Glory New England/Canada Sept 21st any advice, suggestions?

I have been thinking of taking this cruise for the past several years, but always end up in the Caribbean...lol. We are doing a 7 day cruise on the Glory on Sept 21st leaving from NY on the Glory. Does anyone have suggestions on what to do in the ports? Also, kinda concerned about the weather this time of year. Has anyone done this cruise during the late fall and can tell what to expect. My husband and I will be cruising with my 24 year old daughter and her husband:)

The weather should be very pleasant that time of the year here in Boston, mid 60's to mid 70's. Depending on your intrests and whats being offered, I would choose in Boston between Hiostoric Boston and Cambridge, a trip to Salem or The Fenway tour.

In Portland if they are offerring the Cog Railway/ Mount Washington Tour it will be worth every cent. Noty only will the ride over to Brentenwoods N.H. and back be great that time of year (The leaves should be at or near peek). THe Cog railway is a very special treat, plus how offten to you get the chance to say you were at the windest place on earth.

Thanks, I was hoping I wasn't too early for the leaves changing. Ours don't usually change until the middle of Oct. I will definitely look for the Portland tour. Thanks for the input:)

We are on this same cruise the previous week, departing as you are boarding. We have been to Boston before, but it is a fabulous city. If you are able to do some walking, do the Freedom Trail to see the historic sites in the city. A visit to Cambridge is on the itinerary for us this time. On a previous cruise we visited Halifax and toured the Citadel; I am looking to book an excursion to Peggy's Cove this time. St. John and Portland are new places for us.

Any suggestions anyone else has will be appreciated by me as well.

I am going on the October 5 cruise and I am most excited to see the leaves and lighthouses.

This place has cheap excursions for Portland: www . portlanddiscovery . com

mhurley0504,

I've just posted a very detailed 11-part review of the Carnival Glory trip to Canada which should answer a lot of your questions. Part I is posted at: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1881698

Feel free to post questions under each part and I'll check back tomorrow to see if they need answering.

Caribbeanbound thanks for the great review!! This answered many of my questions. I see that you got on in Boston. We are not suppose to be in Boston until 2:00. I'm a little bummed. I wasn't really thinking and I booked a "hop on hop off" tour that the last pick up is 4:30. I was assuming that the was the last time you could begin the tour, but it's the last stop:( Is there any chance that the ship may arrive early, or was it there at 2:00 for you? I did talk to a nice lady at the tour office. They would not give refunds, but she did say after the final pick up there was an 1 hour and 45 minute tour, you just had to stay on the trolly. So that should be ok.

Sounds like you had a wonderful cruise and now I am looking more forward to mine:) Thank you again for all the great information!

I have been thinking of taking this cruise for the past several years, but always end up in the Caribbean...lol. We are doing a 7 day cruise on the Glory on Sept 21st leaving from NY on the Glory. Does anyone have suggestions on what to do in the ports? Also, kinda concerned about the weather this time of year. Has anyone done this cruise during the late fall and can tell what to expect. My husband and I will be cruising with my 24 year old daughter and her husband:)

There are some great groupon and living social coupons for different tourist activities in Boston , like boat rides, trolleys etc. Generally nonrefundable just make sure that you read the fine print before booking those as you need to make sure that they can be redeemed during your trip. Just returned from 5 day Glory cruise and loved it.

These ports are so great and so easy to do on your own!

I got all my information from the New England and Canada ports of call boards here on cruise critic.

The staff on the Glory was for me the best I have had of all my cruises.

The ship is also great! We did a 5 day from Boston. Soooo much to do in Boston.

mhurley0504...

the ship arrives around 7am - 8am.

We boarded at 11:00 am.

The hop-on/hop-off is worth your while to ride it all the way around once.

We did the Old Town Trolley Tour, but there are at least 4 others too.

Complete Carnival review: http://www.lavasurfer.com/info/carnival-glory.html

Boston Review: http://www.lavasurfer.com/info/boston.html

here in Boston you really do not need to book excursions through Carnival. The City of Boston is easy to see by foot & by boat. A water taxi will bring you over to Rowe's wharf which is walking distance of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace and the aquarium The Silver Line stops near the Port of Boston Black falcon Cruise terminal which will bring you to South Station or you can walk along the Harbor Walk which is about 1-2 miles long. You can walk from Southie to the North End in about an hour. You will have a great time on the Glory I sailed on her about a year ago and was thinking of booking a cruise on her again.

Again, thanks for the great info. I did book with Old Town Trolley Tours also. I never book with Carnival, can usually find the same tours much cheaper. I really hope we get there early. Would love to be able to do the whole thing. Getting excited now!

I have been thinking of taking this cruise for the past several years, but always end up in the Caribbean...lol. We are doing a 7 day cruise on the Glory on Sept 21st leaving from NY on the Glory. Does anyone have suggestions on what to do in the ports? Also, kinda concerned about the weather this time of year. Has anyone done this cruise during the late fall and can tell what to expect. My husband and I will be cruising with my 24 year old daughter and her husband:)

Sept 21 is not considered late fall- actually the first day of fall is Sept 22, 2013

I think it will be cooler then what we have in the states.

