Conquest Cruise #2 from NOLA

By KeithnRita

• September 25, 2013

We made our drive to NOLA in just under 12 hours arriving at our hotel in Gretna on the evening of Sept 6. The Quality Inn and Suites need to change their name to the 'Lack of Quality Inn and Suites'! It was a hotel needing a lot of maintenance. It also needed a desk clerk who knew what the hell he was doing! After rejecting 2 credit cards we advised him to turn the card over and scan it correctly, which to his amazement worked! After unloading our auto and finding our room we headed to the restaurant, however it was no longer serving lunch or dinner because of some kind of roof leak? That actually may have been a good thing. We were told they would be serving breakfast so the next morning we went down for this included breakfast and all they had was some funny looking yellow disks they called eggs and some kind of sausage. Yuk! One woman was so incensed she took photos of the buffet to send to the home office. One good thing we can say about the hotel in Gretna is it was very convenient to the port and other attractions in NOLA. Just a short drive across the Mississippi bridge. Cab fare to and from was less the $15. That's all we have to say about this place! The hotel we wanted to stay at was booked up for the Saints/Falcon game.

The rest of the day before our cruise was great as we went to the National WWII Museum and it was amazing. They even have a great restaurant where we had lunch. After that we walked a few blocks over to the French Quarter and it was packed, A lot of red from the Falcon fans. Also Tulane was playing a home game. The crowds looked like Mardi Gras! We ended up at Maison Bourbon Street Jazz Club and helped celebrate a women's 50th birthday. The music was great! We had dinner at Pat O'Brien's and caught a taxi back to the hotel.

The next day we took the 12:00 shuttle to port, which was only a 15 minute trip. We expected to just walk on, however that did not happen! The ship was undergoing a Coast Guard inspection and no one was allowed to board. The check-in lines were barely moving and we soon discovered Carnival's computer system was down. Once we were able to be manually checked in there was no place to sit and wait. Finally when boarding began about 2:00 we found a place to sit until our number was called. It was about 2:30 when we finally boarded.

We went to our inside cabin number 6293 and was very happy with our choice. This cabin was turned 90 degrees from the usual cabins and was almost as wide as it was long. We've had this type before and it was perfect for us. Only 3 flights up to Lido and 3 flights down to our late dining.

This was our second cruise on the Conquest so we won't go into as much detail as our previous review of the ship. Some changes were made in dry dock, but the ship was basically the same. The food and service was good, entertainment was fair and we enjoyed ourselves. One change was the Guy burgers. They were good, however a little greasy. A big change we enjoyed was the Comedy brunch in the dining room. They had it 3 times and we attended twice.

We enjoyed Roatan, Honduras were we did some hiking and shopping, stayed on the ship while in Belize since it was raining, and went shopping in the rain in Cozumel.

We met a lot of interesting folks and our late dinner mates at our table for 8 were very nice. Incidentally, our original table for 8 had 3 couples assigned and we were alone the first night. The table next to us also had 3 couples assigned and they invited us to join them, which we did for the remainder of the cruise. No one ever showed up at our original table.

Disembarkation went smooth and fairly fast and instead of waiting for the shuttle we took a taxi back to the hotel and picked up our car. We made it 'Back Home Again in Indiana' by 11:30 that evening.