Glory August 6-11 short review and tips

Just got off the glory this past sat with my family of 6.

We are a family with 4 "adult" kids ages 17 to 23. we live in s. California, but we're in new York to visit our two oldest daughters, one who recently moved to sunny side queens area in July, and to also visit our other daughter who just graduated from college and moved to philly area in June to start teacher training this summer for her new teaching job in Camden this fall.

Originally only 3 of our kids could go, so we booked one inside triple and one 1a for two people early saver about 6 months prior to the cruise. By one month of the cruise, we changed to an 6b ocean view triple (with$210 obc credit due to price changes) and 4a inside (with $160 obc due to price changes). We mostly got " more the merrier" discounts for the triple and "pack and go" discounts for the inside cabin.

Two weeks before the cruise, we found out our daughter doing the teacher training has that week off after all and could also go. And much to my pleasure and surprise, carnival allowed us to move to a quad oceanview cabin that was still available and add daughter for only $349fourth person rate.

We started the cruise with $370obc from price drops and another $100 ( $50credit per cabin) carnival stock credit. Since our son was a minor at 17, hubby booked inside cabin with son, and I booked with 3 daughters.

FYI, the obc from owning carnival stock was obc non refundable, and the obc from price drops were refundable.

The day of cruise finally arrived.

I, who usually has everything down and organized to a t, was told I didn't need to print boarding passes beforehand to check-in since carnival would have all that info ( I did complete all the online info for us though). We got to pier 90 at 10:30a, check In our luggage, stand in line for security with passports in hand ....and when we get to the front....are told we Do need physical printed boarding passes.

So, we go to the back to talk with carnival rep who confirms we are registered passengers,, go back to the security, security tells us we need to wait for the official manifest to arrive. Sigh...wait for 45 minutes, other people get sent to where we are waiting because they don't have printed boarding passes either...finally I go back to the carnival desk and the rep signs us a paper that we are registered, we go through security, go through check-in

...and finally are on-the ship at 12:3o pm two hours later.

Moral of story, don't listen to carnival if rep says you don't need to print out your boarding passes -- print them out anyway

Oh sorry, that sucks. I will be sure to print EVERYTHING! More please, we sail her on THURSDAY!!!!!

Just had my cruise review all completed, was asked to sign in again...and now my review has been eaten by the cruise review monster...aaarrrghh!!!!!

So I have to start all over again...I think I will do the second time in multiple parts so it can't all get lost again

* * * *

Got to lido for lunch and got to our rooms by 1:30 pm. The ocean view was more spacious than I was expecting...which was great since we had 4 ppl in there, esp two clothes loving, make-up and mirror using girls. The triple bed was a single sofa bed made into a bed, and the

Fourth bed was attached to the wall and put up each morning and taken down at night.

We were on the riviera deck for both our ocean view and inside cabins which ended up being a good choice. -- not only did it save us money than if we had booked on a higher level but also being on the bottom deck kept out two cabins together even though one cabin ended having the pack and go rate..

You see, aLong the way, we changed our original 1a cabin to a 4a to a "pack and go" cabin getting more obc as we went. Pack and go means that carnival can choose your cabin instead of you...but since our cabins was already on the lowest deck non mid ship, we lucked out and the cabins stayed in close proximity to each other anyway-- and we still got the substantial pack and go obc.

Sail away was 5 pm. Our dining was early dining 6pm in platinum 3aft. The ship sailed past the statue of liberty around 5:50pm ( pls note, you wil need to be on the right side of the ship to get the best views) ' so we barely got to dinner on time. Thank goodness, we didn't need to be dressed up...although I did see someone wearing a bikini swimsuit top get turned away from the dining room and she didn't looked none too pleased.

For platinum located in 3aft, you will have to go aft on deck 5 and then climb two flights of staIrs down to get there...you can not walk through deck five. For dinner, you can get water, ice tea and lemonade at no additional charge, and then during dessert, you can get coffee, hot tea, cappichino or expresso also at no charge.

After dinner, we familiarized ourselves more with the ship, played cards as a family, gambled a little, watched the Olympics on the large theater on the lido deck.

When we got back to our room, we found our beds turned down, a animal towel and chocolates on our bed. We also found notices of our obc credit from our early saver price drops and obc from owning carnival stock (you get $50 /cabin for a 5 day credit). Altogether for our two cabins, we got $370 early saver refundable obc and $100 non refundable carnival stock credit for a total of $470. A great day one.

day two was an all day at sea day and elegant night.

On elegant night since we were all dressed up anyway, We wanted to take cruise photos to use as our annual Christmas photo-- but unfortunately, we didnt like any of the backdrops. The only solid one we saw was black, and we couldn't use that as our black hair would "disappear" and All the other backdrops were with stairs, or shiny moon, or a fake looking ship....sigh.

Dinner was great. I ordered prime rib and had a lobster tail. My 17 year old son routinely ordered four appetizers every night. Unfortunately, there were no snail escargot which I had been anticipating. Our waiter said he didn't think carnival served it on 5 day cruises.

For other dinners, I tried the steak and also the salmon on the every night menu, which was quite good. My favorite desserts were the chocolate melting cake and the souffle with vanilla sauce. Since I love lox and they only serve it via room service or in the mdr,we went to the mdr a few times for breakfast.

