MickeyIsMyHomeboy

Would you rather...

Book a Family Harbour Suite (with Cove Balcony)

OR

Connecting Balcony Staterooms

for a family of 5? Kids ages 12, 9, 6.

Balcony is a must so we can still chill while kids are sleeping before us. The pricing looks to be super close (within $1000). I hope some of you have tried both situations and can share your experience!

Thank you!

On 5/16/2022 at 8:13 PM, cruiser0216 said:

Anybody else having trouble with the attachments? They say unavailable. I was able to see the first few when they were posted last week, but now those are now unavailable. Just me? Any other way you can upload them?

I had to sign in with my CC username/password and then was able to get them all! Did not work until I did that.

Hello all!

Have been on 6 cruises (all Carnival), but this will be our first on any RCI ship. We will be on the Brilliance of the Seas next week. What are some of your favorite things about RCI or the Brilliance, in particular? Excited to discover new things aboard a new vessel!

Thank you!!

How much was the taxi to the top of the Mountain to the shop? That's where they have the very delicious banana daquiris!!! We were there last year and did an island tour excursion.

I don't know the exact answer to your question, bc we only took a taxi FROM Mountain Top back to the pier. But the taxi to the gardens from pier was $10pp, and the taxi from Mountain Top to pier was $10pp, so I think it's safe to assume it'd be $10pp?

We don't drink, but it looked like they're famous for those banana daquiris! Also, the shopping there was the best priced stuff we found on the cruise. Got our kids trinkets and a new bathing suit cover up there.

My husband and I have 6/4 cruises respectively under our belt. We have not tried NCL and would like to do so on our next cruise. Are there any boats that consistently have issues/people say to avoid?

Are there any boats that are amazing and cannot be missed? We are 30 and 31, have 2 young children that we do NOT cruise with, and do not care about casinos or alcohol, if that influences your response. We are flexible when we can go, and prefer east/southeast home ports.

Thanks! Excited to sail NCL!!

Final Port: Grand Turk

There were several excursions that appealed to us in Carnival's list of excursions for Grand Turk. We chose to do Power Snorkeling, which was the same as snorkeling but with a self-propelled thing. The guide called it lazy mans snorkeling. We LOVED it. It was with Chakka tours, and their stand was very easy to locate once off the ship. The earlier excursion from the other boat (Sunshine) was running late, so we waited about 25 minutes before going to the boat. The crew was fun and cheerful.

We have been snorkeling before, and I think I was one of the first to hop in the water bc I wanted to maximize my time in the water. Those puppies were awesome! They really helped you dive low quickly, and using your own fins to swim helped you get there sooner. We snorkeling along the huge reef wall, and then back toward shallower waters. It was never very shallow, and the coolest stuff to see was right up on the reef. So if you do this, definitely hold your breath and dive so you can see it more up close! He did give some snorkeling instructions for those who were new to it, but as I wasn't there I don't know how good it was. After doing this, we decided we need to get my husband dive certified (I already am), so we can do more up close and personal viewing. We did a Discover Scuba excursion last cruise and he loved it. The snorkeling here was the best we've done. But again, because we dove down a lot so we could see it up close.

Third Port: San Juan

I actually lived in Fajardo, PR (near Luquillo and El Yunque) for three years growing up (7-10 years old). So the list of things I wanted to do with my husband was really long, and our port time of 7am-3pm kind of put a damper on most of those things. I decided we could save almost everything on my list for a longer stay in PR, and that we would just go to the forts. I have lots of childhood memories there and haven't seen them since a quick visit in college.

We got off the boat and walked to San Cristobol, my favorite (and the bigger of the two). It was awesome,and even more enormous than I remembered. We bought a treasure map for our 3 yo, and walked to El Morro. On the way I had to get an empanada, and stop by the store to get pan sobado (think sweet french bread). Walked around El Morro. Wished we had quarters to use the binocular thing, or wished we had our own. Then walked leisurely back to the ship. The whole thing took about 5 hours, and we walked 4 miles or more, according to Google maps. There is a free trolley you can take, and it stops at the pier and at both forts, among other places. We never waited for it, and it was always mostly full when it went past. Ooh, we also got ice cream. More childhood memories!! Parcha and Pina (passion fruit/pineapple) are a great mix!! The one thing I was sad to miss was pinchos (shish-ka-bobs), but we usually ate those at the beach, not the fort, so next time!

