Carnival Conquest Cruise 2011--The Ship and Sea Days

[I'm going to have to write about our cruise in multiple posts. Otherwise, the post will definitely be too long.]

So who went on this cruise with us?  The real question is who DIDN'T go on the cruise with us??  There were 20 of us total...5 in my little family, my sisters (J and Aunt A), Ah-gong, Ah-Ma, 4 of my cousins along with their significant others (1 cousin also has a child), my aunt, and my uncle (both are siblings of Ah-Gong).  That makes 20.  Crazy, right? We've never gotten together like this before for fun...the only other times we've done it were for funerals or weddings.  So we decided to give it a try...

The Conquest ship is pretty big, carrying almost 3000 passengers.  The kids were SO excited to be onboard a huge ship.  It's so sad that Elina doesn't really remember going to Alaska on a cruise just a few short years ago!  Eli kept asking if we were on the "big ship."

For this cruise, we departed out of Galveston and we had 2 sea days, then 3 port days in a row (Nassau, Bahamas; Freeport, Grand Bahama Island; Key West), and then 1 final sea day at the end.  Sea Days are great because they're like mandatory lazy days.  You check the schedule to see if you want to participate in anything and then just show up.  If there isn't anything you like, then just relax or leisurely walk around the ship.  Now, what to do with all of our kids....?

Carnival actually provides a free camp for kids 2 years and up on the ship.  You can drop off and pick up the kids at any time and there is a long list of daily activities that includes arts and crafts, motor skills, storytimes, etc.  It's a pretty impressive program.  On our Sea Days, we would drop Elina and Eli off for 2 hours in the morning so we could go participate in cheesy cruise games.  I LOVE cruise games!  We did a TV theme song trivia (so hard), Win Lose or Draw (Evie totally cheered us on while we drew--lefthand picture in the collage), Name that Hollywood Star (based on pictures...J and I won 1st place, thank you very much! Although we couldn't have done it without B because he gave us 2 answers that we didn't know.) and Name that Song...to name a few.

But our all-time fave games were The Digital Scavenger Hunt and The Conquest Race (like The Amazing Race, only not quite as amazing).  Obviously, both required some running around the ship, but that was the fun part of it all.  We were a funny sight for the scavenger hunt because we had Evie in tow in her stroller.  So when we had to go up or down stairs quickly, B would just lift up the whole stroller and dash up/down the stairs.  For the scavenger hunt, we had to take pictures of normal things--a ping pong table, a smiling bar waiter/waitress--and some not so "normal" things--a crew member from Thailand, a person eating pizza (not from our group), a big group hug.  It was quite an adventure!  My favorite was asking a girl by the pool to pretend to take a bite of her sister's half-eaten pizza (bottom right picture in the collage above).  For The Conquest Race we were more prepared...this time I put Evie in a sling so that we could all run around without the stroller.  The sling didn't help us to win 1st place, but it was still lots of fun!

What else did we do?  We went to Tea Time in the dining room.  The kids love tea parties so this was right up their alley.  We drank tea and ate yummy desserts.

The kids swam in the pools with B.

We dressed up for dinner on Formal Night.

We even participated in a Family Scavenger Hunt with the camp.  This scavenger hunt was very....particular.  Aunt A did it with me and the kids and, boy, did we have a rough go taking these pictures.  They made us hug 10 random passengers, smear ice cream on one of our faces (poor Aunt A), form a conga line by the pool, draw smiley faces on all our foreheads (luckily, Aunt A thought of using toothpaste instead of pen for this one), do the chicken dance in the kiddie pool, and propose to a crew member.  That isn't even the entire list!

We had Elina propose to a crew member who was cleaning the stair banister.  Before she proposed she was full of worry..."But what if he thinks that I really want to marry him??  I'm just a kid!"  It was such a cute picture...although later we noticed that he was still wearing his latex gloves.

Some of our party had interior quads where 2 extra beds pull out of the ceiling.  Elina and Eli liked playing in my cousin's cabin because they thought the bunks were so neat!

We needed connecting rooms and the only rooms that connected happened to be oceanview room.  So our cabin had a window and the kids loved sitting on the ledge, looking out to the ocean every day.

We were lucky to share the connecting room with my parents.  This helped a lot because after we put the kids to sleep, B and I could still hang out in my parents' room for a bit before heading to bed.  In our room, Evie slept in a crib, B slept on the sofa bed next to her, and I slept in between the other kids on the bed.  The kids slept really well on the ship...besides the fact that we had to wake them up early on our port days.  Evie was a trooper and totally napped well and slept well at night.  She never cried when we put her down.  I think it helped that we kept her busy while she was awake.  It was interesting sleeping in between Elina and Eli.  Elina is definitely a mover at night, so she's always at risk of falling off of the bed.  Eli likes to curl up into a ball with his bum sticking up in the air.  This is cute...as long as he has his bottoms and underwear on.  I say this because one night, he woke up and just started taking off his bottoms and underwear.  I quickly asked him, "Eli, do you have to go potty?"  He was half-asleep, mumbled something, and went back to sleep.  In the morning we woke up to a bare bum sticking straight up in the air.  I asked him why he took off his bottoms and he said, "I had a dream...there was too much underwears."  Ha!  It was so cute!

For the most part, B and I were pretty lame and didn't head out much after the kids' bedtime.  J agreed to stay in after the kids went to bed 2 times, so B and I went on a "date" one of the nights to the buffet.  We even drank chocolate milk (Elina and Eli's fave drink on the ship)!  (I really make us sound lame, don't I??)  And on another night (which was the Midnight Buffet night) we hung out with my extended family and I did some group dances (e.g. Electric Slide) on the pool deck with my cousin and Aunt A.  It was lots of fun, but, honestly, B and I were pretty tired by the day's end.  It's one thing to watch your children at home where they can run around, be free, and you know they are safe.  It's another thing entirely when you are constantly making a mental head count, making sure your new walker is not getting trampled or eating something off of the floor...it was exhausting to constantly "be on."  I think that's why the night we got home from the cruise, I slept about 10 hours and I was still tired the next day....nodding off everywhere.  But it was still tons of fun and we would totally do it again!!

What else about the ship?  We loved loved loved our room steward, Sup.  He was amazing, friendly, and so accommodating with the kids.  Whenever he saw me in the halls carrying a dirty diaper, he took it right from my hand and disposed of it.  Evie accidentally peed--twice!--on the bed and he came right in (after he had just done the turndown service!) and switched out the sheets.  See, how could we not love this guy?? (Although Evie looks unsure of Sup in the picture.)

Of course we adored all the towel animals we got.

The kids' fave one was definitely the monkey hanging from the ceiling!

We ate at the dining room more than the buffet really.  I felt like the buffet food was really lacking on this trip. If you can believe it, it was really hard to feed the kids with a buffet line!  I admit, my kids are pickier than normal...they prefer pasta over anything else.  But every day there would only be ONE pasta available.  So if that pasta was spicy or too different in any way, then we'd have to get creative.  The older ones were great about trying new things, which is probably a good thing.  But it was definitely hard to get Evie to eat anything.  Not only was the food lacking, but the buffet was always crazy.  It just seemed like a small buffet for a ship carrying 3000 passengers!  To avoid the long, crazy lines we usually ate at one of the dining rooms.  The kids loved it because they could drink from "fancy glasses."  (Check out Evie's awesome "cheese" smile in the bottom right picture. Love it!)

We definitely had fun on the ship...but we also had lots of fun at our ports of call!  Stay tuned for more posts...