Back from Glory Eastern Caribbean -Review

Sad to be writing this, as it means our wonderful vacation is over!

We are just back from the Glory Eastern Caribbean 7 day cruise! We had a fabulous time. I will be posting a full review here over the next few days as I get my pictures and thoughts organized. But, for those of you who want the shorter version:

• The crew of the Glory was amazing (as always, I do not think that we have ever had a bad experience but this was no exception)
  
• We really enjoyed our first 2.0 experience with Guy's Burgers, Blue Iguana, Sea Day brunch and other “new” things
  
• The new American Feast style menu on the Glory main dining room was really good, with lots of options. I had wanted to get pictures of the menu each night to share here- but only ended up remembering one night- sorry! But, I can report that they had cold fruit soups (Strawberry, Cherry & Mango (?) 3 of the 7 nights).
  
• CHEERS package was a breeze and loved being able to try some new drinks. No one treated us any differently because we had this package. However, we did tip extra to those servers & bartenders that we always saw/used.
  
• The Aft Balcony room was a first for us. And, I will have to say that we will go back to our mid-ship balcony moving forward. I will get into this more in my full review. It was a lovely view- just too much rattling in the room for our tastes. But, it was still nice!
  
• Camp Carnival was a big hit with our nearly 4 year old. He loved it and was there daily after dinner until between 10pm-11:30pm. One sea day he also went in the morning for about 2 hours.
  
• The ports of call on this Eastern Caribbean are wonderful. We didn't have any shore excursions booked and just beached it at Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas & Grand Turk (Margaritaville- pooled it). San Juan, PR we took a tour around the city and went to the Fort. We loved all of the ports. But, I think that St. Thomas was just amazing. Of course, Half Moon Cay has the best sand ever. San Juan was H-O-T. Very nice, just a shock coming from ocean breeze and water to concrete and heat.
  
• The ship overall was familiar to us as we have sailed on the Liberty. We spent most of our time on deck 5 (promenade) or 9 (lido). Deck 3 (lobby) was the most confusing to get to as the Galley and Dining Rooms block parts of it and I always got turned around. Towards the middle of the week, I started just walking across deck 5 and taking the forward stairs or elevators to get to the lobby.
  
• We met some great and fun people on this trip as well. Most everyone that we met was having a wonderful time. There were of course a couple of bad apples in guests and I think that is to be expected when you have 2000+ people. Most, however- were enjoying their vacation like we were!
  

Time to test out how to upload pictures:

Full review with pictures to come. Any questions, let me know!

Kim

Awesome, can't wait for the full review with pics. Thanks for writing a review!:D

OK. Figured out the images. More to come this week now that I know I can upload photos!

Testing out some picture uploading.

Elegant Night (or whatever they call it- Formal night!). I was actually surprised at the number of tuxedos and long dresses we saw. So many lovely people took the time to dress up! There was a good mixture of just nice polos/sun dresses as well. We were "in the middle" dressed-up wise.

Mommy (Kim) and Keiran (almost 4!) at Castillo de San Cristóbal over looking the cruise ships in Puerto Rico

Kim

Thanks so much for this! 68 days and I'm back onboard! Glad to see you enjoyed one of my favorite ships. Can't wait for more pictures. Thanks agai for taking the time to write and post pictures, I really appreciate it.

Allow me to give you some background and introduce the cruisers! My husband and I really enjoy cruising, although we do not get to go on as many as we would like! We live just outside of Tampa, Florida- which is convenient for cruising. We both work and travel often for work. When not working, we are playing with our son, Keiran who will be 4 years old in December.

We had hoped to go on a cruise in May, but bought a new house instead in March.... so, plans were delayed! Luckily, we sold our old house quickly, got settled in to our new home and by July said- OK, let's book!

Introductions by pictures...

My son, Keiran. Also known onboard the Glory as "cherry boy" as all of the bartenders served him cherries and he adored them!

My husband, Steve. He took me on my first cruise. And then, 2 years later we were married on a cruise (Carnival Legend out of Tampa). Now, we cruise as a family and luckily our son loves it as much as we do!

Me, Kim aka Mommy on our balcony heading into St. Thomas. I spent many nights reading these boards pre-cruise. Hopefully someone will find an ounce of helpful information from my review so I can pass it forward.

Pre-cruise:

This was my 6th cruise, my husband's 7th and our son's 2nd. We have never been on a 2.0 upgraded ship, so we knew we wanted that. We really liked this itinerary of Half Moon Cay, Grand Turk as we had been there before with Keiran and they were easy beach days. We had never been to St. Thomas or Puerto Rico. We booked the 7 day Eastern Caribbean on the Glory!

I read so many helpful tips on these boards and learned so much pre-cruise. So, thank you!

First winner tip- the Verizon Smart Rewards (I have a Verizon cell phone thru work) that you could purchase Carnival e-Certificates for 10% off! We purchased $800 worth for $720. Score! (NOTE- they worked like a charm and it took all of 5 minutes to get them loaded to our onboard credit when we got onboard the first day)

I also saw that there were price drops, so I looked. We did not book ES but a casino rate. I called and they couldn't lower my rate (boo!) but, they did upgrade us to an aft-extended balcony from a regular balcony. We ended up not loving the aft balcony. But, the views were amazing.

FTTF was sold out when we first booked. I kept checking and SCORE! They opened some up 2 weeks before the cruise!

The day before the cruise, 4 suitcases and one box later we were ready for vacation! I use a box to bring a bunch of stuff that I do not mind if I leave behind or I know we will use up on the trip (sun screen, bucket/sand toys, etc.). We also had a backpack and a carry-on with water bottles.

That is it for tonight, will do posts throughout the week until I finish!