CHEF'S TABLE!!!

This was, hands down, our very favorite thing about this cruise. It was $75 each, and included a galley tour, an 11 course meal (?), Q&A with the chef de cuisine, and a photograph of the group with the chef and sous chef hosting the event. Worth. Every. Penny. And so much more. I know the menus are floating around, there are play by plays from other people posted. Ours was pretty much the exact same as all the other reviews I have read. We will definitely do this in the future, probably not every cruise because we like the steakhouse too and only want to do one or the other. If we did everything every time, we'd go on half the cruises we do, which would be nowhere near enough. Once every few years is already not enough...!

Second port: St Thomas

After looking through the Carnival ship excursions, we didn't find anything we had to do, so I looked at TripAdvisor. (We had a near miss once in Belize where we barely caught the last tender, doing a non Carnival excursion, and agakn in Roatan doing a non ship excursion, so since then we've decided that either we do our own thing or book through Carnival. No more third party excursions for now.

Anyways, so TripAdvisor had lots of great stuff for St Thomas. Including the Phantasea Botanical Gardens. We took a taxi ($10pp) to the gardens. The gardens are new, so you have to be careful the taxi knows where to take you. You are NOT going to Greathouse. It's off the one-way road on the way to Mountain Top. Some knew, many didn't. The owner, Patsy, Is a Florida native who moved to the island 20-something years ago. She started working on the garden 20 years ago. It was $10 pp entrance fee, and truly stunning. She has over 1000 orchid plants and a huge variety of other tropical plants as well. I will be doing a Tripadvisor review and post pictures there (and here if I can figure it out). Because of this year's drought, most of the orchids were still recovering and putting out new growth. If what we saw was only a little part of things blooming, I can't wait to come back in Feb or March. What we saw was AMAZING and so gorgeous. We walked around the gardens for a few hours, taking a million pictures. There are steps built into the trails, so this garden is definitely not wheelchair/stroller accessible. There are bathrooms, very clean, and Patsy has cold beverages. The garden is mostly shaded, so we weren't as hot as we expected.

After the gardens we confirmed directions with Patsy to walk up to Mountain Top. On the way we passed the Kohler ruins (Kohler toilets- the family had a vacation home that burned down some 20 or 30 years ago. The gate was not locked so we strolled in. Really cool. Lovely view of Meagan's Bay. We had fun trying to figure out where everything went in the house.

It was pretty uphill. I believe the elevation increased 400ft between the gardens and we reached Mountain Top. It was just under a mile. The scary part was the people driving on the road that twists and turns a bit. We never felt in danger, and stopped for every car. I had read that Patsy would call you a taxi, but we wanted the exercise and the views. Oh, the views while walking were gorgeous, and we would have missed out on them with the taxi. Plus exercise is good for you!

Mountain Top was a "tourist trap" with a view of Meagan's Bay that was pretty awesome. It was free to go in, very large shopping area. I wish I knew that the shopping there was the best of the whole trip and we would have purchased more of our souvenirs for the kids from here. Best prices by far of any port. An honestly, the view of Meagan's Bay was nice, but we'd had a similar view from the Kohler place. The view that made the hike worth it was from an empty driveway just before we got to Mountain Top facing the bay where the cruise ships port. It was amazing.

Tonight was our Chef's Table! Coming next post.

From Mountain Top we hopped a taxi back to the pier, and read on the deck until we pulled away and night fell.

First port: Half Moon Cay

Carnival's private island. I'd heard so many dreamy things about it, but also knew the risk to miss it was real, depending on weather and wind. Since we had FTTF, we went to the assigned waiting area for the first tender. We could see from the window that the tenders kept trying to pull up beside the boat. They even tried the other side of the ship. The whole process was over an hour and a half (yes we timed it), and in that whole time no Carnival employee communicated to anyone at all. That was not very cool. We ended up on the second or third tender over with all the other FTTF/Diamond/Platinum. The beach was easy pickings, but we'd heard the best place is near Cabanas 8-10, so we headed that way. (Turn right once you hit the beach, walk past all the chairs calling yourname, trust me, and past the Pirate ship. You'll notice less chairs are set up over here. That's because WAY less people come over here. We found some chairs in between 10 and 11, and I decided if we ever get a cabana that #11is the perfect one to get. Why? Same location as 9 and 10 (literally steps away), but it has 2 hammocks on one side, and 1 hammock on the other. There were a few other hammocks in the general area, but no other cabana had 3 attached to it. And hammocks are my husband's happy place, which means I get to lounge in the sun, reading a book, listening to the ocean and hearing the DJ's awesome music (my happy place). The music was not too loud, not too quiet, just right!

