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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Review - Conquest 12.26.10 - New Year's Eve

xerenthar

By xerenthar,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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xerenthar

xerenthar

Posted
Posted

this one has been a long time coming. i'll post 1-2 days at a time with corresponding pictures.

 

in this review: xerenthar, 23, first time cruiser. ceight, 24, first time carnival cruiser(RCCL, Princess)

 

being a loyal cruise critic reader, i was ready! i was ready to take on the carnival conquest leaving out of galveston, texas. that being said, i was ready for a ship full of racist texans who wore camo shorts to the dining room, kids running in the halls, the poorest of the poor who shopped at wal-mart to match the "wal-mart of the seas" title carnival has rightfully earned, awful food, rude service - when it existed, of course, and BEDBUGS. did i find all of these things and more? read on...

 

december 25, 2010

 

very early in the morning, i drove from chicago to peoria, IL. ordinarily a 2.5 hour autopilot drive, a severe winter storm made it 4.5 hours of unpleasant white-knuckle driving - an ominous foreshadowing of what could come later. the weather service had declared a Lake Effect Snow warning for chicago's weekend, which for those from chicago, northwest indiana, or especially the western coast of michigan, spells certain doom. for those unfamiliar with the term, Lake Effect Snow refers to winds off lake michigan creating extremely sudden rapid snowfall, in the worst scenarios dropping a foot in an hour.

 

throughout my family's christmas holiday, i monitored the weather forecast - the meteorologists were vacillating between the lake effect snow starting the night of the 25th or the morning of the 26th.

 

we leave my family's home around 2PM for a 7:20PM flight. the drive is mostly uneventful, but as we get closer to chicago, the snow starts coming down. our preferred off-site airport(MDW) parking was full due to cancellations and delays, mostly arrivals from the south. we park in the snow and are headed off to MDW by 4:45PM. we're there, and have no idea what to do. we're at-the-airport-1-hour-before-fly-time people. so, naturally, we drink until it's boarding time.

 

we get on the plane and have a 3-seater to ourselves due to a friendly flight attendant taking pity on us for already having a baby behind us. the snow is coming down hard. we pull away from the gate and the friendly southwest pilot comes over the speaker and says "ho, ho, ho... we're in the snow" and says we're going to get hosed with de-icer and make a run for it.

 

we take off, the flight attendant gives us 4 free little shot bottles of jack daniel's, i read about lisbeth salander, and the descent is the most PAINFUL DECOMPRESSION IN MY EAR EVER. same goes for my girlfriend, and if the crying is any indication, the child whose foot has been in my back throughout the plane ride (even while his mother was playing the "drums" for him on the tray table attached behind my seat.)

 

southwest comes through and manages to not lose our luggage on a direct flight, something i am told is impressive. we catch the last enterprise shuttle, negotiate out of a hefty young driver fee (making it far cheaper to rent a car and park it in galveston than take two cars), have our first jack-in-the-box experience, and make it to our HOU-located Marriott. it was nice enough for the $30, and they gave us cookies. the remote's batteries are broken. i discover i can't book lighthouse's online-only rate 12 hours before we sail. we switch luggage around and go to sleep.

 

december 26, 2010

 

we wake up at 8:0…8:3…..9:0…9:15…..eh, around 9:40. check out, staple some stylish luggage tags on, and have an uneventful drive to the port of galveston. by the way, texans, it was 40 degrees in texas. i thought the south was warm?! we park at lighthouse parking around 10:30, hand 3 bags to the porter at 10:40, and are in the building with MORE WINDING TUNNELS THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE by 10:50. we go through security, and one of our bags is flagged. the security officer explains he needs to see the wine in the bag, and asks whose it is. i claim it immediately, since ceight is a terrible liar. he inspects the wine bottle, gives us the all-clear, and sees our ziploc bags full of Lipton Iced Tea bottles (three of which had already made it through in a backpack.) he gives us the evil eye and glare that transmits "i know you kids are NOT bringing on iced tea." he picks a bottle up, inspects the sealed cap, shakes it (as he probably wonders if iced tea fizzes or not), and begins to bring it up to his nose. the scene 36 hours prior wherein i poured ever-so-carefully even amounts of booze and wiped each bottle down with a separate paper towel as ceight called me paranoid flashed through my head. the bottle passed the smell test, and he frowned, giving our iced tea back.

