

Here's another method you can use to have the Jacuzzis all to yourself: 6 PM is the most popular dinner time... and by 6:15 or 6:30 the hot tubs are about as empty as they'll ever be... so that's a great time to use them. If you have "your time dining" you can eat a little later, after you're done with the hot tubs.

While we're talking about beating the crowds... remember that if you try to eat a meal at the same time everybody else does, you're going to find the buffet very crowded. So, try to adjust your schedule a little off-peak to avoid the crowds. Get up a little earlier than everybody else to avoid the breakfast crowds. Or eat lunch a little later than everybody else to avoid the lunch crowds. The buffet is really crowded at 8 AM, but usually not at 7 AM. And the lunch crowd is huge at 12:30 but not bad at all at 1:30 or 2 PM. Guy's Burger Joint doesn't even open until noon, and there's usually a pretty big line that's formed by the time they open... so wait until at least 12:15 before you go there.

I hope you followed the links to see the videos on YouTube, and that you enjoyed them. I know what it's like to sit at home with a bad case of "cruise fever", wishing you were on a cruise vacation rather than being stuck back in your real life. Sometimes the only cure for cruise fever is to find a great cruise review on the Internet, with lots of pictures and videos that make you feel like you're there on a cruise. I try to do my share by documenting all the fun of our various cruises... and I hope you'll do the same by posting to Cruise Critic when you make it back from your next cruise. Besides posting on Cruise Critic, be sure to upload some videos to YouTube, too. These experiences are too good to keep private... they belong out there for all the world to enjoy!

There was a time, however, when I was actually forbidden from spending time during a cruise taking photos and writing up a review! What happened was that I spent a little too much time with my computer and my camera during our first Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Glory... and not enough time paying attention to my wife! So, on our next cruise, on the Carnival Valor, she put her foot down and told me that I had better knock it off and pay more attention to her. That's why, out of all of the cruises we've taken, the only one I didn't fully document with a million photos and videos was that one on the Carnival Valor.

On our last couple of cruises, I've totally avoided the doghouse in spite of spending hours and hours shooting photos, videos, and editing HTML. The reason is that in a total stroke of luck, my wife acquired a new best friend: an Amazon Kindle! Now when we're on a cruise, she's happy to spend hours and hours reading books on her Kindle... leaving me hours and hours to work on what you're seeing here. So, thank you to Amazon.com... without you, this review might not exist!

Now I want to post links to some things that you might find very useful if you're doing research for an upcoming cruise on the Carnival Conquest...

Take a look at this detailed set of deck plans for the Conquest class of ships. Print them out on 11x17" paper and take them with you on your cruise. They are far more detailed than the printed deck plans they hand out on the ship. Or download this slightly more detailed .jpg format deck plans, which are specific to the Conquest. Download either version, or both, and save them to your iPad or laptop computer and bring them with you on the ship.

Another very useful document to look over is the full list of shore excursions. It not only has descriptions, lengths, and departure times for all the shore excursions that were available on this itinerary... but it also has prices!

You can also take a look at the "Fun Times" newsletter from each day of our cruise, in order to get an idea of what kinds of activities and entertainment they offer on the ship:

Some other things you may want to look over are the list of perks for platinum VIFP members, room service menu, the menu from the Blue Iguana cantina, and a very cool high resolution 3D cutaway diagram of the Carnival Conquest. Please note that the 3D cutaway diagram was made a few years ago, and no longer accurately portrays the area of the mid-ship pool on Lido deck... which was extensively modified when the Funship 2.0 upgrades were done.

Have some fun with these last two items:

Listen to the Carnival Cruise theme, or play the sound of a Carnival ship horn.

If you're a true cruise junkie, download the audio files (by right-clicking, and saving) and then set your computer to play the ship horn when you get a new email, and to play the theme song when the computer boots up and/or shuts down!

One unusual thing about cruising out of New Orleans is the time spent sailing on the Mississippi River. New Orleans does not sit directly next to the Gulf Of Mexico... it's actually quite a ways up the Mississippi River from The Gulf. A year earlier, we sailed out of Galveston on the Carnival Magic... and the port of Galveston is right there on the edge of The Gulf. A few minutes after pulling away from the Galveston cruise port, the ship was in The Gulf. But New Orleans is not that way.

