~~A GLORYus review~~ 5/2/2010

[elldav7]

Quality isn't great here, but it was a ton of the dark blue fish munching away at whatever they eat on the coral.

 

 

All in all, the totally unplanned day went great. We've been to Belize on a cruise once before, and while we really enjoy it, one thing about the port is kind of a nuisance. You have to do a lot of traveling to get anywhere in Belize. We've stayed in the water both times, but all the tendering then other high speed boats to the destination is kind of a lot of work. I realize it's kind of a dumb thing to complain about, oh well.

 

So on to dinner, and this one was a good one. Starter was the Sliced Beef Tenderloin and Noodle Salad. Here's a pic after I already ate one of them, remembered mid bite that I should take a pic because it was so tasty.

 

 

Then the main course, oh it was good. Rack of New Zealand Spring Lamb Dijonnaise.

 

 

And finally for desert. And let me take a moment to thank cruise critic forum folks on this one. There was a thread a little while ago talking about most underrated meals in the MDR. Someone said Bitter and Blanc was great. Now I remember from past Carnival Cruises the name Bitter and Blanc, but I never tried it because I'm not really a Bread Pudding kind of guy. This thing was fantastic though. The vanilla sauce is great, but I'd recommend it with some Warm Chocolate Melting cake as well. The DW had that and it was awesome.

 

 

The show in Amber Palace that night was the Illusionist named Justin Illusion. It was really cool, I think we've seen him before on a past cruise so some of it was rerun for us. But there was a couple of times where you kind of knew where the trick was going, but was still amazed when he'd pop out of some prop that you thought he'd have no chance of even being near.

 

[elldav7]

Good morning Roatan, and hello to overexposing the sun!

 

 

I hadn't heard much about Roatan before booking this cruise so to be honest I didn't have any expectations for it. It ended up blowing us away how beautiful it was.

 

 

Without realizing it, we were lucky we even made it to the island. I noticed it seemed like we were docking late, but it wasn't until breakfast at the buffet (aka soggy scrambled eggs) that the cruise director came on and said we couldn't dock at Mahogany Bay due to high winds. But fear not, our super Captain (Agostino Fazio) got us in safely at some other port that I forget the name of.

 

Today's safety tip from the Fun Times was by far my favorite. "Do not touch or play with monkeys and stray animals." Don't touch the monkeys?? We're definitely not in Minnesota anymore.

 

After searching the Roatan forums on CC, I came up with the Tabyana Beach Break excursion. People on here said it was a very nice beach and great snorkeling right off the beach. That was an understatement for sure, this excursion was fantastic. For one thing the ride on the bus to the other side of the island was great. I couldn't believe looking out the side of the road and pretty much seeing right in to a jungle. The canopy tours on this island must be phenomenal! So after getting off the bus, we found Tabyana beach to be beautiful.

 

 

Here's the view from where we sat down. One nice touch was upon arriving on the beach a worker came up and asked if we wanted to sit in shade or sun, and we asked for shade (yup, still sunburned).

 

[Fishfish]

Great vid of the blue fish and love the pics of Roatan...awesome review! We leave in 6 days on another ship and your review just adds to the excitement! Thanks for taking time out to share it.

[elldav7]

There is a building right when you pull up to Tabyana beach that has their snorkel equipment. They wanted 15 bucks for 2 hours. We were planning on being there for about 3, so I went looking for other options. There was a guy on the beach selling shells, and had some snorkel gear. He wanted 10 bucks for as long as we wanted so we went with him. I have size 13 feet and he only had one beat up large pair of flippers, but they worked fine. So 20 bucks for DW and me. We geared up and hit the water. I put my head in the water still in the sand was thinking I was going to be disspointed, I was wrong. After swimming I'd say about 25 feet you hit the coral reef and it was breathtaking! This pic is from farther out.

 

 

Lots of great fish too.

 

 

 

And some video (remember hit 720p)

 

 

This was our favorite island and excursion, and it was relatively cheap, I think $36pp. Took the bus back to the ship and it was time for dinner. I forget what I had as a starter, maybe just the Caesar salad. Main course was the Grilled Filet Mignon of the Finest Aged American Beef. It was great.