After the hubs took his nap, we headed over to get some lunch from the island BBQ. We found ourselves a mostly unoccupied spot further away from the masses and enjoyed lunch. Then we decided to create our own excursion by doing some of the water sports. We settled on paddle boarding. It was $35/hr pp, and you DID use your S&S card. They told us to stay on the right side of the bay, and let us do our own thing. We had a BLAST, especially because we didn't feel like we were getting babysat. We went pretty far out and were confident we'd be able to get to the boat (we got halfway), but the wind made it hard to get back and we didn't think we could do it within the hour time limit. The safety boat came out once to see if we were doing ok. We asked if we were fine to be that far out, and they said yes. Loved the independence! Note: we were wearing life jackets and are very good swimmers. The DJ'S music was loud out on the water, which was fun and unexpected.

Got back to shore, and went back to the boat soon thereafter. Excellent day in HMC. Wish it'd been more sunny (rather than warm with clouds), but we still got a better tan than we had that morning!

Carnival Glory

November 14, 2015 Review

Background: My 31-year-old husband works a very stressful job, often pulling 50-60 hour work weeks. Even when he’s on “vacation” time, he usually still has to be plugged in. I am a 30-year-old SAHM to a three year old boy and one year old girl. Used to teach math and didn’t realize how hard it was to be a SAHM till I made the jump. When the youngest was a few months old, I told my husband I thought that once the baby was 1 and weaned, we needed to take a cruise. He agreed, so here we are!! This was my 6th cruise, his 4th, all have been on Carnival. My parents are Platinum on Carnival. We do hope to try other lines as well. All opinions expressed here are my own. Please ask questions if you have them, but don’t be rude. Start your own thread to express your own opinions if you disagree, but please don’t hijack mine.

OVERALL: “A”

We had a GREAT cruise. We feel like we maximized every ounce of fun and relaxation we could get. We left with plenty of things on our list that we wished we’d done, so we obviously need to cruise again! ;)

Ship: Glory

This was our 2nd time on the Glory, which was fun in that we didn’t need to explore the first day. We saw crew cleaning/touching up every chance they had. The décor doesn’t bother me. It’s so different from home, the craziness just makes me feel more like I’m on an exotic vacation. The slide and aft hot tub were closed 2 port days while they repainted them from head to toe, and we saw them painting the exterior of the boat in San Juan. There were some lights out along the windows in the dining room, but no other wear/tear stuck out to me. The staff was incredibly hard working and very cheerful with every encounter we had with them.

Ship Grade: “A-”

Embarkation:

Went super smooth. This was our first time flying in the morning of the cruise, and I was slightly nervous something would go wrong. We flew in from ATL (on Delta, who we LOVE), and landed early at 9:13. We were in a cab by 9:33, at the pier by 10. We had FTTF and we really, really early, so we had to walk a little bit to find where they were starting to accept bags for our cruise. Got them dropped off no problem, and were done checking in by 10:30. Found some seats and waited. We say the B2B folks getting back on the ship at 11:13 and boarding started soon after. By the time they called Diamonds, platinum, then us, we were on the ship, bags dropped off, up on the Lido by 11:55am!!

Embarkation grade: “A”

Room: 7412

We choose this room on purpose. It’s a “weird” room, an interior one that is parallel to the hallway as it’s behind the elevators. We and my parents have been in “weird” rooms behind stairs or elevators before and have had good experiences. Figured we’d try it this time. It suited our needs but we would definitely not stay in this room again. The layout is weird – you walk in and are standing in the main area, with the bed to your left, the desk straight ahead, and the closet hallway/bathroom to your right. We felt like it ate into our liveable space and made the space feel smaller. The bed was also much closer to the door/wall because of this layout, and we heard everything that happened in the hallway. On vacation we like to turn off our alarm clocks, but I was woken up by 7:30 in the morning everyday when the room steward (who was wonderful and we loved) got out the cart. Then as everyone left their rooms in the morning, he cheerfully greeted them, and we heard every word said by everyone. So if you’re a light sleeper or like to sleep in late, don’t get this room. Early risers or heavy sleepers, you may like it. Anytime we were swaying significantly, we heard a clanging noise that sounded like a neighbors’ door was banging shut… we figured out that it must have been the elevators, because there was no room behind us where it was coming from. We LOVE the aft location. We never felt any vibrations, and love the easy access to stairs with less foot traffic of people walking across the floor.