 

by 12 at the absolute latest we are on the ship holding some drinks of the day. we hit up fish 'n chips (delicious), wander around with our suitcases, and around 1:40 our room down on deck 1 is ready. it's room 1226, which is convenient, since when we are drunk, we can remember it's the day we left. ceight is floored by how big the room and especially bathroom is.

 

we drop our luggage and go to further explore. no one is really doing anything on lido, as it's still around 40 degrees. ceight and i are quite warm, having left 11 degree snowy conditions. texans are wimps about this. one thing we notice immediately.. this ship is hideous. the colors, the design, the gaudiness…. everything is overwhelmingly tacky and designed poorly. there's salmon and yellow and green and floral patterns and fake gold everywhere. the dining room really just confirms this. i don't really care either way, but wow, it was jarring.

 

we had Late Dining. we had a table for 2, surprisingly. we briefly meet the end of the table for 8/10 family near us - one member of which we would see EVERYWHERE. the food was better than expected. ceight initially remarked that it was better than RCCL and Princess. it being my first cruise, i was quite fascinated by the never-ending food all over the ship. i ordered a warm chocolate melting cake. it was pretty good, but i felt it was overrated… for the fans of this dish… no joke, you should try dominos pizza's warm lava crunch cakes. they're almost as good.

 

somewhere in here we get a call confirming our Chef's Table reservation for tuesday. awesome.

 

i love towel animals.

 

we head to the 10pm welcome aboard show. it was alright, but a bit corny. we never catch up to the 'fun tour', so we end up at the casino. i believe this was the day we tanked pretty hard. we had drinks and wandered, ended up in some bars, the disco, etc.

 

we note that the 15-17 club is scarcely populated and looks really cool. the disco and alfred's are two of the only rooms on the ship that were not hideous. the disco was pretty cool, actually. it seemed to go as late as 4-5AM several nights.

 

we end up back to our room fairly late and inebriated, fill out a sloppy room service card around 3-4AM, and go to sleep.

 

 

relevant photos:

 

sailaway:

167261_537103723214_54300099_31295003_2412540_n.jpg

163731_537103733194_54300099_31295004_1976876_n.jpg

36248_537103743174_54300099_31295005_8264303_n.jpg

 

not sure what i am doing here, but here's a faraway glance at our iced tea. closeups can be provided of what is left:

166833_537103763134_54300099_31295006_1675279_n.jpg

 

today's towel animal:

165353_537103778104_54300099_31295007_6648146_n.jpg

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KRW71

KRW71

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I have to admit when i scrolled down and saw the hat, I actually went ughh and rolled my eyes a little. That being said...Great review!! Looking forward to reading the rest. I also must say Go Bucks!! Sorry had to be done. :p

 

I agree

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xerenthar

xerenthar

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it has been ever so long, my cruisecritic friends, but i have not forgotten you. what i have forgotten, apparently, are my fun times. i was going to use them to sort of retrace the steps of my cruise. now i only have my bar tab. as such...these next two days really run together. they were both sea days.

 

december 27, 2010

 

the only evidence i have that i was even on a cruise this day is that i have this picture of a towel animal:

163280_537103798064_54300099_31295008_6960905_n.jpg

 

luckily, my bar tab recreates this day pretty well.

 

this was our first full day, and our first full day to explore. it was still cold, and the pools were de facto closed. it didn't stop us from loving the lido deck (michigan, remember? this is downright balmy.) and hanging out in the adults only hot tub with drinks of the day. the adults only pool/tub is the 'sun pool', and for much of the cruise, the roof was over it. on the cold days, this was okay, but even once we got to jamaica, the roof was up. it may have been the last port day that the roof left. i think that the adults should have gotten the "stars" pool and hot tub - the kids had fouled the main "sun" hot tubs and pool nearly completely, with idiotic miscreants all jumping in at the same time and sitting on people.

