Caribbean cruise, Post 1: Carnival Conquest

January and February were very busy months for us. Not only was Ben working about 60 hours per week as a big deadline approached at work... but we also moved house in early February! (We're still in the same city and really enjoying our new place.)

Thus, by the time March rolled around, we decided we needed another holiday. :D Two weeks in advance, we booked a last minute Caribbean cruise deal for March 9th to 16th, sailing from Miami, Florida.

We flew out of Seattle, so the evening before our flight we crossed the border and drove the 3 hours to Seattle, stopping in Bellingham for dinner at our fave place: La Fiamma Wood Fire Pizza. This was Finley's first time there. We already knew we loved this restaurant, but it turned out to be great for kids too. In addition to being able to watch the cooks making the pizzas (including tossing the bases into the air), kids are given a lump of uncooked pizza dough to play with (and/or eat). Play-dough, literally!

That night we stayed at a motel we had used on a previous trip. It's far from fancy, but it's near Seattle Airport and they offer a good value accommodation plus week-long car parking deal. On Saturday, we took the motel shuttle bus to the airport, spent the day flying to Miami (Florida) via Charlotte (North Carolina), and arrived late that night at our motel in Miami.

The next day, May 9th, we took the motel's shuttle bus to the Port of Miami and boarded our ship: the Carnival Conquest. It was our first cruise with Carnival (although our third cruise overall), and we did their 7 Day Western Caribbean itinerary. Our four ports of call were: Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), Cozumel (Mexico), Belize (Belize), and Mahogany Bay (Isla Roatan, Honduras).

Here's our stateroom, buried deep in the belly of the ship (as most bargain price last minute staterooms tend to be!)...

The view of Miami from the ship before we set sail...

I'll do a separate post for each of the four ports of call, so the rest of this post will just be about life on board the Conquest. There aren't too many photos as there were only two sea days, and having a toddler with us meant that we took it pretty easy rather than throwing ourselves into all the activities and entertainment. We watched two or three of the family-friendly stand-up comedians, but that was it. It wasn't until the last night that I was even out of our room after 8pm, and that was only because I couldn't let the cruise end without doing a midnight dash to the 24-hour pizza parlour on the pool deck!

Dinner time was the highlight of each day for all of us. The food was fantastic! One thing we really enjoyed was their "didja" category on each night's menu; i.e. a "did you ever..." opportunity to try something unusual. We tried snails, frogs' legs, alligator, etc! And since we were paying the full adult price for Finley on this cruise (no discount is given for kids, but since we got a last minute deal it still worked out pretty fair in total), we had no qualms about ordering him a full three course dinner if we couldn't decide on only two menu items per course for ourselves. Hahaha!

Formal night

Formal night

Formal night

Towel animals are always fun...

We found that the ship had hardly any options for children under 2... they aren't allowed in the swimming pools if not toilet trained, are too young for all of the kids' club activities, can only visit the kids' club with parental supervision for 2 hours in the morning (when Finley was still asleep anyway, due to the time zone change!), and there wasn't even a playroom anywhere on the ship where parents could watch their kids play. We were a bit disappointed about this - particularly that last point, given Carnival's "family friendly" branding - so I made sure to provide feedback about it when they sent me the post-cruise survey.

Finley, however, still had a great time! He is generally very sociable, so he loved meeting people (and being seriously clucked over) everywhere we went on the ship, and he was well looked after by our three waiters each night at dinner. We also took him to empty lounge areas and long corridors and let him crawl and walk and explore to his heart's content. One night he wasn't tired at bedtime, so Ben accompanied him while he walked a stateroom corridor the entire length of the ship, and up six flights of stairs. That did the trick! :D

To be continued...