When a cruise ship departs New Orleans, it sails down the Mississippi River for eight hours before finally making it in to The Gulf. It's an interesting trip down the Mississippi! When the Conquest sailed away from New Orleans on the first day of our cruise, I had my camera rolling in order to be able to create a time-lapse video of the trip down the Mississippi.

That video doesn't actually show you the whole journey down the Mississippi, in to The Gulf. I had to stop it after sunset, when there wasn't any more light to shoot by! But I enjoyed sitting out on our balcony that night and watching the trip down the Mississippi. We finally made it in to The Gulf around midnight.

In the time lapse video of sailing down the Mississippi, you saw the beautiful sight of the sun setting over the river. In another time lapse from a few days later, please enjoy a beautiful sunrise... as seen from our balcony at the back of the ship.

Because we've cruised with Carnival before, we had the privilege of attending the invitation-only VIFP party in the Toulouse Lautrec theatre... Carnival's way of thanking their loyal customers who have cruised with them multiple times.

The VIFP party was a perfect opportunity for me to get pictures of the senior leadership on the ship:

Captain of the Carnival Breeze, Antonino Sammartano

 

 

 



Cruise Director, Gary Brierley.

In our 19 previous cruises, we've seen quite a few Cruise Directors.

Gary was right up there among the best.

I have one last video to share with you. Now that you've made it this far in to the story of our cruise on the Carnival Conquest, I think you'll especially enjoy a two-and-a-half minute video which summarizes the cruise for me.

As we walked along the dock to get back onboard, I had Kellyn stop for this almost-mandatory photo-op:

Seeing that picture reminds me of another thing I really love about cruising: we spent almost the entire week wearing shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and flip-flops! Even though we live in California, that's something we just can't do at home... too much fog during the summer months!

Please pardon the last five photos... all of which were shot with my little waterproof Olympus camera, rather than my much better Digital Rebel. The waterproof camera is great in situations like snorkeling, where you just can't take the big DSLR. But for overall picture quality, you cannot beat the Digital Rebel!

Speaking of photos... it's now time for a Jim Zim photo tip! Lots of people go up to the upper decks of a cruise ship to take photos at sunset... and quite often they ask their spouse to pose for a photo by the railing...

This is great, but you have to remember to put your camera in to the "force flash" mode. This forces the camera to use the flash... even though the camera, pointed at the sun, won't think it needs to. Without the flash forced on, your spouse's face will be a dark un-lit mess. But with the flash forced on, you get a beautiful photo like the one I got of Kellyn...

And after taking her sunset picture, I handed the camera over to her so that she could get one of me...

The best day of the entire cruise -- and a really great shore excursion -- happened the next day... as we visited Nassau. Before I tell you about the shore excursion, though, I have to mention that we were the first ship to dock in Nassau that morning... and we were joined a little later by the Carnival Pride, which had sailed all the down from Baltimore.

The Carnival Pride and the Carnival Conquest

docked next to each other in Nassau.

A portion of the Atlantis resort can be seen in the background on the left.

I have to tell you that I'm a big cruise ship fan. I guess you probably figured that out when I mentioned that this was my 20th cruise overall... 19th with Carnival! Anyway, I just love cruise ships. So, it was a fun game for me when our ship arrived first in Nassau, and upon spotting another cruise ship heading our way, way off in the distance... to play a game of name that cruise ship. I got a pair of binoculars out, and was able to spot the big whale-tail funnel on top of the ship... so I knew it was Carnival. That made the game a lot easier, because I know Carnival's ships pretty well. As the ship got closer, I was able to spot the unique pattern of cabin arrangements along the length of a Spirit-class ship. Some of the balcony cabins, directly above the life boats, are set back deeper than the other cabins. You can see it in the picture above. Once I spotted that, plus a unique arrangement of circular shaped windows at the front of the ship, I knew we were dealing with one of the Spirit-class ships. I also knew that the Carnival Spirit was in Australia, and the Carnival Miracle was in Alaska. So, that helped to narrow it down. I also knew that John Heald, Carnival's senior Cruise Director, was currently on the Carnival Legend... in the Mediterranean. So, long before the ship got close enough for me to read the writing on the hull, I knew with 100% certainty that it had to be the Carnival Pride out of Baltimore. For a cruise geek, it was a fun game, and I totally nailed it!

