Jazz Cruise Day 1 - Jan. 28, 2007

PRE-BOARDING: The Carnival Conquest cruiseliner was set to sail from Galveston, Texas, at 4pm. Boarding (e.g. embarcation) was set to begin at 1:30pm. We were warned not to arrive before 1:30pm, because it could slow down boarding. Not sure why or how. We were also told to drop off passengers and luggage at the terminal first, and then drive to a parking lot to drop off the car and catch a shuttle back to the terminal. Easy enough. I dropped the wife off at about 1:35pm and was directed to Parking Lot A. You have to pay for parking in advance. For a seven-day cruise, the fee is $70. Ouch. No covered parking available, so the car would be exposed to the elements for a week. Oh well. But you also learn that your parking fees go towards improving and expanding the cruise terminals, so that's cool.

The wife checked our one bag in with a porter at the curb and we were carrying on two smaller bags. After I got back to the terminal, there was a small line waiting to enter (Terminal #1 of 2, in this case), but once we got inside, there was a line longer than any I'd ever seen at Disneyland or any amusement park, snaking back and forth up to three of those scanning machines you see at airports. My feet and back started hurting in anticipation of the long wait. Sure enough, it took almost an hour to get through that line. Once we'd passed our carry-on luggage thru the scanners, there was another huge line around the corner to check boarding documents. Christ!

We smuggled three bottles of wine onto the boat. Clos du Bois is our current favorite. The FAQ’s put out by Carnival stated that no liquor could be brought on board, but they made an exception for wine, and everyone I’d spoken with who had taken a cruise said that they had brought wine on board. Sure enough, not a peep from the scanners or bag checkers.

Since we had missed the Saturday pre-jazz cruise jazz concert in Galveston, we also didn't get our "goodie bag" at the hotel on Saturday that we didn't stay in. I asked an attendant where the Jazz Cruise Hospitality Desk was. (I'd been told by the organizers that I could pick up my goodie bag inside the terminal at the Hospitality Desk.) The attendant directed us to a room with a large "VIP" sign over it. Cool! I thought. After a couple of minutes we were called up and gave the guy our travel documents. Turns out this was not the Hospitality Desk. That would be on board. Oh, ok. Since we had missed the Saturday gig, we also did not get our "Sign and Sail" card or other boarding documents in advance. So this guy takes our documents and eventually comes back with a temporary boarding pass, allegedly registering us for the cruise. He tells us to simply go to the Purser's Information Desk on board to obtain our Sign and Sail card.

BOARDING: We were able to proceed directly to boarding. Didn't have to stand in that other huge line. Cool, or so we thought. We went ahead and boarded the boat, and sought out the Purser's desk. A HUGE line. It took another 30 minutes of waiting to get the Purser to issue us our boarding documents and our Sign and Sail card. Turns out the guy in the terminal hadn't registered us at all.

(This "Sign and Sail" card is a devious, ingenious device, a credit-card-sized piece of plastic that you can use once on board to charge alcohol, soft drinks, purchases in the gift shops, to pay for excursions, etc. By the end of the cruise, we had rung up another $500 in charges. Ouch.)

We FINALLY got to our stateroom (with balcony) and our checked bag was already there waiting for us. We decided to unpack before doing anything else and there is a surprising amount of drawers and storage in this 250 sq ft room. Everything fit nicely. It was now 4:30pm and we hadn't sailed yet. Didn't get away from the dock until about 5:15pm.

We were advised that the very first thing we needed to do was "muster" at our mustering station ("E" in our case), so we waited for the call and put on our lifejackets and stood for another 30 minutes while everyone else meandered into the line. We were stacked five rows deep. Damn, there were some hot women on this boat, but the only time I saw them for the whole cruise was during this muster. Where did they all go?

After the safety talk, we were really hungry. It was now 6:30pm, and we had been assigned to the "late" dinner, which was set for 8:30pm. The early seating was 5:45pm. Normally, we eat dinner by 5:30pm or 6pm, so we were pretty disappointed. Since we were already famished, for our first meal, we decided to skip the dining room and eat elsewhere.
The boat is a maze. There are 14 decks on the Conquest, some with staterooms, some with entertainment venues, some with restaurants, casino, etc. By the time we had finally figured it all out, the cruise was over.

We had some dinner on the Lido Deck, Deck 9, and sat at a window as we leisurely left the port of Galveston and headed out to sea. The waters were very calm, with 0.5 to 1.5' seas, about as calm as it gets. Little did we know what lay ahead.

Since we were on the All-Star Jazz Cruise, there were going to be concerts every night. The first night’s concerts were by Marion Meadows at 5:30pm and then Nick Colionne at 6:30pm. We went to the venue, the Toulouse-Lautrec Lounge, around 5:45pm, and there was not one seat to be found. It was dark in the lounge, but even when they brought up the house lights, which they did periodically to allow people to find seats, the place was jam-packed. The Lounge covered three decks, Deck 3, 4 and 5, but all avenues were full. This was somewhat disappointing. We wondered if all the shows would be this full, but figured that if we arrived earlier we'd find a seat. Since these weren't the shows we really wanted to see, we hung around a bit in the aisles, but decided to leave and explore the ship. Down to the Bone, a group I wanted to see, wasn't going to take the stage until after dinner at 11:30pm. 11:30pm?!?! We're usually fast asleep by then. But, hey, it's vacation. We'll see.

These guys ding you at every opportunity. In addition to the fact that alcohol is not included in the price of your cruise ticket, they automatically add a 15% gratuity to EVERYTHING you purchase on board, including water. Sure, water is free at dispensers around the boat, but if you order water via the 24-hour room service, they charge you for the water AND an additional 15%. Soft drinks are also NOT included. They allow you to purchase a special card for $40 or so that will give you free soft drinks for the entire cruise, but there’s no way we drink that much soft drinks, so we didn’t do that either.

I quickly learned that I could borrow a plastic cup from one of the service kiosks and put my own wine in it. This is how I drank most of our wine, in the plastic cups. Saved us quite a bit of cash. Pretty cheesy, but it worked.

The bed was surprisingly comfortable in our stateroom. We purchased a Tempur-Pedic bed in 2006 and nothing can compare to that, but the bed wasn’t bad. A huge lump in the middle of it, but not that bad. After several cups of wine and exploring the ship, we were a bit too pooped to get back to the Toulouse Lounge for the 11:30 show of Down to the Bone. We'd heard they'd be playing again later in the week, so we crashed. The seas were still very calm, but it was still so cold outside we couldn't really spend any time on the balcony. It wouldn't warm up enough to stay outside or on the top deck until mid-Monday.

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