Room Grade: “C”

FTTF:

This was our first experience with FTTF and we LOVED it. Our bag was ready when we boarded before noon. Our checked bag arrived before 2pm. The line for FTTF/Diamond/Plats at Guest Services was nonexistent the few times we needed to use it. Even the last night when we had to go by twice, and the normal line had 50 people in it, we got the next available team member. It was AWESOME. We only had one tender port, Half Moon Cay, and that experience was fine. We were on one of the first tenders (couldn’t tell if we were 2nd or 3rd), but there was zero communication with all of us waiting. This included the diamond/platinum guests. We were late getting to port, and nobody said anything to us or kept us informed. And there was no announcement that it was time to go, we just got the clue when there was a max exodus following one team member. We were sitting at the very front, mind you, so we could hear when anything was said. Nothing was said. He just started walking with a purpose and the whole room followed him.

Overall Grade: “A+” We will DEFINITELY do this every time until one day in the distant future we hit Platinum :)

Cruise Director: Eric Brouman

The “Voice From Above” as he called himself. I tell you what, he sure seemed like a nice guy, but he made WAY too many announcements. Every morning before 9:40, he would make an announcement. Which made me mad b/c I knew that people (like us) may have wanted to sleep later than that, and he would have just woken them up. Every time there was a larger activity, he would make an announcement 30 minutes prior to invite people to it. You could tell what activities had small crowds b/c he would REANNOUNCE those 10 or even 5 minutes before they started. It was incredibly annoying. Also, the few times we saw him live, he seemed to be trying to push the envelope of suggestiveness. We’ve sailed with Wee Jimmy, who I thought was funny/suggestive. But this was beyond that and not very funny. Personal opinion/preference. But the announcements + hyper-suggestive attitude =

Overall grade: “D”

Food:

We LOVE food. We also love cruising where we can order 4 appetizers or 3 desserts (or both), so we definitely got to try a lot of the menu. We both averaged 3-4 apps, 1 entrée, and 1-3 desserts every night separately, and got to try bites of each others stuff too.This was our first experience with the new American Table menu. We thought that, overall, it was better than the old menu. Remember that we only cruise every few years, but we thought the new menu was fresher and more innovative. Our favorites (the cold fruit cream soups) were still there, so we were very happy campers. Our menus were better the first half of the cruise, but we always found something that sounded good, and everything tasted wonderfully. Except the shrimp creole, which was not good at all. We loved the port of call menus, and some of our favorites were: all the fruit soups, the empanadas (MIA port of call), the passion fruit custard (came with the fig/date pudding cake thing), the passion fruit flan. We were especially impressed with the cook on our meats. The salmon was always perfectly done and exceptionally juicy (I had it 3 times and it was this way each time). In the past the beef was always very overdone. Not this time! The cook was spot on, even for the regular MDR meats! We were very surprised and pleased!

Overall Food Grade: “A-“

Debarkation:

We have always done self-assist. This time, because of FTTF we were zone 1 and decided to try regular debarkation. Never again! We were ready and waiting and had to wait until they escorted us off, then had to wait for our bags to rotate through the conveyor belt thing. Things went very smooth, however, so it was our own fault for choosing not to self-disembark.

Overall debarkation grade: “B-“ but most of that is b/c we choose to wait and do zone 1.

Other notes:

Lido: we felt like in the 7 days we never got sick of the Lido food. In fact, I never got to have any one thing more than once. We loved Fish N Chips, Guys, and Blue Iguana. We loved the carving station. Never even got to try the deli. I personally feel like there is so much variety it’d be really, really hard to NOT find something you like. Maybe the only exception is I feel the desserts on Lido are lacking. But that’s okay with me b/c I get to spend my “dessert calories” on ice cream cones, fruity “zero-proof” drinks by the pool, and one (or more) dessert at dinner.

