Carnival Glory June 25th to July 2nd Review

[trogmd]

Hi Debbiemo,

Just had to compliment you on your stunning photos. I have seen hundreds of pics of San Juan and have to say yours are the best I have seen of the place.

Thanks for your review,

Mark. :)

[Jenny in TX]

We did this same itinerary on the Glory last year. It was one of my favorite cruises!!

[DebbieMo]

Hi Debbiemo,

Just had to compliment you on your stunning photos. I have seen hundreds of pics of San Juan and have to say yours are the best I have seen of the place.

Thanks for your review,

Mark. :)

 

 

Aww thank you Mark, I really appreciate it [emoji4].

 

 

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[DebbieMo]

We did this same itinerary on the Glory last year. It was one of my favorite cruises!!

 

 

Yeah, it was great! Wouldn't mind doing it again.

 

 

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[lmsdf]

Fabulous review! We are going on the glory at the end of August. Thanks for the great feedback. Looking forward to reading the rest of your review.

[DebbieMo]

Hi everyone! Thank you for reading if you've made it this far.

 

Before moving on to Grand Turk I want to point out that you can see El Morro Fort in San Juan from San Cristóbal. I've been told that it's about a 30 minute walk but as I said previously, you can take the free trolley.

 

 

Now on to Grand Turk!!

 

 

My plan for Grand Turk was to visit Governors Beach. I read on some other reviews that you could walk from the port to Governors Beach so that was the plan. We (hubby, myself and 4 kiddos) were going to join my parents and my uncle and his wife at the beach. Hubby's side of the fam just wanted to browse the shops.

 

Since we were docking at 11am and we all woke up early we went to the dining room to have a leisurely breakfast. My 8yr old actually asked to go to the dining room because he said he was tired of the buffet breakfast, lol. He is definitely my foodie. After breakfast we headed to deck 5 to go outside to watch arrival.

 

 

Just past this rust bucket is where I plan to go once docked.

 

 

So before docking Eric came on the speaker saying that Magic was right behind us and that once they arrived, the gangway would be closed and no one would be left off until they were completely docked and once docked the gangway would be reopened. This is done for safety issues since the ships are so close.

 

We head back to the cabin to change into our swimsuits and get our bags. On the way we pass my crazy uncle speeding down the hall heading to the gangway saying he didn't want to have to wait for Magic, my parents close behind. Since in HMC we didn't get a spot with shade they wanted to go out early and get a good spot because 1/2 of us have sensitive skin and I actually ended up with a nasty heat rash in HMC that hadn't gone away. We saw where Magic was when we were outside, we were going to be fine, we thought.

 

We hurried and got our things and went down to the gangway. There was a huge line and after about 5 minutes you wouldn't guess what happened...yep they closed the gangway. The info coming down the long line was that it would be an hr wait and people were starting to leave. There was no way my 4 kids were going to sit there for an hr so we went back to the cabin for a bit. We stayed in the cabin about 15 minutes then went back down to the gangway so we could stand in line but soon after getting on line the gangway opened back up and was moving quickly.

 

My mom flagged us down when we got to the beach and showed us to the clamshells they held for us next to them. It was right at the beginning of the beach to the left. I still wanted to walk to Governors Beach but the kids had already ran in the water with the grandparents so we left them in their care and hubby indulged me and walked with me. The sand is very soft and so hard to walk on and its not like the beaches here in FL where if you walk closer to the water its harder and easier to walk on. The sand closest to the water is soft and if you walk just in the water your feet start to sink when the waves come up and not just a little. As you walk away from the port the beach is so much cleaner and the water so much clearer but the downside is that there isn't seating or shade and it was very hot out!

 

Up the beach we slowly walked...

[DebbieMo]

We came upon Jacks Shack & Topher & beautiful water

 

Edited July 29, 2016 by DebbieMo

[DebbieMo]

We kept walking and came upon this bridge that i'm not too sure we were allowed to pass.

 

 

The rusted chain link fence under the bridge had an opening cut into it so very carefully we passed under the bridge and go to this beautiful area.

 

 

To go any further we would need to climb on the bricks and pass some more rusted chain link fence here

 

 

So I gave up! I'm guessing the only way to get to Governors Beach was to go to the street by the ship and walk from there but there is no open path walking on the beach. I did see some local kids up on the rusted ship and they walked back not too far behind us so I asked them if they climbed over the rocks to get to the ship and they said they did. They went into a house right by the beach a little further down from Jacks Shack, how great it must be to live right on the beach in Grand Turk! The area behind the houses were not very clean and filled with trash though.