Now, let me tell you about the great shore excursion we took in Nassau. It was called the "Balmoral Island Beach Day" excursion... and it was the highlight of the cruise for us. I'll cut right to the chase and show you a picture of the little beach resort on Balmoral island. It was paradise.

 

I spent a LOT of time in the water there. It was warm and wonderful.

When I wasn't in the water, I was in a lounger... under one of those umbrellas.

 

The sand and the water and the weather were great... but you can get that on a lot of shore excursions. Three other things took this from being just another one of many enjoyable tropical shore excursions, to being an exceptionally good one:

• It was a private beach on a private island, so no locals were on the beach to bug you. No beggars, no one selling sunglasses, no one offering to braid your hair. Just a nice day on the beach, enjoying the sun and the water.
  
• Roaming waiters were ready at any time to run and get you a drink or some food from the restaurant and bar behind you. There was no need to get out of your lounger... they'll bring it to you.
  
• No cash required! Just show them your sail-and-sign card... and any food or drink purchases will show up on your onboard account... just like ordering something from a bar on the ship.
  

With all that said, however, there was one little thing about this shore excursion that bugged me. Directly behind us, near the bar and restaurant, they had a DJ playing tunes over loudspeakers that could be heard along the entire beach. None of the music was really the kind of stuff that this 57 year old guy would ever choose to listen to, if given the choice. And the problem was... there was no choice. There was no where you could go on that beach to escape it. In between the music (much of which was in Spanish... which was really odd, since we were NOT in Mexico or a Spanish-speaking country) was a whole lot of DJ chatter and several loud games (musical chairs, tug-o-war, etc.) to involve the crowd. To me, it was just annoying to listen to on a beach that should have been quiet and relaxing. But it was only annoying... it did NOT ruin my day. I still had a great time!

Back to the positive things about this shore excursion... no bus ride involved! It's on a private island. To get there, you just take about a ten minute walk from the cruise ship to a little dock nearby... where you board a boat that takes you to the island. The boat ride was something like a half an hour long. I enjoyed it, because we started chatting with a real cute couple from Mississippi that had a couple of cute kids... including an especially chatty young girl (four years old perhaps) that provided a lot of entertainment during the boat ride. I liked them so much that I just followed them when they got on to the island and I sat down a few loungers away from them on the beach. People watching is always fun on a cruise, and this cute little family was a lot of fun to watch. Anyway, it was a great shore excursion, and a great day.

On the way back from Balmoral Island, I shot this photo of the Conquest docked in Nassau:

 

A few hours later, the rain had long since stopped... but there were just enough clouds for a beautiful sunset...

Our second port-of-call was Freeport, on Grand Bahama island in the Bahamas. As we pulled in to Freeport, we found the Carnival Fantasy had beat us there that morning.

Freeport is a very industrial port, rather than being in a big tourist zone like the port of Key West. There are a few bars and restaurants right on the dock at Freeport... which cater exclusively to cruise ship people... but other than that, if you want to see Grand Bahama island, you pretty much have to take some kind of shore excursion involving getting on a bus to go see or do something. We're beach/water/sun people... so we elected to take what's known as the "Freeport Power Catamaran Snorkel" excursion. This starts with a long bus ride over to the other side of the island... then you get on a big catamaran and head out to the reef which surrounds the island. Once at the reef, there's some good snorkeling... with lots of fish to see. Later in this review, almost at the end, you'll find a video of some of the highlights of this cruise... including a brief underwater shot that shows all those fish!

Even in ports-of-call where it's possible to book independent third-party shore excursions, we always book our shore excursions through Carnival. We do this for three main reasons:

• You're never going to get left behind somewhere and miss the ship when you're on a Carnival shore excursion. The ship will always wait for a Carnival shore excursion to return... no matter how late they are.
  
• You can always cancel a Carnival shore excursion easily and with a full refund. If you realize the weather is going to be bad, or if you're not feeling well, you can cancel.
  
• If anything goes wrong, you can complain directly to the staff on the ship... and that's going to carry a lot more weight than complaining to some company on an island you'll never return to.
  

