Glory brief review: 1/15/12-1/22/12

Just off the Glory 7 day Eastern Caribbean itinerary. I have a couple of hours to kill at the airport so will do a very brief review. Ports of call were Nassua, St. Thomas, San Juan and Grand Turk. I was traveling with 3 friends. Ages early 30s-50s. All are experienced cruisers. Flew in from Seattle to Miami the night before. Stayed at Hampton Inn and Suites-Blue Lagoon. Plenty of resturants, two drug stores, places to shop..etc across the street which was nice.

Embarkment: Pretty fast. We arrived to the port at about 11:15-11:30 and were onboard a little after 12:00pm. Just a quick note, I am unsure if this is the standard, but they were really strict on the 12 soda/water/1 bottle of wine rule. Everyone that was carrying on beverages had to go to a special line to have them inspected. Some people in my party carried on water and each water bottle was taken out and shaken even though everything was in its original seals.(I am assuming to make sure the liquid inside was really water). I normally don't have drinks with me so am unsure if this always happens though.

Room: Two of us booked a porthole on deck 2. I literally was in the room to sleep, shower and change so the porthole was sufficient. My room steward Angel was very efficient as far as keeping the room clean. Very friendly whenever I saw him in the hallway. The others in our party had a balcony on deck 7.

Punchliner comedy shows: Two of the comedians were great and two were horrible (just my opinion). Definitely get there earlier because it was standing room for the better comedians. Most people stayed for all the shows too, so even if you want to only see the 11:45pm comedian, you literally have to go to the 9:45 and 10:45 shows too if you want to sit, because not many people left between comedians.

Shows: I only went to two. The Justin the Illusion magic show which was great and was by far the best show I have seen on Carnival. I also went to the Legends show (mainly because the comedy show that was going during that time was repeat material). It was very cheesy, but fun to watch fellow cruisers perform.

Other entertainment/activities: I did a little of everything and it was only so-so. We had a great time, but if you have cruised Carnival before it is basically the same thing and gets kind of old. Even the trivia questions were the same as previous cruises.

Food: Lido deck food was always lukewarm at best. As a result I often found myself at the omelet station for breakfast, and the grill, mongolian wok, deli or burrito bar at lunch since most of that food is made to order so it would be hot. There were plenty of selections at those stations so I never went hungry and always found something tasty to eat despite everything else not being that great.

Main dining room: I am normally an advocate for anytime dining, but have to say this was probably the worst experience I had doing it. We were assigned to the golden resturant on the first level. Although it was four of us traveling together, we decided to only eat together half the cruise. Aside from the first night, we were given a pager every single night even when it was just two of us. The waits ranged from 10 minutes to 45 minutes (45 was the first elegant night). All the staff seemed overwhelmed. There was only one lady checking people in and another one seating you. The assistant MD (I think that is who he was) would come over and help when it got extremely busy. Even when the pager went off, you still had to wait another 5 min due to the fact that only one person was seating people so she could only take back one party at a time. You could definitely tell that the servers had too many tables. It took forever just to get something simple like more butter, your order taken...etc. I also noticed tables sat dirty longer once people were done eating so even though they technically had empty tables no one could sit there for awhile. I do not really blame the staff for these issues since there is only so much they can do with the amount of people they had and enjoyed most of the food regardless.

To make this review fair, I guess I should state that we did show up at the dining room most nights around 7-7:15 I knew going in this was a busy time. As we left each night I noticed that things slowed down considerably so we may have had a different experience if we showed up after 8:30pm. However starting dinner at 8:30-9:00 would have been too late for us.

One previous cruises, ATD was great, even when showing up at 7pm, so hopefully this ATD experience was a fluke.

Puerto Rico: Booked ziplining through Carnival for the morning. Walked to the forts and did some shopping on our own in the afternoon.

Nassua: Did an island tour for $20 a person with an independant right at the port. Went to the straw market afterwards.

Grand Turk: Rented bikes for $20 just outside the cruise center. We rode around the island for a few hours and then hung out at the cruise center and beach the rest of the day. We actually got to Grand Turk an hour early , so had more time in port which was a nice surprised.