 

We walked back to the where the family were and my dad told me that there were lots of fish around and asked if I had anything to feed them and I'd brought Pringles and peanut butter crackers for the kids to snack on and I gave him some.

 

Feeding the fish aka our super cheap excursion

 

[DebbieMo]

This is how close we were to the dock

 

 

The water closest to the ship is very dirty and cloudy bit if you go further down the beach be prepared to not have covered seating or no seating at all if you go even further but the beach is a lot prettier and cleaner. There were chairs for $20 per day by Jacks Shack and it came with an umbrella.

 

After out little "excursion" with the fish we were all ready for lunch and even though we were super close to the fish we thought we'd try some local food. Hubby and the older folks went off to find food and I told the to try Jack's Shack since i'd read so many great things about them.

 

After what seemed like forever they came back with jerk chicken & beef that was dry and slightly edible that they got from someplace else because the line at JS was super long and super slow. My dad said it seemed like they did no prep ahead of time and only started making anything when it was ordered so it took forever to get served. The food was terrible!

 

After hanging out for a bit longer we packed up and headed back to the ship to get showered and ready for our 2nd elegant night.

 

Only complaint at dinner was the tablecloth that kept moving. We all enjoyed the food and talking about our day.

 

Tonights after dinner entertainment was Playlist Productions: Epic Rock and it was another great show! Can't stop saying how amazing the performers were.

 

After the show we watched the High Seas Karaoke for a little then I took the kids back to the cabin to relax so hubby can go to the comedy shows with his family. My family were out enjoying the shows & casino but my dad came back early because he was feeling tired but offered to keep an eye on the kids if I wanted to go see the comedy shows. I wasn't tired so took him up on his offer and went to go meet hubby and his fam in the lounge. We stayed for 2 more shows then turned in for the night.

 

I honestly can't remember how each comedian was specifically but I didn't enjoy them all. Some were just ok.

 

It was another great day even though it didn't go exactly as planned. The whole family loved feeding the fish.

 

See you soon for our final day/Sea day :(.

[fofita01]

Loving the review. Great pictures

[declansdad]

Reliving our cruise on the Glory through your review, the only difference was we went to Amber Cove instead of half Moon Cay.

 

We did both forts in Old San Juan and they were both pretty cool and you have some great views and picture opportunities. We would love to go back to there and look around some more.

 

You should have given Guy's another shot, we never had a bad burger there all week.

[DebbieMo]

Loving the review. Great pictures

 

Thank you :)

[DebbieMo]

Reliving our cruise on the Glory through your review, the only difference was we went to Amber Cove instead of half Moon Cay.

 

We did both forts in Old San Juan and they were both pretty cool and you have some great views and picture opportunities. We would love to go back to there and look around some more.

 

You should have given Guy's another shot, we never had a bad burger there all week.

 

Did you have to leave the ship really early to be able to do both forts in 1 day? Did you walk or use the trolley? I wish we had had time to go to both.

 

Your ends weren't burnt? The fam had gotten 4 burgers and they all looked the same. I probably should have tried it another day but there were so many other great things to eat on the ship. I definitely will on our next cruise that has a Guy's.

[declansdad]

Did you have to leave the ship really early to be able to do both forts in 1 day? Did you walk or use the trolley? I wish we had had time to go to both.

 

Your ends weren't burnt? The fam had gotten 4 burgers and they all looked the same. I probably should have tried it another day but there were so many other great things to eat on the ship. I definitely will on our next cruise that has a Guy's.

 

I think we left the ship around 9:30 or so and were able to both forts without a problem. In fact we probably had a couple of hours back on the ship before we left. We did walk to both forts and that is really all we did. Took a few pictures along the way and the return walk was through the shopping area of the city. All the pictures from both forts can be found in the links in my signature if you want to see the other fort.

 

We never had any burgers from Guy's that were burnt. And the fries were great.

Edited August 1, 2016 by declansdad

[DebbieMo]

I'll be wrapping things up today with our last day/at sea and debarkation.

 

 

It's so sad to wake up and realize its the final day. The week definitely goes by quickly but I feel like it's the perfect amount of time for a cruise, not too short and not too long. I do want to do a 10 day at some point though.