I suggest the port of calls boards to see what interests you.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39

We decided to rent a van for our party of 8. Van rented for 70 bucks an excursion for to Peggys Cove was 64.pp

Rentals make good sense, especially for larger parties. We had a great experience renting in Canada.

We did this cruise last year the last week of September from New York. Boston was my favorite port, we did the HOHO trolley and went to USS Constitition museum, Cheers, Fenway Park, Prudential Center (great seafood lunch at Legal Seafood) and Quincy Market.

We did the Fort/Lobster Bake in Portland and the 10 best tours in St. John and Halifax. Really liked the reversing falls in St. John. Peggy's Cove was worth the trip, but the rest of the day was kind of long, if I were to do it again, we would go to Peggy's Cove, and spend rest of the day in Halifax, tour tried to fit too many things into one day.

The weather in Boston and Portland was great, but it was cold and wet in St. John and Halifax.

I thought the Glory was a great ship, we were on one of the last trips before the 2.0 upgrades, but still enjoyed it.

Just got back from a B2B on the Glory to Halifax (twice), Saint John (twice), Sydney- which we called Sadney, and Portland.

I will be writing a review tomorrow. Let me just say- it was an awesome time. Just loved both sailings. You can really just walk around in Halifax but you'd better have a plan in Sadney or just stay on the ship. In Portland we went to LL Bean (lame, I know) and in Saint John we also just.... walked around. You will love the ship. We saw +/- 20 whales. So fun.

You will love this cruise! Do make sure you take a jacket and jeans ... we did this cruise in late June and were huddled up under blankets on the Serenity deck ... and we didn't think to pack quite enough long pants, so we were a little sad at night ... during the day, however, the temps were beautiful - cooler than the states, but warm and just gorgeous. I would expect that time of year to get cooler, though - pack for the weather and you'll be sure to have the best time!

One other thing that did surprise me - no hot drinks available on the lido deck or on serenity - you can't order Irish Coffee or anything like that - at the time it didn't make sense to me (because I was so chilled), but thinking about it now, it probably does make sense because it would be hard to keep the hot drinks hot and move quickly (and safely) while balancing them.

Seago2 I look forward to reading your review. Sounds like you guys had a great time. Also,trvlqueen , thanks for the packing advise. I was wondering what to pack. We've always gone tropical and just packed shorts:) Definitely will take a jacket for the cool nights on the decks.

I took this 7 day cruise last year on 9-22-2012. As far as weather, it rained only in St Johns. Boston and Portland were in the mid to upper 70's. St Johns and Halifax were in the mid sixties to 70. So as mentioned above, definitely take pants and a jacket. People did use the pools. They did use the retracting roof in the aft pool area. It did keep the pool area warm.

I enjoy the ports on my own so I used the maps provided at each port and did walking tours. My favorites were the Halifax Citadel and the Halifax marina area.

Not many kids on this cruise and it was a mellow crowd.

I really enjoyed this cruise. It is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Where is this Sydney that you mention?? Google maps shows it to be a land-locked city.

Where is this Sydney that you mention?? Google maps shows it to be a land-locked city.

Sydney, Nova Scotia, at the northern end of Cape Breton island has a harbor (decorated with the world's biggest fiddle):

We just got off the Glory 7 day from Boston yesterday. We walked around in Portland; took the Big Pink Bus in St. John and Halifax and didn't do much in Sydney. If we did this again we would rent a car in Halifax so we could go to Peggy's Cove and spend more time where we wanted to go and also a car in Sydney so we could drive up the Cabot Trail. A car would be a lot cheaper and give you more time. A couple of times we waited over half an hour for the bus to return. We didn't book anything on the ship but the excursions in the terminal were really Carnival excursions and the cost was applied to the Sign and Sail card. There weren't lots of vendors selling tours like you see in the Caribbean islands.

We got really lucky on this cruise because it was nice and warm and sunny for the first three ports and first sea day. Sydney was overcast and pretty cool. The fog started Friday night along with the fog horn every couple of minutes. The horn didn't bother us and we had to really listen for it in our cabin. It was very foggy late Friday and all day Saturday. It was also pretty cold outside on the deck. The nice thing is that the Glory has the retractable Magrodome over the aft pool so it was really nice back there. That is an adults only pool along with the whirlpools. The fog pretty much lifted by Saturday night and the fog horn stopped. Sunday morning was warm and sunny again when we arrived in Boston.

It's too bad that the fog happened on the last sea day because that is when our Diamond Captain's event was scheduled but then cancelled. We were supposed to have tea with the Captain on the bridge but can certainly understand that they didn't need any distractions on the bridge since you couldn't see anything outside.

Do the Moosehead Pub Crawl in St. John. It was one of my favorite excursions EVER!!

We were on the seven day Glory last year . In Halifax we took a Carnival excursion and then ate at Tub's Pub ( great chowder ,share it , It is huge ) In St. John's we walked around then took a horse drawn tour ( located right off the street near the harbour and very inexpensive ) . In Portland we did a trolley tour that we booked that day and In Boston we did the Fenway tour ( bought online ) . They were all great tours . We have been to Boston many times but for new travelers to boston I highly recommend the Hop On Hop Off Tour.