In retrospect, however, I think I made a mistake by booking the "Freeport Power Catamaran Snorkel" excursion! While the snorkeling was really great, with more fish than I've seen on most of my previous snorkeling excursions, there was a lot of travelling and not much snorkeling. Between the bus ride and the catamaran trip... we probably had about an hour of snorkeling in an excursion lasting over three hours. Really, it was the bus ride that I kind of regret. While it was nice to hear the bus driver talk about some of the things about Grand Bahama island that I didn't know about... I really could have done without the bus ride! The better snorkeling excursions are the ones where you jump on to a boat right at the same pier where the cruise ship is docked. For example, the day before, in Key West, I noticed a different catamaran snorkeling excursion where you walked right off the cruise ship and right on to the catamaran just a short distance away. No bus ride required. That would probably have been a better choice.

In Key West, the "Catamaran Sail and Snorkel" excursion heads out to open water

Kellyn and I had never been to Key West before, so we elected to just explore the town on our own rather than do any kind of organized excursion. We noticed that the weather had gotten mostly cloudy, and that the weather forecast was calling for a 30% chance of thundershowers. So, we brought a small umbrella along with us. You can see that the skies were threatening as we got off the ship and snapped a photo of a local fisherman at the dock.

We walked around the commercial district of Key West, exploring the shops and hoping to find a good restaurant where we could stop for lunch. I had a craving for Mexican food, so I was keeping my eye out for a Mexican restaurant. I wasn't sure if Florida's style of Mexican food would be different than what I had come to expect and enjoy in California, though. When it was getting close to lunch time, Kellyn announced that I needed to find a bathroom for her. She made a big point that it had to be a CLEAN bathroom and not some filthy mess of a public toilet. So, as we continued our walk around Key West, my new goal was to find a Mexican restaurant that looked like it would have a clean bathroom. And right about at that exact moment, we noticed this:

Well, that was quite a sight! My first thought, of course, was "Hey, Kel, there's a toilet you can use... and it's right in front of a Mexican restaurant!" But as I thought about what I was seeing, I realized that I had stumbled on to the Holy Grail... a Mexican restaurant that had just recently replaced the toilet in their bathroom and had the old one sitting out waiting for the next trash pickup. Surely, this would be the cleanest toilet in all of Key West, and it came with a Mexican restaurant as part of the deal! Absolutely perfect!

So, that was our lunch stop... and yes, the bathroom was acceptable to Kellyn. The only problem was that the restaurant sucked! Or at least, what we ordered sucked. Maybe we just ordered the wrong thing... but it was awful. Even the margaritas were awful... because the restaurant didn't have a liquor license and had to make Margaritas with wine instead of with tequila. But at least the bathroom was fine, so that Kellyn would be happy. However, I think she was a bit unhappy with my decision to just spend the day walking around and exploring the town. Fairly soon after lunch, she said she was getting tired of walking around and wanted to just go back to the ship. So, we ended up back on the ship a lot earlier than many of the other passengers... and that ended up totally working out to our advantage... because shortly after we got back to the comfort and safety of our cabin, the clouds opened up and it started to totally pour rain outside. That wasn't a problem for us, all nice and warm in our cabin, but it was a real problem for the people who got caught outside in a line waiting to go through security to get back onboard the ship.

 

Later, the Carnival Imagination set sail under very cloudy skies:

 



Notice that an airplane was coming in for a landing at the Key West airport as I snapped this photo

When it was our turn to sail away from Key West, I set up my camera to capture a time-lapse video of our departure.

One of my favorite places on Conquest-class ships (we've sailed on the Glory and the Valor prior to our cruise on the Conquest) is the aft pool. It's got several things going for it. First off, it's adults-only... so you don't get any screaming kids back here. Second, it's really mellow back here... unlike the atmosphere of the main pool in the center of the ship where there's always loud music playing and crazy activities like the hairy chest competition. The aft pool area is also somewhat wind protected, because of the way it is set down below the upper deck and behind some taller structures.

Another great thing about the aft pool is that there is a glass roof that can be closed in the event of bad weather. Most of the time, the retractable dome is left open to let the sun shine in... and it feels great back here on a sunny day. But on those rare occasions when a thunderstorm strikes up... the dome can be closed and the aft pool area becomes a very warm and comfortable indoor pool.

We only ran in to some very brief periods of bad weather during our cruise on the Conquest. The crew was really great about closing the dome when they noticed bad weather was coming. This was in stark contrast to the experience we had once on the Carnival Spirit where the crew claimed that the dome could not be closed when the ship was moving. When bad weather hit the Carnival Spirit during a "Fun Day At Sea", they never closed the dome... and the entire pool area become unusable in bad weather. But on the Conquest, they seemed to have no problem opening and closing the dome as needed... whether the ship was in motion or not.