 

On our final day we got up, dressed and went up to the dining room for Seaday brunch. As we're being seated i'm wondering to myself why we didn't have breakfast in the dining room everyday. You don't have to stand in line, you don't have to look for seating that will fit everyone and you get served! The food is basically the same so why not? I don't think breakfast in the dining room took any longer than breakfast in the buffet.

 

My 2nd oldest has been begging to go back to the camp but we hadn't had time with all the port days so since we were basically doing nothing today we dropped them off for a little while. After leaving them hubby and I didn't know what to do with ourselves, lol. There are not a lot of options on the last day it seems.

 

After we didn't find anything that caught our interest we went back to the cabin to do some packing. I didn't want to wait until the last minute. After packing for a little while and we went up to the casino to cash out our remaining gift card balance. Initially I had no idea what I was doing so I only added $10 to casino and played a little because I read that you should play a few bucks but I was losing so I gave up on that then realized I needed to transfer the entire balance I wanted to cash out to the casino so thats what I did then took my card up to the window to cash it out and they did, no questions asked. Next time I think i'll just transfer the amount and go to the window, I didn't see any reason to play.

 

After getting that done we went to get the kids to get them some lunch and check out the Chocolate Extravaganza. We just got food from the buffet and since I wasn't really hungry I just got some things from the Chocolate Extravaganza. Some things were good and some not so good. The rice pudding was very good but the chocolate pudding was hard and not very good at all. While there we met up with hubby's family and sat and talked for a bit before they decided to go explore some of the ship they hadn't seen yet and we left to do the same.

 

We walked around towards the back of the ship and of course the kids had to grab some ice cream. We walked around a bit then found the mini golf area and the kids played a few games. The mini golf isn't big but they did 2 rounds and had fun. After golf we walked around a bit more and checked out what was going on on lido which wasn't much. Something I noticed is that the steel drum player/singers which was a man and a woman, sang the same songs daily. I liked hearing them sing but after hearing the songs more than once it kind of gets old. Also when they spoke at the beginning and end of the songs we could not understand what they were saying at all and it's not because of their accent.

 

After checking out lido we went back to the cabin to get everyone showed and ready for dinner. It's crazy how fast the day goes by.

 

Debarkation day was my sister in laws birthday and our cousin's 21st birthday was a week later so we ordered 2 cakes to celebrate a bit at dinner. It was a surprise for them which was really nice. We ordered 2 9" chocolate cakes and even with 15 people we had 1 whole cake left over. We couldn't even share with other diners because it was towards the end and people left or were leaving already. I wish I would have planned it for Thursday instead of Friday because then we could have taken the left overs back to our cabins but since we were debarking the next day and everyone was so full from dinner it would have just been a waste to take it back so we told our head waiter to keep it and share it with the servers. I don't even know if they are allowed to do this and maybe just threw it out but we would have done the same. Another reason it would have been better not to do it on the last night is because the dinner entertainment which was great, made the rest of the dinner run late and the cake came right at the end when everyone was kind of in a rush to get out of the dining room. The cake was delicious!!

 

After dinner we rushed over to the Amber Palace to get our seats for Playlist Productions: Latin Nights. We enjoyed the show and was sad to see it end. After the show I was feeling a bit tired and not interested in doing anything so I told hubby to go with his family to the comedy show and I took the kids back to the cabin so I can complete our packing and put our luggage out. Hubby watched 2 comedy shows which he said he enjoyed. He came back in time to put our luggage out and we watched some tv before bed.

 

Not too many pics today

 

 

The water is such a pretty royal blue

 

Not even sure how I forgot to mention this. Normally I read myself to sleep at night because I don't fall asleep quickly but I didn't feel like reading when I went to bed so I opened up the curtains all the way, made the room completely dark and star watched from bed for a little while. I tried going to sleep but couldn't so I went back to star watching and saw a shooting star from our oceanview window!! I've seen a few shooting starts before but it's been a while. I loved it and it was a great start to our great trip.

 

A couple of other things before I get to debarkation:

 

The cabin temperature was perfect and we were all comfortable.

 

The ship main areas never felt overcrowded, even on sea day.

 

The only time we came across sort of unruly kids was the night we watched the dive in movie for a bit. Since we were way in the back we were by the ping pong table and there were some teens using it hitting the balls every which way and we even saw a couple go overboard. Other than this I didn't find kids out of control.