Entertainment: We went to some of the family-friendly movies and always busted a gut laughing. We went to the Dive-In Movies for the first time ever and loved doing that!!! It was awesome. Especially when it started sprinkling, we just hid in our blankets and finished watching. We didn’t go to any shows, which is a change for us, so I can’t comment on that.

About to hop on the plane now, I will talk about our ports of call and what we did later this evening once we pick up the kids and get home. I miss my Carnival hot chocolate already :)

We made HMC yesterday! Had some sun and some cloud cover, which made for a great day actually!

The Captain's job is the safety of his guests and crew. As to weather, if you are looking at weather.com, you are wasting your time. For accurate marine forecasts try windguru or crownweather. As a Captain I can tell you its all about the sea state or north swells. North swells can make anchorages untenable. If they can not comfortably get the tenders to the docks, which in a swell can be very dangerous, the ship will leave.

If windguru is a good place to look, then it's incredibly bad news for sun lovers. Each port of call has 100% cloud cover all day. Except Grand Turk, which ranges from 100% to 89% cloud cover throughout the day. While that's not rain, to a sun lover that's just as bad. Oh well, hope there's a lot of great activities on the boat for the sea days...

I would be lying if I said 100% cloud cover didn't completely bum me out... #firstworldproblems #stillavacation

What ship?

Are you excited as I am and ready to go? THis should be a fun and exciting cruise. We will be arriving around 11pm in the port trying to check in. Have you looked at the weather for all the other ports? How is it looking, someone said it appears we are going to have a very windy and rough seas cruise, but I disagree.

We're sailing this week too, and every port day has 70% chance of rain. I didn't pay attention to wind, but it's sure to accompany the rain, isn't it?

Ginger pills for everyone!!

We leave TOMORROW on the Glory, and are not alcohol drinkers. Would love suggestions about what there is besides Pina coladas and strawberry daquiris!!

We too set sail this weekend (Sat) on the Glory, and every port has a 70% chance of rain every hour of the day... it really can't rain THAT much, can it? Let's do our sun dance people and get that sun out!!!

Huevos Rancheros are available DAILY at Blue Iguana. They'll also fry you up the egg, or you can eat it without one. Even if we eat in the MDR, we always have to get one before or after. They're THAT good.

I always wonder why folks need this info before they sail?

Would you cancel a cruise if you didn't like the movie?

We, for one, have avoided renting the movies that we hoped would be on our sailing. We would have more fun seeing movies for the first time together, rather than already having seen everything. Of course we wouldn't cancel our sailing, but if we can do more to maximize our fun (or get excited), then you can bet we'll do that!!

You can also search this board. The Nov Dive In movies were copy/pasted from JH's FB page a few weeks ago!

In Cozumel we did the Amazing Cozumel Race through Carnival. Loved it. On the next cruise we did Stand Up Paddle Boarding/Snorkeling/Beach thru Carnival. Really enjoyed the SUP, the snorkeling was fish and sand, but the beach was good. Pool, hammocks, etc...

In Grand Cayman we did Sting Ray City, which if you've never done is, I feel, a must do. The second time I think we just got off the boat and did some window shopping near the port.

In Belize we did cave tubing and zip lining. Both were great, but stressful bc of time limitations. That was NOT booked thru Carnival, and we were lucky to catch the last tender back. The port area felt icky, so our next trip we made it a boat day and enjoys mini golf, etc while others were on land.

In Roatan we LOVED the beach area that's accessible from the ship. Very short walk. When we went back we actually did a scuba dive. Half of us were doing a Discover Scuba thing, the other half was doing two dives. It was fun bc we met up together during the second dive. Not booked thru Carnival. The dive was great, but the DM was incredibly unprofessional beforehand, making lots of innuendos that made feel feel incredibly uncomfortable. And I was 28 at the time...

Have fun! That's a great itinerary!

Our friends 2ere on that cruise too!! Excited to read!

We're signed up for it on the Glory next week. I'll post the menu when we get back!

I've only been on one balcony, so I have no other balconies to compare. But it was an L shaped aft room and we would jump to get it for 180. If you have 180 laying around. Our bed faced the windows, which we loved, and which is different than normal balconies. Whichever you do will be amazing. 180 can also go toward a lot of other fun stuff, which is why we usually book inside.

Even if you're the last off the ship, I think it'd be pretty hard to sleep with all the constant debating announcements being made and the commotion in the hallway. Have fun and good luck!