Carnival Glory B2B: 97 Photos, 19 Videos, 1 Long Review

[dolphin2012]

THANKS for sharing such a wonderful written review!! The pictures were amazing and i loved the writing style. I have been "stuck inside" the house and it really made me feel like i was right there on vakay!! Most of all i think yall are a couple that just enjoy life ! It shows in the pics. Best wishes for endless cruising days ahead...thanks again!!

[Texasgalsa]

I created a really interesting time-lapse video while we were in Mahogany Bay. We had a perfect vantage point as the Carnival Legend sailed away. The ship was waiting for a couple of tardy passengers ("pier runners") and sailed away as soon as those last two passengers got onboard. You can see it quite clearly in the video. Once the ship gets safely out of the harbor, you'll see a pilot boat bring the harbor pilot back to the pier... so that he can help guide our ship out next.

 

[YOUTUBE]LER5WNiycGo[/YOUTUBE]

 

 

Before the Carnival Legend sailed away, I snapped a picture of the Legend's aft so that I could share it here with you and talk about a couple of things that are very interesting about Legend.

 

 

The first thing I want to point out about the Legend is the location of her Serenity deck... it's at the back of the ship and sunk down three decks below the funnel, which makes it somewhat wind protected. That's such a superior location for Serenity than on the Conquest-class and Dream-class vessels. If I were put in charge of Carnival, one of the first things I would do is to create a Serenity retreat at the aft pool on all of the Conquest-class ships. It's already an adults-only area... why not upgrade the loungers to the superior type used on the current Serenity deck? What I would actually do is just buy Serenity-style loungers and day beds and put them throughout the ENTIRE Lido deck from front to back... replacing all the current non-Serenity-style loungers.

 

The second thing I want to point out in that photo of the Carnival Legend is that green waterslide. That's the Green Thunder slide, and it's scary as heck! Notice that the beginning of the slide, the part at the top, is basically vertical. What you do is enter that green tube in a chamber at the top, they close a door around you, and a countdown begins. When the countdown gets to zero, the floor falls out from under you and you drop straight down for about two seconds before finally leveling out and finishing the ride in the manner of a conventional waterslide. It's the scariest two seconds of your life when that floor drops out from under you!

 

The reason that I know all that is that I had the pleasure of experiencing the Green Thunder waterslide during a March 2012 cruise on the one other ship in the fleet that has one: the Carnival Spirit... and there's an interesting story about that. I had so much fun on the Green Thunder waterslide that I decided to make a YouTube video about it. I shot lots of video of people on the Green Thunder slide... especially when they entered that chamber up at the top, the door closed, the countdown began, and then the floor suddenly dropped out from under them. Some of the people's reactions were priceless!

 

When I got home from that cruise on the Carnival Spirit... I edited together my little Green Thunder waterslide video, uploaded it to YouTube, and didn't give it another thought. To me, it was just another in a series of many cruise ship related videos I've posted to YouTube over the years. I literally forgot all about it and went on with my life for the next couple of months. Completely unknown to me at that time... the video went viral on YouTube! And I didn't even realize it.

 

One day, a couple of months later, I was just goofing off at my computer and I decided to take a look at the statistics on my YouTube channel to see how many people had been watching my videos. Up until that point, 1,000 or 2,000 views would have been really good for one of my videos. Imagine my surprise -- no, that's not a strong enough word -- imagine my total SHOCK when I discovered that my Green Thunder waterslide video had over 2,000,000 views at that point! That's two million... and that's a LOT of views for a YouTube video.

 

The first thing I did was to call my son, Jeff, to share the news. Because Jeff is Internet savvy... I knew that he, of all people, would appreciate how amazing it is for a YouTube video to get two million views. If I told my wife about it, she'd just say "that's nice, dear". But Jeff would totally get it. His reaction, upon hearing the news, was that I absolutely must monetize it.

 

Monetization on YouTube is the process of allowing them to run ads along with your videos. It can be either those ads, similar to a TV commercial, that run before your video plays... or it can be those little text or banner ads that are superimposed over the video as it runs. By allowing YouTube to run ads with your video... you earn a portion of the advertising revenue if someone watches a TV-style ad all the way through without skipping it, or if someone clicks on one of those text or banner ads. That's what monetization is.

 

So, Jeff's immediate advice was that I had to monetize the video... and I had actually realized that same thing for myself before I had even called him. Hearing him say it, too, gave me even more motivation. I didn't really have a clue what kind of advertising revenue we might be talking about... and I knew that I had really blown it by not monetizing it BEFORE the first two million views... but all I could do was to monetize it at that point and hope that two million views was just the beginning. And that's exactly what it was.

 

Before I go any further with this story... let's take a look at my Green Thunder waterslide video... the one that went viral on YouTube.

 

[YOUTUBE]aPMfe1vMZuE[/YOUTUBE]

 

As it turns out, the first two million views were indeed just the tip of the iceberg. It boggles my mind to be able to say that my little video has now been viewed over 26 MILLION times on YouTube! Is that crazy, or what? Just to put that in to perspective... if you go to YouTube and do a search for "Carnival Cruise" and then sort them by the number of views, you'll find that my video is -- by a wide margin -- the most viewed YouTube video about a Carnival cruise that there is. In fact, don't just limit it to Carnival. Do a search for "cruise ship" and sort by number of views and you'll find that my little Green Thunder video is the #1 YouTube cruise ship video of them all!

