I'm baaaa---aaaack!
The cruise was fantastic!
The thing that I missed most (comparing to Disney) was the alternating dining rooms. On the Conquest, we had the same dining room every night. Our servers were fabulous - equal to Disney's!
The other thing that was not as good as Disney was our stateroom service. Now, I'm sure it was just our individual steward and not the entire ship's fault, though. And really, the only complaint was that he didn't make up the twin bed into a couch during the day and just left it as a bed all the time.
But he did much better than our
DCL steward with keeping my cooler full of ice all the time. As well as our ice bucket even though we never used it. So I won't complain too much. My son loved the chocolate chip cookie with the smily face that he got at bedtime, too. Of course, the towel animals were there -- my son decided to save them all from day 1. So he had a line up of them on his bed. And we noticed that our steward would continously put them back together so they were all fresh each day - poor guy - having to recreate 6 towel animals by the last day - LOL!
Anyway....to the important things -- ok - on Disney, my dh and I were wandering around at midnight looking for something to do. On Carnival, the lounges were hopping, the deck parties bouncing, the piano bar crooning...way into the wee hours.
Since were were there on New Year's Eve - free champagne was handed out from the time of boarding until 1 AM. As midnight neared, servers were wandering the central atrium with two bottles in each hand - busy refilling glasses. It was the biggest party ever. There were hundreds of balloons in a net at the top of the atrium and the balloon drop was grand!
The CD was awesome in getting everyone involved. Carnival has the Red, White and Blue teams - you are assigned to a 'team' and all through the cruise you cheer on members of your team. On the deck party night, each team had a contest for longest conga line - and man, I swear -- it seemed that EVERYBODY was out there. It was the most fun I've ever had on a cruise. And the food was great - steak fajitas and Mexican food on the deck party night as it was the night before Cozumel.
Carnival's 24 hour pizza was quite good and this coming from a Chicagoan who will usually never even taste pizza outside of the city. Really - I had it at least 3 times and usually around 1 AM.
There was a deli with excellent sandwiches; best was the seafood grill with the best fish and chips, oyster stew, chowder - all very very good.
The food, in general, was excellent! I was pleasantly surprised about that. Room service menu was a bit more extensive I thought, with things like roast beef sandwich on a baguette; although my dd missed the chicken nuggets from DCL's menu.
There was a sushi bar, pasta bar, ice cream bar and grill (like DCL's) and the grill had much better burgers I thought - didn't try the hot dog. Fries were excellent.
The chocolate buffet was nothing compared to DCL's. But the midnight gala buffet was like nothing I have EVER seen - fabulous, incuding the desserts.
Surprisingly, with the number of people on board, the pools were never as crowded as DCL's and my son used the huge slide several times. One of the pools had a retractable sun roof which was great on the cooler nights as we headed back toward Galveston.
I know there was no
Castaway Cay, but in Montego Bay we were the only ship docked. We took a cab right to Sunset Beach, an all inclusive resort. So I can compare this to CC - because basically it was quite similar. There were very few people there - easily many less than on CC at any one time. For $180, myself, dh and 4 kids (3 paid as adults) had a buffet breakfast, buffet lunch (awesome Jamaican jerk chicken and ribs), desserts, drinks - *including* alcohol. Have a very fond memory of sitting at the swim up bar chugging mudslides - LOL! There were several beaches here. My dh and ds and I headed for the one on the far left and along with us there were maybe 2 other families there. Since we were at the edge of the property, one side was bordered by large rocks as a kind of barricade and along these rocks were many tropical fish. My ds and I spent a lot of time with the masks checking out the beautiful fish.
There was also a water park here with slides and a lazy river - along with the swim up bar I mentioned, there was another pool on the other side of the bar with another swim up bar - and there was also another pool and hot tub.
I loved this place - it was awesome!
We had balcony rooms - wow! Just great - I'll never go back to an inside room. The cost of our two balcony rooms was less than the two inside rooms on Disney.
The beds were super comfortable with very smooth sheets and a soft down comforter. I loved that we had the use of robes in our room. We also got gift baskets of sample type things - lotions, razors, mints, facial cleansers, etc., which was really nice.
The bathrooms were not the split bathrooms like Disney has, but we had two staterooms; thus two bathrooms so that was ok.
There were more shops on the ship and visiting the casino after dinner became a nightly routine, but I didn't lose too badly and my sil won $300 on a 2 cent slot machine.
I missed the shows on DCL - they were MUCH better than the ones we saw on Carnival. We didn't go to all the shows. The magician was thumbs down. A comedian we saw was ok....the variety show was just ok. Very entertaining was the Legends show on the last night.
I missed the Disney theme since I love Disney! And I'm very glad I've sailed on DCL since it was a wonderful experience. But I would go back to Carnival, definitely, it was a great time!
I do want to comment on the hand wipes issue. The anti-bacterial agent in the wipes is effective on bacteria only and has NO effect whatever on viruses. Thus, people get a false sense of cleanliness when using wipes. Carnival stressed that the noro-virus is just that - a VIRUS and the only way of eradicating it is by handwashing with soap and water. Norovirus is spread from bathroom use and Carnival's public washrooms provided disposable door handle covers which I had never seen before.
Well, I hope I didn't blab on too much. I would definitely encourage any of you who haven't tried Carnival, esp if you like the contests and games and that type of thing, to give it a go. They really do go all out to get everyone involved and get the crowd going.
My son won the limbo contest, btw!
Kris
- and since you mentioned the NFL, and I have no team in LA (I gave up on the Rams when that mean old lady moved them away), I have become a Saint's fan, of course due to Reggie Bush. Which is weird because I grew up hating the Niners, Falcons and Saints (the old NFC West Division) and now I am rooting for the Saint's. Hopefully they will do well and i won't be in my house with a paper bag on my face.
) . We had highs this week of mid-80's to 89 degrees. Now there is a huge cold snap with lows about 30 (just in time for me to get on the boat
). Oh well, I will have to stay inside so it gives me a great excuse to watch the games and have a few at Pappas and Beers or Husong's 
Give yourself time to absorb the shock.
where I dropped too much cash (never go to an auction when you have had a few
What type of hardware do they give out to contest winners on the Carnival ships (medal, trophy, key-chain, what?).