 

 

I had the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake (awesome), and the wife had the Chocolate, Raspberry and Vanilla Cream Cake, she said it was "just OK."

 

 

That night we went to see Edge in the Amber palace. It's a comedy juggling (on steroids) show that we really enjoyed. His yo-yo contraption that he invented is really cool. The movie that night (that we skipped) was Julie and Julia at 6pm. And then there was a deck party at 11pm that sounded fun (ie. I could hear people partying), but I was getting to the end of the Vince Flynn book I was reading and found a nice deck chair to finish it up.

 

That's all for tonight, this review is getting to be a lot longer than I ever thought it would be. Thanks for hanging in there with me, we're getting close to the end I promise ;)

[Shake-n-Bake]

Enjoying your review. I'm going on the Glory in November and was on it last September. Love this ship. Looking forward to the rest of your review. :D

[ChefSusan]

Thanks for the review! It's getting me even more psyched for our GLORYous trip in two days!!!

[cruisee<3]

Love the review! My DH and I leave this Sun on the Glory! Super excited.

 

ME TOO :)

 

im loving the review.. which watercamera do u use?? it takes such great videos :D

 

i will only be able to use a disposable for this trip since it's so late .. but i do want to invest in a nice water camera :p

[cruisee<3]

o whatttt .. the review isn't finished .. he left us hanging :( now i may not know the end until after my cruise .. when i will be in major post cruise depression. :(

[elldav7]

My camera is a Panasonic DMC-TS1 that I bought before the cruise. I've really loved it in and out of the water. It's small, and IMO takes solid pictures and video. I brought my video camera along and ended up not even using it because I just carried the dig cam everywhere.

 

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to finish this thing up. Is it really a vacation if you go away for the week and get back to work and all the stuff from the previous week is there for you to deal with?? What's up with that?

 

Wait, I'm not sorry, you're cruising in 2 days! I'm jealous, I've only been off a week, and I wish I could get back on that ship. ;)

[oncruisecontrol]

Great review; nice pictures......and video.

[jeschwartz82]

We were on your cruise and also loved the "balcony entertainment" with watching the drunk girl 45 minutes late in Cozumel! It was priceless and good thing she was too drunk to probably remember about 2000 people yelling at her between the 2 ships!

 

Great review, I'm looking forward to reading the rest! We had an awesome time too and can't wait to go on another one.

 

:)

we were on the same cruise - had a great time, and definately were out on the balcony yelling at the drunk girl coming back late!

 

 

did anyone else see the other drunk girl (blonde) who was escorted back to the ship by security?

[nothomeonacruise]

Your sense of humor makes it fun to read. I can't wait to get onboard in November! We're crusing eastern.

[elldav7]

We're close folks, I'm finishing this thing tonight ;)

 

Good morning Grand Caymen!

 

 

It's another tender port, but this one was really easy. It seriously is as close as that picture above looks. The time it took with engine's running at full on the tender was one minute, 30 seconds. This was another port I didn't have totally planned out, but we picked the "Reef and Ray's" excursion because it was highlighted in the excursions booklet.

 

So sticking with our repetitive ways we hit the lido for breakfast again. Post cruise note, I'm seriously done with Omelets for a while. Which reminds me that for next time (cruising), I'm going to try to make it a point to hit up the MDR for breakfast a few times. And then we were off to our excursion. With a Carnival based excursion this time, we went to get a tender in the Amber palace, and not more than 30 seconds from getting there our excursions number was called. You get a numbered sticker based on what excursion you are a part of.

 

So to be honest I think at this point I think we were getting a bit snorkeled out, but here's a quick rundown of how it went. Jump on a bus to get to the excursions boat, then about a 15 minute boat ride to the reef. Even with the reef it was the choppiest the water had been for us snorkeling. I had a serious fog problem with my mask this day, had to go all the way back to the boat to get some spray. The normal process of taking the mask off and spitting in it (yum) just wasn't working like it had the rest of the cruise. There weren't as much fish here, but I think the reef had the most unique as far as different types.

 

 

Even though it was choppy the water was SUPER clear, check out this vid.

 

 

After about 40 minutes at the reef we all piled back on the boat and cruised over about 5 minutes where he explained to us about the Sting Rays and why that area is called Sting Ray city. I really enjoyed this part, it is really fun to swim with these guys.

