Glorious Spring Break Review - March 10th-17th

My family — Mom aka DM, DD age 12, DS age 14 and myself (DH joins us every other year) just returned from our annual spring break adventure where we trade snow for sand onboard Carnival Glory. Cruising has become our spring break tradition, all but one being on Carnival. This was our first time sailing on this ship.

Our journey began the day before flying from MN to West Palm Beach. While we were waiting to board the flight we learned that over 50 of our fellow flyers were part of a group of 100+ people who would also be sailing with us. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Juno Beach. Great hotel about 3 blocks to the beach and about 15m from the airport, we rented a car one-way to drop off downtown Miami. We spent most of the day walking the beach looking for baby sea turtles since it’s hatching season, watching the surfers and trying our hand at fishing from the big pier. Pictures of the pool area at the hotel and the nearby beach.

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Following along.

Keith

Saturday morning we were up and on I95 heading south to Miami shortly before 930am. We were all so excited it was finally cruise day! Pretty sure DM asked more times than the kids if we were there yet [emoji16].

Traffic wasn’t too bad, after stopping to fill up the rental car we arrived to drop it off at the downtown Budget office at 1030am. It was PACKED both with cruisers dropping off cars like us and those who just ended their cruise and now picking up their cars. It looked like it could be quite a wait for the complementary shuttle so we opted to hope in a waiting cab instead. So glad we did, it was only $15 and before we knew it we were at the terminal.

This was the first time we purchased FTTF and it was completely worth it! There was no line in the FTTF queues and we were checked in and in the waiting lounge in less than 5 minutes. Over the speaker, they had just called boarding for Platinum, Diamond etc. we didn’t even get a chance to sit down and they called boarding for FTTF. It was the best boarding experience ever! First thing we did was checked out our room, 1103 on Spa Deck 11. We met our room attendant Anthony who was at the cabin next door. He was super friendly and fun to talk with-he always had a joke to share.

Our overall impression of the room was good, typical balcony room layout and size with updated carpet. One different thing with the spa deck balconies is the doors are sliders, which was nice but you had to practically slam it during sailing to close it completely and avoid the wind creating an annoying whistle.

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Can’t wait to read the rest of your review! Helps with the wait for my next cruise in 34 days. [emoji4]

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I board the Glory on June 9th, I’m looking forward to your review!

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Excited for this review! Glory is my most traveled ship, but I haven't been since 2014, so I haven't seen the new refurbishments. Can't wait!

Excited for this review! Glory is my most traveled ship, but I haven't been since 2014, so I haven't seen the new refurbishments. Can't wait!

Can’t wait to read the rest of your review! Helps with the wait for my next cruise in 34 days. [emoji4]

 

 

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I board the Glory on June 9th, I’m looking forward to your review!

 

 

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Thanks for following along! I’ll share as many pictures as possible [emoji4]

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Back to the room, we originally were booked in a balcony on deck 9, room 9265. However, I’m a price stalker LOL [emoji23] and frequently was on the lookout for price drops to take advantage of Carnival’s price protection program. I originally booked this cruise last April and saw multiple price drops both before and after final payment. Price drops that happen after final payment result in onboard credits. One of the price drops after the final payment included changing to a balcony guarantee. I was really nervous about not knowing where we’d end up on the ship but figured the credit amount was worth it and it’s still a balcony so I took the gamble.

I was pretty pleased when we received our room assignment about 30 days prior to sailing and seeing we were on the spa deck, even though there would be no perks since it’s not a Cloud 9 spa. Our room was underneath the Serenity area which for the majority of the week was VERY nice and quiet. Even better was there were only 6 other cabins on our side of the ship. I say quiet for most of the week because one particular night it was horrible! There’s a Serenity Night party midweek that starts at 1130p and didn’t end until about 3am. We were all woken up from what sounded like deck chairs being slammed down directly above our room. Not a fun night.

Now on to the real fun starting back to getting onboard. Since we got onboard so fast and had no bags we roamed around the top few decks checking out the pool areas and hitting up the lido for lunch before it got busy. Everyone split up at this point heading for their favorites — Guy’s Burgers, Pizza and the deli.

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Not sure what in the flip flop is going on with loading pictures but hopefully I’ll get it to work shortly.

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After lunch, I started roaming around the lower decks to avoid the crowds around the lido until it was time for the sail away party. Bunch of photos to come in no particular order.

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After roaming around taking pictures, it was time to regroup and complete the muster drill which is outside on deck 4. It didn’t seem to take nearly as long as it did on our last year trip on Sensation. Our Sensation muster meeting spot was on the lido and standing shoulder to shoulder in the sun seemed to take forever! At least here on deck 4, we were covered by the lifeboats. Getting an elevator didn’t seem likely so we decided to hike it up the stairs back to the lido for the sail away party. It was overcast and cool which seemed to put a slight damper on the party feel compared to previous trips. They had all the fun, usual line dancing style songs. One was new to me, I never got the name of it but it looked like a cross between the electric slide, the Cupid shuffle and the wobble all rolled into one. If anyone knows the name of it, let me know [emoji4]

Still was fun and decent participation. Fortunately this was the only day of not so great weather. I was REALLY nervous about how the seas would be as the week prior wasn’t so great and the forecast for our week wasn’t looking the best either. So happy meteorologists are wrong!

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Soooo excited to read your review! We're going on the Glory in October, and there aren't a lot of reviews on her. Great start!

Looking forward to your review. I love all the pictures already! We are sailing on the Glory June 2nd

Following! Love all the pics so far!

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Soooo excited to read your review! We're going on the Glory in October, and there aren't a lot of reviews on her. Great start!

Thank you and gotta say, I love your reviews ! Your Halloween one cracked me up!

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Following! Love all the pics so far!

 

 

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Looking forward to your review. I love all the pictures already! We are sailing on the Glory June 2nd

Thank you for following [emoji4]

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Subscribed. :) Enjoying your review and can't wait for the Glory Western Fun Times :D

Along with enjoying the sail away party, had to check out both the Vista and Escape and some amazing looking yachts as we pulled away and out to sea.

Did some more exploring around the ship and DM and I played the trivia game in the promenade. Must have been my lucky night because I walked away with the coveted gold ship on a stick! My luck didn’t follow me into the casino and I quickly gave up to find something else to do. Met back up with the kids, grabbed a bite to eat from the lido and we headed outdoors to catch the dive in movies. The ship at night is always one of my favorite times to try to take pictures!

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I’m having the hardest time with pictures loading and returning an error message that says sorry we have trouble completing this request. I took a screenshot of the error and that too won’t post. Any suggestions??

Might just be a good time to wrap up for the night and try again tomorrow. I’ll first though try posting the fun times for the first day.

Grrr those aren’t working either ☹️ I’ll try tomorrow from the computer instead and hope that solves it. Have a good night!

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Thanks for the review.