As past cruisers, we all got a free coupon for a drink to be used at breakfast, brunch or lunch in the mdr so that was nice. I am not sure if all past cruisers got this coupon, or if we got it because we were "red" cruisers.

Some things we did on ship were seeing the kareoke, liars show,marriage show, Olympics trivia, Motown music trivia, sports trivia, one daughter splurged and got a $139massage, facial,scalp massage --and said it was worth every penny.

Late night snacking

The pizza area and ice cream areas are open 24 hours. There also was hamburgers and hotdogs at 11:30pm each night.

Norovirus

On day 3, wed , we started hearing announcements on the intercom about noro breakouts and to wash our hands frequently. After the cruise was over, carnival put out an official statement that 212 passengers got sick, but I think there could have been more than that since not everyone would have reported it. One passenger we talked to said two thirds of the passengers on the eight deck was sick -- I guess one small blessing is that our two cabins were on the first bottom deck

Other things we did-- We also laid out by the pool getting a tan and watched the olympics on the big screen. I enjoyed doing some gambling. . . Winning some, losing some...let's just say i put our $100 carnival shareholder credit to good use.

Excursions

For saint John, we booked our own excursion doing the jet boat thrill ride at reversing falls for $43/pp. it took about an hour altogether, with the actual ride being about 30minutes. You do get soaking wet, even with the jacket and pants they give you to put on. We took a large. Taxi that fit the six of us for about $15 each way.

Pls note that for both saint John and Halifax, the land time is one hour ahead of the ship time. We needed to be at our jet boat ride at 12:30 which meant 11:30 am ship time.

For Halifax, we spent a lot of time at the maritime museum which has a whole section devoted to the titanic since the titanic sank not too far from there. Cost is $8.75 / adult and $4.75/ child and you can also get a slight discount if you show your aaa card. It is the 100th year of the titanic sinking.

For museums, stores, etc, you can pay with American dollars-- the exchange rate is one to one. . .you will get change in Canadian change though.

Internet

We did not buy Internet on the cruise, instead waited to use Internet at port both at saint John and Halifax. Free Internet can be had at any local starbucks,or in the nearby port market area

Some tips

1. Use the kiosk to check your shipboard accounts, saves you time from waiting in line at the guest services desk.

2. Your gratuities will show up on day three ($11.

50/day is what they will charge your charge card unless you go to guest services to alter that amount higher or lower).

3. You can ask for free carnival playing cards at guest services.

4.You can get a free lanyard at the casino to hold your card around your neck.

5. Bring your own books or reading material. The ship library is terrible. It only has about 1 1/2 small shelves of books, of which many are in other languages besides English. Many of the gmes seemed to be broken or incomplete. So bring your own books and do not count on the library to provide with them.

6. For disembarkation, you can do "self assist" and carry your own bags off ship, getting off 8:00-9:00' or you will be assigned a number. They will start with 1-5' then 6-10, etc. we were number 29 and got off About 10:15am.

There are taxis at port, but if you have a larger party, i am not sure you can count on getting a larger taxi. We called sunny side car service which was recommended to us on this site. We were going back to my daughters apt in queens and it cost $45 for the six of us, and we gave $5 tip for a total of $50.

7. If you are staying in new York either pre or post cruise, and want to see a broadway play, you can use sites such as broadway box or goldstar for discounts. We saw the circ d soliel zarkana, bird land jazz and will see Evita tonight--all at about 35% discount.

8. We are flying home tomorrow and again am using sunny side care service ( for comparison, it will cost $17 to go from sunny side queens area to la guardia for three of us)

Thats all for now. I'm not an eloquent or flowery writer, so please excuse my writing ( especially since i am writing on an ipad with autocorrect spelling)

Any questions, fire away

We were on deck 8 of the Glory on the same cruise, I guess we were some of the lucky ones who did not get sick. We did notice a lot of "snoozing" signs out on rooms during the day on our floor and there was a certain odor present. I know the room stewards were working overtime to keep things as clean as they could. I was surprised they still allowed cruisers to serve themselves in the buffet after the outbreak was discovered. We avoided the buffet after that and were fine.

Sorry to hear about your troubles! Thanks for the heads up on printing documents!:)

Thanks for your review- will be sailing on glory on the 20th and getting excited! I was just wondering what the weather was like on port and sea days- trying to not overpack :-)

The weather was cool on the first sea day and in St. John. A jacket made it more comfortable. In Halifax it was beautiful - around 80 degrees and sunny. On the last sea day it was nice again, but it started to rain later in the day. Of course, all that can change week to week, but I would suggest a jacket and a pair of pants for cooler weather if you come across it. We always try to pack in layers with coordinating outfits. It was cooler also inside the ship at times.

Definitely bring some cooler weather stuff.

sometimes we were wearing shorts and sometimes long pants. I think we had warmer weather at saint John and Halifax than the glory cruises sailing before us in July.

Ohh, and if you like having high tea, there was tea served at 3:30 pm on sea days. We had early dining so of course we were still full after finishing the tea when we had our 6 pm dinner.. . .but oh well we were on a cruise!