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Our Awesome 20th Anniversary spent on the Glory 4/28-5/5 Eastern picture review!


rdh rules
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This is my 1st review after 8 cruises. I tell myself every time I’ll do one but then life happens. So here goes....

Background: I can be long winded sometimes, I’m 40 and my DH is 52. We have done 6 Carnival and 2 Princess and keep coming back to Carnival because of the price. We like to just hang out and relax. We chose this itinerary because we have never been to St. Thomas or San Juan and it was during our anniversary 5/1. We booked 1st of February a port hole on the 2nd floor since it had a couch and a king bed. My DH hates sitting on the stool and was excited for a couch. Well the very end of Feb, I received an email upgrade offer to a balcony and had till 3/15 to accept. We’ve only done interior and ocean view because we’re never in the room. I decided to do it to surprise my husband and made sure to book one with a couch (didn’t want to downgrade). We changed to the 8th floor Verandah forward so rooms were above and below on the port side- 8252. I had the room decorated to surprise him and purchased FTTF as we enjoyed it last time. We decided to book a nonstop flight from Greensboro, NC to Miami the day of. We got there at 9:45 and the Carnival check in was at our baggage claim area for American. It was around 10:10 as the airport is large with a jaunt to the baggage claim. There was probably 100 people in line and I was temporarily let down till I realized we had FTTF and got to jump right in the priority line and be next with no one in front!!! My husband was ecstatic and surprised!!! A quick check of our passport cards and tickets and the nice lady attached our luggage tag to the bag. They said when we get to the port to just bypass everyone and go to line that says priority and tell them we checked in at the airport. I had both Lyft and Uber apps on my phone and quickly got quotes from both. Lyft was $18.91 while Uber was around $25. I chose Lyft and it was about 4 minutes and the guy was loading our luggage. I just looked and it was 18 min with 10.6 miles and he dropped us off right at the front at 10:35. A porter quickly took our checked bag. The line was huge, there were 3 lines: on time, early, and priority. We bypassed about 300 or so people and was already in the security line. At this time I let out a small scream and said OH NO!!!! I realized that I had left our 2 bottles of wine in our checked bag. See for the airline it has to be in the checked bag but for the cruise it has to be in the carry on bag. I immediately alerted security and they said it was too late and I would just lose our wine. I said I didn’t really care about my wine but didn’t want our stuff pilfered through after they found it and the letter of shame. The guy just shrugged and said “sorry it’s too late”. I mean it’s been about 3 minutes really???? Oh well we moved through security and the waiting room was packed completely and it’s about 10:45 and they ushered us to the end of priority seating. This port has 2 sections identical as you board at the forward and middle of deck 3. So they just have half the room go one way and the other half the other. Well I dropped my DH off at the seat and I went to find a supervisor. I explained about the wine situation to a Carnival supervisor and she said it’s too late and this is what will happen. She said, “they’ll find it and take it out and will page you over the intercom. It may not be till later today but when you come down to guest services I’ll walk with you down stairs and let you retrieve the wine since it was an accident”. She wrote down my room #. I went back to my seat and they said that they would start letting people on board at 12. They actually started calling platinum at 11:45. We got on board and at our room at 12:00!! They have an awesome gangway contraption to get you on the ship so high at the Lobby. Our room was already decorated and hot as I’ve read was the case on previous reviews. We did meet our room steward Rambert and asked for a fan. He gave us an multi plug extension cord and said he would have the fan to us later. There’s plenty of storage in this room with 3 closets, 5 drawers and 2 cabinets plus your bathroom storage and drawers under the couch. I’ll continue in a few....

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This is wonderful, thank you. It is nice to get a sneak peek before we leave May 26th. Did you find out why the rooms were typically hot? I haven't run into this issue before. We're you able to cool it down? We will have a cabin on deck 7.