 

 

And a short vid with the Sting Rays.

 

 

The bus ride home was entertaining. The bus driver sang the whole way. We stopped to let some people off at a restaurant. The only reason I point this out was there was a sign in the parking lot with big letters spray painted on it saying "PARK AT YOUR OWN RISK". I wonder what that was supposed to mean. That doesn't seem to be a very good advertisement for a parking lot. Moving on...

[elldav7]

So back on the boat we grab some lunch and it was still middle of the afternoon so off to the Lido deck for me. I don't know if I point it out in this review yet, but the DW is 5 months pregnant at this point, so she would usually head in for a short nap in the later afternoons. And that meant Lido deck shenanigans for me! OK not really, it was more like sit on a lounge chair get really hot, jump in the pool, rinse off in the shower next to the pool repeat a few times. This day I hit up the water slide a few times, and got a vid of it one of the rides.

 

 

Moving on to dinner it was our second elegant night. So we dressed up some and hit the Golden Dining room for another night with Robinson. Tonight I had something I can't find on the online menus I've been using as cheat sheets. There was some story behind it being a special menu item because the chef won some cruise line dining challenge or something. If anyone on here has had it, remind me what it was called again, it was tasty.

 

[seguincruiser]

One of the best reviews I have ever read. Great job.

[elldav7]

Thanks for the nice words everyone, it's been really fun recounting everything the past week.

 

Walking back from dinner we stopped to look over the balcony of the atrium (I think that's what it's called) and one of the lounge singers was doing her thing, I got a little video of that.

 

 

We had a decision to make, should we go to the show that night in the Amber Palace. It was called "Just Rock." If you've been reading this whole review I'll give you all one guess if we went... Nope. I'd like to point out that on our past 3 cruises we went to them all, but this time we weren't as interested. Mainly because of our first experience this cruise, but that in no way reflects the quality of the singers/dancers. I have no doubt we'll be hitting a lot of the shows in future cruises, just wasn't our thing this time.

 

The movies that night were GI Joe Rise of the Cobra at 8pm and Yes Man at 10pm. We found a couple nice lounge chairs and watch GI Joe. We'd seen it before, but I'm an action movie junkie and really enjoyed sitting on the Lido in the breeze watching the big screen. I took a video, hopefully it doesn't infringe on too many copyright laws...

 

 

This review is about done, so I thought I'd show you who we are. I took it while we were out watching the movie. The smiles on our faces point out how fun this cruise really was. As far as a vacation goes, this one was about as perfect as you could get.

 

[elldav7]

The next day was our final Sea Day, and I'll leave you with one last Safety Message: "Always use stair handrails; Use one hand for you and one hand for the ship." I don't think I really even understand what that means??

 

Nothing too enligtening to share about this day. We spent the whole day eating and haning out on the Lido. What else do you do on Sea Days? Oh, I decided to use SPF 15 sunblock on my front all day. This after spending half the cruise with a tshirt on due to burning my back the first day. Long story short, I gave myself a good sunburn on my front this time. I guess I really wanted to bring something personal home from the cruise.

 

I haven't talked yet about the food available during lunches on the Lido all week. We thoroughly enjoyed almost everything offered. DW had the Mongolian Wok a couple times and really liked it. I love asian food, but never ended up standing in line for it. They had the longest lines all week. I had the burrito bar a couple of times, and really liked it (ask for extra Guacamole spread). Had some hot dogs and chicken tenders from the Grill. DW had a bunch of pizza that was available 24 hours a day, and of course a whole bunch of ice cream cones. I heard here on CC that people liked the Reuben from the deli, so I tried it and really enjoyed it. I had a bunch of different things from the buffet all week as well. Lastly I had some mix of stuff from the Fish and Chips one day and really liked that as well. Can you tell I really enjoyed pretty much all food on this cruise ;)

 

That night the movies were "More than a Game" at 8pm, and G-Force at 10pm. The wife wasn't up too late each night (remember, pregnant), so I ended up watching G-Force this night due to already finishing that Vince Flynn book I talked about earlier. It was a great last day at Sea.