Perhaps you've seen the CBS television series "Under The Dome". I had a lot of fun making jokes about being "under the dome" at the aft pool during bad weather!

Speaking of bad weather... the day we really hit it was during the cruise's first port of call: Key West, Florida. Let me paint the picture of how that day went. It started with a moment of irony! Early in the morning, as the sun was rising and I was walking around taking pictures up on the upper deck, they had "Good Morning America" playing on the Seaside Theatre screen.

The ironic part is that if you look real closely at the picture on the Seaside Theatre screen, you'll see that they were interviewing swimmer Diana Nyad by satellite from Key West, Florida. I thought that was pretty funny, since we were about an hour from docking at Key West at that time! Anyway, as you can see in the picture... there were some clouds in the sky that morning, but the weather really didn't look too bad.

As we arrived in Key West, I shot some video of the Carnival Imagination, which had arrived in Key West just a little bit before us. If you think that cruise ships are beautiful things (like I do)

There was an unfortunate incident during our cruise. A female crew member lost her footing on a slippery floor, and hit her head hard when she landed on the ground. It was a serious enough injury to require hospitalization... so, for the first time on all of our cruises, we got to witness a medical evacuation by the U.S. Coast Guard.

As you can see from the still photo, I had a really great vantage point to witness the medevac. Of course, I went to capture it on video... and I shot a bit of it until one of the Carnival security guys asked me to turn my camera off. He claimed that the type of camera I was using caused some kind of electrical interference that might interfere with the navigation devices on the helicopter. I certainly wasn't going to argue the point with him... the last thing I wanted to do was to interfere with a medical evacuation in any way. Besides, it's pretty much the same thing they say on airplanes... to turn off ALL electronic devices. So, while hundreds of other passengers shot pictures and video with their cell phones and pocket cameras... I shut my DSLR off before the really dramatic part of the medevac got under way. But as luck would have it, Kellyn had a view of the helicopter from our balcony... and shot some video with her iPhone. I've spliced together the stuff I got with my Digital Rebel with the stuff she got on her iPhone... and put together a video of the medevac.

There was one other really unusual thing that happened during this cruise... something that had never happened to us on any of our previous cruises. One day, when we were out at sea and about 150 miles from the nearest land, we had our balcony door propped open (as usual) and a little bird -- a finch -- flew in to our cabin! He was so tired from all that flying that he didn't put up much of a fight when I picked him up and handed him over to Kellyn...

Something I haven't seen on a cruise ship in a long time is a passenger talent show. I remember that they did used to do this years ago on some of our first cruises, but in recent years they seemed to have gotten away from it. I enjoyed seeing the one on the Carnival Conquest... we had some very talented passengers! Sometimes at passenger talent shows you get people that do comedy, or who play a musical instrument... but this time it was 100% a singing show... very much like watching karaoke, but with a live band in the background. If you're in to karaoke, or want to see for yourself what the level of talent was among the passengers on our cruise, take a look... just be forewarned that this video goes on and on... and that it seemed like they (probably on purpose) put the least talented singer on first and saved the most talented guy for last. So, don't let the first song scare you off!

I'm really mad at myself because I made a bad mistake while shooting the video. I paused the recording in between acts because I didn't think there was any reason to record all the chatter by the host. However, this ended up being a bad mistake... as I had the recording paused when Gary Brierley, the Cruise Director, offered a beautifully delivered version of a joke that I've heard Cruise Directors make at shows on many of our previous cruises. I guess it's a standard Carnival Cruise Director joke... but I wish I had caught it on video, because Gary delivered it so well. It would have been a great addition to the video, if only I had kept the camera rolling in between acts... but let me see if I can at least give you the text version of the joke that had everyone in the theatre laughing out loud.

Gary: "I'd like to give a big shout-out to some of the guys behind the scenes that help put on our show. I'm talking about our sound and lighting guys. And tonight I have to give a big shout-out to one in particular... Tony, up in the booth. We got some fantastic news today... Tony's wife delivered healthy twin boys last night." (Big applause from the audience) "Folks, working on a cruise ship can be a really tough life for our crew members... with long stretches of time at sea, away from their loved ones at home. In fact, Tony's been working here on the ship for the last eleven months straight!"