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We unpacked our carry on and went to go explore and have some lunch. Well we should have ate 1st because it was packed. Our room was centrally located. One floor up the stairs and you were at Lido above the atrium. A few more steps and you were staring at the big screen and the bars, Guys and BlueIguana Cantina. I did not take any pics of how crowded but there was 2 lines to Guys and it was all the way to the beginning of the entrance we walked in! All the buffets were crazy too so we said let’s head upstairs and try the bbq, there was just about 5 families in line. I wanted to try the pork and beef but not the chicken. The potato salad was good but had ice chunks in it. The coleslaw was so-so. I loved the beef and the sauces were good. We didn’t try the bread. We walked around the deck and saw no one was in line at the seafood shack. We headed back to our room to see if our luggage was there as we had FTTF. This was around 2:30 and it was there. So I opened it up and I can tell it’s been looked through and find a note from the TSA saying it was randomly searched. Well guess what is in there??? 2 bottles of wine. Now did Carnival not see 2 bottles of wine or did they leave them still wrapped up? That lady said it was too late for our luggage and she would deal with it later. So did she change her mind or did they not look?? We’ll never know. I would think if she changed her mind and contacted them, why did she not ring me or send a correspondence? We sat on our balcony for a while after unpacking and it was time for Muster Drill. At this time it’s getting stuffy and we were early to line up on the back wall. Well this took about 30 minutes because our section was missing 2 people and they were waiting on them. We were shoulder to shoulder 4-5 deep and I’m glad I wasn’t claustrophobic. It was so hot standing there and I smelled some b.o. They finally went through the demonstration and then we had to wait to leave as they don’t want the ship to be lopsided.

My DH got ill and we headed back to the room to watch sail away. It was awesome to watch from our room as this was our 1st balcony. We were greeted with our anniversary cake that came with the decorations. Rambert brought the fan and DH ended up laying down and took a nap while I headed to the gym to work out which is 3 flights straight up. It was empty except for about 3 people. It was warm up there too but cool in the hallway leading to the spa. When I came back I had brought him some iced water and coffee. We had got up at 5 for our 7:30 flight and he had only had 1 cup of coffee, so I was thinking this was lack of caffeine. The room started to get cooler when we were moving. I’ve never experienced no air flow when we were at port but this is how it went for the next 4 ports. When we were moving, you could feel air but It never got cold and the hallways were hot too on that floor. But then other areas would be ice cold. I don’t know what the problem was but the room steward said it’s been hot lately. I did let Carnival know in my survey about the unevenness in the temperatures.

 

DH finally got up around 7:30 and we got ready for dinner in the Golden restaurant 3 Fwd for Anytime dining. It was 5 floors down. 3 is the floor you can’t walk across as the galley is in the way. 4 you can walk across the middle to the aft but I just realized we never did that. There was no wait and we asked for Horratio as someone mentioned him being good. There was just food being delivered, no personality not even our names being said. The food was great on this cruise in the MDR for dinner and breakfast. I have lost 44 lbs since July and survived a 5 day cruise in November. This food was so much better and I did try to get to the gym every day and took the stairs but I knew I was gaining some weight. We do not eat grains and our last cruise we asked for no bread at the table. This time my DH said it won’t hurt to have it and you don’t have to eat it. Well the addict in me came out and I ate 1-2 rolls every night. There was too many choices and I wanted to try everything. Our first night-Saturday, I had chilled Vietnamese rolls, calamari, strawberry bisque (my favorite cold soup), salmon with creamed spinach and vegetables. My husband got the Miami appetizer croquetas, empanadas, black bean salsa and the fried chicken BLT. We had no room for dessert. We walked around and enjoyed the quiet of the ship. I just looked at my last picture that day and it was 10:15 so I guess bedtime was short after. Half Moon Cay was next day with tender at 9.

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This is wonderful, thank you. It is nice to get a sneak peek before we leave May 26th. Did you find out why the rooms were typically hot? I haven't run into this issue before. We're you able to cool it down? We will have a cabin on deck 7.

 

 

 

We have never run into hot rooms before either. Never found out why. The fan helped us sleep better but during the ports you would start sweating if you were in the room as there was NO air flow then. We took showers in the spa so it wouldn’t heat up our room. You may want to go ahead and ask for a fan as soon as you get in your room. Then if you’re fine, you can give it back.

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Following along. Great review so far. Love the pics as never been on Glory, but hoping to in the not to distant future.

 

 

 

Thanks! We were very happy with her! We would give it 4.5 stars with the air conditioning bringing the score down. Best food, great service, smoothest ride. It was a little rough the last day but there was a storm out there with white caps.

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