 

Oh, the final night dinner went like this for me. New England Lobster and Crab Cake and Lobster Bisque as starters. I wished I would have remembered the camera to take a picture of that Crab Cake, it was fantastic. I had the BBQ baby back ribs and one last Warm Chocolate Melting cake to finish off our experience at the MDR.

 

Finally... Good morning Miami!

 

 

Pic of our balcony we enjoyed all week.

 

 

Carnival Glory room 1023 on the Panorama deck, we'll miss you...

 

 

We had a flight back to Minneapolis at 1pm, so we were in no real hurry to leave the ship. We had disembark stickers 15 I think, and it was about 9:30am when we were herded off the ship. It all went quite smooth. This is a view of the lines you need to wait in when you're trying to get on the ship. Trust me, it will be a lot busier when you're there to embark. ;)

 

 

Flight home went extremely smooth, it sure was great to see our two daughters (age 5 and 2.5). It was also good to hear their "Grandmas and Grandpas week" went as smooth as our cruise on the Carnival Glory.

 

So that's it! Thanks for reading. For all those that have been on the Glory and the Western Caribbean itinerary, hopefully this has been a trip down memory lane. And for those cruising the Glory in the future, I hope you have as wonderful experience as we did.

 

Now how do I fix my sig and get that big fat "Sailed!" off there, it's really starting to hurt my feelings!

[CruisingBull]

Thank you so much!

 

This ship is in my future plans.

 

I enjoyed reading your review.

 

I love it when someone adds pictures to their review it makes it even more exciting to read!

[gapearl]

That was a great review! I'm a little jealous you got the picture of the underwater statue at Chankanaab Park. I snorkeled there and didn't know about it. The video of the late people was too funny. It's good to see they waited a few extra minutes for those passengers. I thought they just left if you weren't there on time. Warm chocolate melting cake- the bomb! I'm getting excited all over again for another cruise. How am I going to wait 4 more months reading reviews like these?

[melsmom303]

great review will be on her in 29 days i really cant wait.;)

[arf2005]

Great Review! Sailing on the Glory in March and can't wait!

[boricua2007]

 

So remember how I pointed out the time when we were supposed to be back on the ship. 4:30 right? We were on way before that for lunch, I think around 2:30 (more on the lunch options later). 4:30 comes and goes and we're not going anywhere, we were sitting in our cabin, and the DW comes in from the balcony and says to come out and check this out. At this point it's 5:10pm. 40 minutes after the back on board time, and 10 minutes after set sail time. Right before I took this video one lady had to be brought on board by a security officer of some type with a firm grip on her arm. This to me is a walk of shame worse than what people talk on these forums about booze smugglers getting caught with locked baggage. People were seriously heckling these people, it was quite funny. I didn't realize balcony cabins had some additional entertainment value. Again, remember to click the resolution up to 720p, and sorry for the weird perspective/angle of the video at times, again I'm sort of new at this... ;)

 

 

 

Oh, we saw this! We were on Deck 6 up front the ship (trough the "secret doors"). The lady you're talking about looked pretty much wasted! And this last lady you video taped, you see her waving? I was clapping to her and she waved to me :-)

[jeschwartz82]

Right before I took this video one lady had to be brought on board by a security officer of some type with a firm grip on her arm.

 

thats the one!

 

we actually saw her late in the evening in the colors lobby. one of the members of security was speaking with her, and we overheard her say that she got a little drunk but was fine now and wanted the officer to stop harassing her. :rolleyes:

[laumicmah]

Fantastic review!!! Thanks!! I'm thinking about the Glory for an 8/2011 sailing out of NY to Canada. Was waiting on the Pride's itin (for 8/2011) to be posted, but I love the Seaside Theater and NY is close and Canada is beautiful.

[clearwatergirl]

Thank you for such a great review. I really enjoyed the underwater perspective. I've been to all these ports before but never saw all our ocean life. I snorkeled twice in Belize off Goff's Caye. That was amazing.

 

Roatan is a beautiful island with a lot to offer.

 

We are scheduled for the same cruise on the Legend in November. After seeing your review, I really want to snorkel in Roatan.

 

Good luck with your new baby. How wonderful for the both of you.

 

I'm lucky to live in FL and have a short drive to many ports. We;re already planning for 2011.

 

Again, thank you for such a nice review. :)