 

We did have an elevator incident where we got on and all the buttons were pushed and the 2 guys (late teens - 20s) were still in the elevator. They confirmed they pressed it all and showed no remorse but we made the best of it and it wasn't a big deal.

 

I really wanted to try the Taste Bar & Fish & Chips but never made it there. My parents did try F&C and said it was just ok but i'm not sure what they had.

 

I can't remember which night it was but towards the end of the week we had some late night room service. We got the Roast Turkey sandwich, some cookies and chocolate cake. The food came quickly, a lot quicker than the said and everything was good. We never got anything from the paid section.

[DebbieMo]

Our other towel animals

 

[DebbieMo]

Room service menu

 

 

Wine menu from dining room

 

[DebbieMo]

Debarkation day :(

 

We got up and got all our stuff together to leave the room then went up to the dining room for a quick breakfast. The service today was a little slow but we weren't in any real rush. All my daughter wanted for breakfast was chocolate muffin and apple :confused: but the server said he didn't have any and would have to send someone to the buffet to see if they could get it for her. By the time our food came they brought her a plate with 3 muffins (1 chocolate) and they even sliced up her apples which was nice. With teary eyes I ordered my last french toast and it was delish!

 

After breakfast we went back to the room to grab our things and right then a crew member was walking around telling people they needed to leave the cabin. We were being kicked out!! LOL.

 

We were trying to avoid the crowd on the upper decks so we thought we'd go to deck 5 to sit on the outside deck but it's like a maze to get there and because of debarkation we were being turned around so we just decided to go up to lido which surprisingly wasn't that crowded. We found seats in Red Sail with the rest of the gang and just hung out since we weren't in any rush to get off the ship. Those with flights were not scheduled until after 5pm and we were driving so we just stayed and waited with them.

 

Basically after breakfast was over you couldn't get anything to eat other than ice cream so if you plan to hang out a bit and think you will be hungry, save some food from breakfast. While we were sitting in Red Sail we saw the workers restocking the buffet for the next cruise but everything was covered up. We got the final debarkation call and made our way down to debark. We left the ship at 11:30am.

 

We got our luggage and made it out of the building by 11:45. My dad bought a lot of duty free liquor which we picked up the morning of debarkation and got everything out without any issues.

 

We sadly said our goodbyes to the rest of the family and was on our way by noon. Parking at the port for the week was $140.

 

Not even 1 minute in the car and the kids were asking if we could go on another cruise soon. They all loved it so much and cannot wait to go on another. I'm currently a stay at home mom looking for work at home so we can cruise more often! LOL. My side of the family are already looking to book their next one and my uncle who did not want to go on this cruise because he said the only thing you do on a cruise is "gamble & drink" is hooked and I think he had the most fun out of everyone. He loved it!

 

Thanks to all of you that hung in there with me as I wrote my first review. It was a blast and I had fun reliving it.

 

We miss it already and needless to say it wont be our last. Until next time Glory..

[TJ92813]

Awesome review. Thanks for sharing!

[DebbieMo]

Awesome review. Thanks for sharing!

 

 

Thank you & thank you for reading!

 

 

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[DebbieMo]

I think we left the ship around 9:30 or so and were able to both forts without a problem. In fact we probably had a couple of hours back on the ship before we left. We did walk to both forts and that is really all we did. Took a few pictures along the way and the return walk was through the shopping area of the city. All the pictures from both forts can be found in the links in my signature if you want to see the other fort.

 

We never had any burgers from Guy's that were burnt. And the fries were great.

 

 

I guess if we didn't have that detour we would have had enough time but there's always next time [emoji3]. I will definitely check out your pics.

 

I guess we just had a bad batch. The fries were good!

 

 

 

 

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[DebbieMo]

I think we left the ship around 9:30 or so and were able to both forts without a problem. In fact we probably had a couple of hours back on the ship before we left. We did walk to both forts and that is really all we did. Took a few pictures along the way and the return walk was through the shopping area of the city. All the pictures from both forts can be found in the links in my signature if you want to see the other fort.

 

We never had any burgers from Guy's that were burnt. And the fries were great.

 

 

Wow, you got some really great pics of the forts and the city! El Morro looks really cool.

 

 

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[declansdad]

Wow, you got some really great pics of the forts and the city! El Morro looks really cool.

 

 

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Thanks and thanks for the review.

[geoatl]

Wow! Your night-time photography is excellent!

[DebbieMo]

Wow! Your night-time photography is excellent!

 

 

Thank you [emoji4]

 

 

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