St. Thomas was only so-so. There was a windstorm and rough seas the night before so we arrived late. Many excursions got canceled. To make up for it we did get to stay an hour later, but aside for shopping there wasn't much else to do once it got dark that late in that evening. I definitely want to revisit on a nicer day though.

We did the skyride up to Paradise point and just shopped. It was pouring rain off and on most of the time there.

Debarkment: Very smooth. We did regular debarkment and were in zone two. We were off the ship, luggage gathered and through customs before 8am.

Overall: Had a great cruise. Mainly booked it to get away from wintry weather and got a really good price for the cabin ($400). I would definitely book another cruise with Carnival if I need an inexpensive getaway to a warm place, but am looking at other cruiselines and different itineraries to break things up a little. After you have done a few Caribbean cruises, especially on the same line, it kind of becomes a been there/done that feeling (just my opinion).

Thanks for sharing your review.

Thanks for this review. We leave on the 29th.

I'm getting very excited. Other than the rough seas the one night was it warm and were the seas pretty smoothe?

Im there in 1 week. :D

Thanks for the review. I'm gonna miss the eastern ports this year.

I am curious, in your opinion, which comedians were the good ones and which were not as good?

Glad to see your review. We'll be going on the same cruise next month. I was happy to see you docked in Grand Turk early.. We have a cabana rented. It would be nice to get an extra hour there. I understand your comments about Carnival, but I still feel it's a good bang for your buck!

I don't know how they pass health inspections with lukewarm food being the norm fleet wide.

I don't know how they pass health inspections with lukewarm food being the norm fleet wide.

Neither do I.

Glad to see your review. We'll be going on the same cruise next month. I was happy to see you docked in Grand Turk early.. We have a cabana rented. It would be nice to get an extra hour there. I understand your comments about Carnival, but I still feel it's a good bang for your buck!

Yup! It's definitely a great bang for your buck.

Thanks for this review. We leave on the 29th.

I'm getting very excited. Other than the rough seas the one night was it warm and were the seas pretty smoothe?

Yup. It was warm pretty much all week. 70's in Bahamas (although the locals thought that was cool).

St. Thomas was warm, but it kept raining (probably high 70's)

Puerto Rico, Grand Turk and the last sea day were very sunny and hot (80's).

I came back tan. I saw some people that were burnt.

The first couple of days I could feel the ship moving at times, but the captain said that was normal for this time of year. The rest of the trip (once we left St. Thomas) was smooth sailing.:)

I am curious, in your opinion, which comedians were the good ones and which were not as good?

Darren (can't remember the last names sorry :o) and Mike (can't remember his last name either but he is a ventriloquist) were good.

Scotty K and something Lucas ( can't remember his first name:o) were not that great.

**I guess I should have saved my Funtimes to remember the names**

There were 2 comedians the first few days of the cruise. At St. Thomas, the first two got off the ship and 2 new ones came on for the remainder of the week.

Thanks for sharing your review!

Thanks for the review. What nights are the formal nights?

Darren (can't remember the last names sorry :o) and Mike (can't remember his last name either but he is a ventriloquist) were good.

 

Scotty K and something Lucas ( can't remember his first name:o) were not that great.

 

**I guess I should have saved my Funtimes to remember the names**

 

There were 2 comedians the first few days of the cruise. At St. Thomas, the first two got off the ship and 2 new ones came on for the remainder of the week.

Darren "DS" Sanders and Scotty K were the first 2 comedians.

Mike Lukas and Jerry Goodspeed were the last 2 comedians.

Darren was hands down the best.

:)

Main dining room: I am normally an advocate for anytime dining, but have to say this was probably the worst experience I had doing it.

We had the same experience with anytime dining especially on the first night. The 2nd night we did a table for 2 (usually had a 6 top with my family) and had about a 45 min wait. Formal night was another long wait. (we usually went at 5:50/6:00).

Seating/wait time became better thanks to the Assistant Maitre D' who (due to mobility issues with my mom) he allowed us to have the same table each night and enter through the back door.

They definitely have some kinks to work out and hope they get things working more smoothly in the future.

Glad to see that overall you had a great cruise as well. :)