 

Now, let's discuss this a little, shall we?

 

First off, you're probably wondering... have I made a ton of money off of it? The terms of my the monetization contract with YouTube forbid me from discussing the specifics of that aspect. Let's just say that I'm very happy with the advertising revenue. And yes, the IRS is, too.

 

Second, you might be wondering if Carnival is aware of the video. Well, Carnival is a big company. I know that a few people within Carnival are aware of it... but I imagine that most are not. John Heald, Carnival's Senior Cruise Director, is aware of it... because I've shared it with him, via his Facebook page, and he has congratulated me on it. I've heard from a few other people within Carnival about it, too. The most interesting contact was from someone with Carnival's advertising agency who approached me about using the video in a Carnival advertising campaign. However, when we started talking specifics... the deal fell apart because I am unable to provide a signed release from the people featured in the video authorizing Carnival to use them in their advertising campaign. It's legal for me to share the video on YouTube without a release from all those people in the video... but it wouldn't be legal for Carnival to do so in an advertising campaign. All the people in the video are just random passengers... I don't know any of them... so there's no way for me to get releases from them.

 

I'm certainly wondering if lightning can strike twice. In other words, can I come up with a second viral video? I keep trying! You just never know what's going to catch on. I keep shooting videos and posting the interesting ones to YouTube. As of this writing, I've got over a hundred videos on my YouTube channel. But none of the others have come close to matching the popularity of the Green Thunder video. At least, not yet!

 

One more thing about the Green Thunder vertical-drop waterslide...

At the time I shot my viral video, it was the only slide of its kind on a cruise ship. But it's been so successful that not only did Carnival add a Green Thunder slide to the Carnival Legend, but Norwegian Cruise Lines put vertical-drop waterslides on their two newest ships. I'm looking forward to trying the Norwegian cruise line version later this year.

 

 

 

If you don't mind me asking, how did your YouTube video go viral?! That's just amazing to me with all of the hits you have gotten on it and I can't even imagine the kind of money you are making on it! Wish this would happen for one of my videos!! LoL

[Won Ton]

Hi Jim Zim. I just booked a cruise on Carnival Glory to Eastern Caribbean in July of 2018 and your B2B review of eastern and western glory popped up. I love your review. Great, great, great.

 

I have since joined cruise critic and am reading more of your reviews. Currently I am reading the repositioning on Freedom.

 

I have a query. Can you write a review with your top tips, insights, and secrets as such an experienced Carnival Cruiser? For instance, you suggest taking a large plastic cup. Genius. Your portion on secret spots and where to find them was great.

 

Do you already have a review that covers the cruising with carnival experience from top to bottom?

 

I'm talking pre-boarding, boarding, muster, settling in, carnival nuances, zimming when other people are zamming.

 

Otherwise, I will keep reading all your reviews (which I will do regardless) and pick things up the long way.

 

I would just love to read a review that is general to the cruise line and the universal carnival experience from day 1 to trips end.

 

Keep up the great stuff!

 

Juan

[garypolton]

What he said ^^^^^^

[miss tea]

This is my review of our most recent cruise: back-to-back Eastern & Western Caribbean cruises on the Carnival Glory during the last week of April and the first week of May, 2014.

 

Our ports of call included Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, Grand Cayman, Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas, San Juan, and Grand Turk.

 

Almost all of the pictures and videos were shot with a Canon EOS 70D camera, with the exception of the time-lapse videos and underwater videos.

 

I'll get things started by sharing a few of my favorite pictures from the cruise...

 

 

One of the best days of my entire life!

Relaxing in a private cabana at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas.

 

 

 



One of my favorite cruise destinations: Grand Turk

 

 

 



From the balcony of our cabin, we had a beautiful view of the ship's wake

and quite often some beautiful sunsets and sunrises

 

 

 



My favorite place on the ship: the aft swimming pool and Jacuzzis.

In 2 weeks, we had three afternoon rain showers where they closed the dome over the aft pool.

Of course, at all other times it was open to take advantage of the warm Caribbean atmosphere.

 

We are taking are first B2B next summer. Can't wait to read your review

[Balcony Hound]

Awesome information regarding Carnival Glory! We will be staying in Cabin 7440 in March 2018. This will be our second extended wrap around balcony. They are grand and I am quite surprised that they are not listed as suites.

Sunrise, as seen from our balcony

 

 

 



Sunset

 

Still pictures don't do our cabin and balcony justice, though. The best way for me to show you what's so great about these "aft-wrap" balcony cabins is to give you a video tour. Click the triangle in the center of the video screen below to start the video playing.

 

Zob53BSSIsc

 

A tip about the videos on this page:

They default to playing at a fairly low resolution on this page, but you can watch them in high definition at resolutions of 720p or even 1080p if you want to. To do so, you have the click on the YouTube logo in the lower right-hand corner of the video screen to open the video up in a new window on YouTube, and then change the "settings" (also in the lower right corner of the screen) to the resolution of your choice. If you choose 720P or higher, it is recommended that you also set the video to play full screen.

[RL_Bynum]

When you are going on back-to-back cruises on the same ship, I assume that you still have to exit the ship between cruises?

[MRVEGAS711]

I have been on Cruise Critic Boards for many, many years. THIS......is the best review ever!!!! Thanks!