 

i order room service around 3pm as a post-lunch pre-dinner "oh hey free food everywhere is so novel" snack.

 

there's some casino and drinking before dinner. i play some poker at the 'poker pro' table. i love hold 'em, but i won't play when i'm drunk, so there's very little of it. the ~200 i made over the week did help offset the hemorrhage of money when i mistakenly sat down at 3-card poker.

 

ceight buys some earrings at the gift shop, we bring her friend's homemade port wine to the dining room for dinner, have some glasses of wine.

 

keep wandering, attempt to go to the 11PM comedy show and it's full. hit the cigar bar for a cigar and some drinks, go to the 12AM show which is hysterical, certainly aided by the additional charge i see on this bar tab for more drinks. after this, there's general casino/disco/wandering.

 

december 28, 2010

 

a new day dawns....around noon or 1pm, and we barely make it to lunch. onward, to the sky pool (bar). i think today was when we realized we didn't need two of each souvenir cup. we negotiate prices with the drink servers. we make friends with one of them named Edwin, and he will feature in the story until the end. with the roof open, the hot tubs are HOT. the sky tubs seem to be the hottest. we eventually retreat to the casino before our chef's table reservation.

 

our letter dropped off said to call to confirm the details of said reservation. we do so, and are informed exactly what the letter said: cocktail in the lobby bar area at 6:30 until the head chef arrives. interestingly enough, we get a 'where are you?' call at 6:25. i guess we understood the meaning of "cocktail reception at 6:30" differently.

 

we meet our dining companions, some of which are cruisecritic members. we tour the galley, and have some fabulous appetizers in the galley. the warm chocolate melting cake is made before our very eyes. we sit down in a private room off of the main dining room and have a meal that ranks in the top 10 of my life. everything is excellent. the presentation is on par. the endless wine is quite endless. the staff is amazing. the head chef is very personable, explains everything flawlessly without droning, and takes pictures with everyone. at the end of our meal, we are given a carnival cookbook autographed by the head chef, a picture with the chef, and a refill on the wine (well, i got one. i don't know about the rest of you.) start-to-finish, it's about 2 hours and change.

 

we have some time to kill before the comedy shows, so up to the sky tub and we get some wine refills to add on top of our ~10 glass of wine dinner. we finish there, zoom down to change, realize it's a bit too early, and get a couple glasses of wine at the wine bar before heading into the lounge for the first show.

 

we did stop to admire the towel animal:

167531_537103813034_54300099_31295009_74158_n.jpg

 

and to take a very serious picture:

164127_537103823014_54300099_31295010_3878319_n.jpg

 

the first comedy show (11pm) is crowded, but not as packed as the first one last night. edwin recognizes us from our drink of the day negotiations (ceight's hair is quite recognizable) and asks if we'd like a bottle of wine to refill our glasses, as we can save an entire dollar if we were to buy four glasses. this seems quite reasonable to us, as we'd end up getting four anyway. the comedy shows are both great.

 

we head to the casino for some blackjack. we use the drink holders to hold our bottle of wine. there was no couple classier in the casino that evening, i can tell you that. we pocket our winnings and run... in this case, to the bar to refill our wine glasses, leaving the bottle behind at the table.

 

we hit the disco around 1, it's doing quite well. the disco is a quite grand refuge from the eyesore most of the conquest is, so we hang out there for a while. apparently, we had our final wine refill of the night there as well around 1:30.

 

we go back to our room. i order room service a bit after 2. god forbid i go all the way up to 9 to get pizza or caesar salad. it takes longer than i possibly envisioned anything could take. i didn't actually hear the door, so they called and were like "hi. your blt is outside. please open the door." this was around like 2:40. the blt was everything i hoped for, including dip for the chips. it was sooooooo worth it.

 

i hang a room service card on our door with one order of toast but five different orders of jelly, amongst other things.

 

alarms are set for 9:45, 11, and 12. jelly reviews, when we finally get out of bed in montego bay, jamaica, and much much more to come in the next post!

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