Enjoy!

Kim

Following! We are doing this same itinerary on Conquest next month :)

Looking forward to your review since we will be sailing on her in December. Recently I've seen comments about how rundown she appears - in dire need of painting! I hope you saw things differently.

I am sailing on her the 15th of November. Can't wait to read your review and think about the upcoming trip:)

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Looking forward to the full review. I'll be sailing on the Glory in a month :)

Any chance you remember which night had creme brûlée?

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Nice start to your review! I look forward to the rest, thanks for posting:)

Thanks for posting your review, and look forward to the rest. We enjoyed both of our cruises on the Glory.

Thanks for your review, loving the pictures.

Thank you for the review! i can't wait to see the rest of the pics.

Thanks for posting! I'll be following closely, since we're taking this same cruise in February, down to trying an aft balcony for the first time. Your son is adorable!

Thanks for posting...look forward to the rest! Sailing the Eastern Caribbean itinerary Glory at the end of November.

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Thanks for the review and looking forward to the rest. We are leaving this Saturday on the same cruise. So looking forward to it.

Thanks for the review and glad you had a wonderful cruise!

Can you tell me when the first Elegant night was? Sunday or Monday?

Thanks!

Have been looking for a new Glory review since forever.:)

Thanks for taking the time to post. We sail her in April.:)

Following along! Sailing her in April on the western route. Can you tell me if the Bitter N Blanc is back on the dessert menu?! :)

Love your review so far, can't wait for more as I will be on her this Saturday as well.

Nice review, can't wait to read the rest of it, we will be sailing her January 10. We are doing the same ports but sea days are at the end. Do you know when the formal nights will be? Want to go to the steakhouse but not on a formal night and not the first night.

Bruce

Thanks for posting. Doing this cruise in February.

YAY!! A glory review! Can't wait to read the rest! Not too many Glory reviews out there...woo hoo!!

Booked her mainly cause I want to experience 2.0 upgrades and She is stopping in HMC.. most favorite port so far... also St. Thomas and S.J. will be new port for me as well.. So excited!!

And your lil dude is adorable!!!! (my lil guy is 4 1/2)

Saturday, September 6th had arrived!

We decided to not spend the money on a hotel room and just drive down early Saturday. We left at 6:15am! It takes about 4 hours driving time, but with a 3.5 year old and all of the unknowns, we wanted to give ourselves extra time. Plus... who am I kidding, we like to start our vacation early! We are not those people who wait until the last minute to board.

The drive was uneventful with only 2 potty stops, lots of tablet games played by Keiran and a bit of a thunderstorm just outside of Miami. We made it to the port (and I will say, there were NO signs as to where your ship was... you had to look for the name of the ship on the actual ship!) around 10:30. Steve dropped Keiran & I off along with our bags at the porter. No problems there and I saw that they put the FTTF tags on and they made it into the FTTF “designated” cart. Steve parked in the garage and by 10:50 we were checked in, had our sail and sign cards and were ready to go. We had to wait until about 11:15 until they started the boarding process.

Before 11:30, we were onboard! First things first... go up the glass elevator!

We found our room, dropped off our bags in our home for the next week: 7446. Aft-extended balcony on the Empress. I will digress here a bit about the room... The balcony is larger. And great views when out at sea of sunrises. However, I did not like that you could see your neighbors as they were watching the wake and so were you. I felt like I was invading on their quiet time and vice versa. In addition, the vibration in the aft was not bad, but it was slightly noticeable. It would not have been as bad if the “lights” around the room did not slightly rattle throughout the night. By the third night, we got used to it and it no longer was bothersome. However, those first two nights I kept wanting it to stop or just keep rattling. Not off-and-on just as you were falling asleep! The cabin had 3 closets (2 hanging, 1 with 3 large shelves). All of our clothes (and I brought a lot!) fit just fine. In my “box” I also bring some extra plastic hangers and some little (think dollar store!) plastic baskets to put odds & ins in. These baskets held our batteries, etc. I also brought an over the door shoe hanger for all of our sunscreen, lotions, bandaids, etc. It worked out great. We also stored the Camp Carnival Fun Times there for easy access and to not get it mixed up with all of the daily ones (Camp Carnival just gives you one for the entire week with each day's activities & times in it).

I thought it would be fun for Keiran to decorate the door- so we packed (again, in the "box"). Keiran decorated over his bed too. Lot's of flip flops and beach balls with that blue "tack" stuff that comes off mess free! We also got a magnetic white erase board and put up in our room for Steve & I to leave each other notes, pin up the cell phone number, etc. (Camp Carnival gives you a cell phone for 2-5 year olds and it can also be used on the ship from any other phone/room/etc.)

View from the balcony after sailing. (at some point!)

Back to our first few hours on the Glory!

We explored the ship a bit and made our way to Lido for our first Guy's Burger. This turned out to be one of many lunches had at Guy's this week! My favorite was just the Plain Jain with cheese. Then, you can add your own toppings- mine: grilled onions, bacon & chipotle mayo. Yum!

My husband & I got the CHEERS package. We decided that we would try it so that we could try new drinks, not worry about not liking something and wasting money, just not worrying about it. We are not huge drinkers, but... on vacation decided that we could at least break even! We got a diet coke each (ohhh... big drinkers- lol!) and I went back to the room to start unpacking while Steve & Keiran explored the ship.

All of our bags were at our room by 12:45. I was unpacked and ready to explore the ship myself while Keiran & Steve took a nap. I got my first drink, didn't like it- so I got another! My drinks of choice during the day were Mai Tai. They were tasty, plus- they came with a $5 Match Play with your receipt for the Casino. Just be certain to sign the “reprint” and keep the original receipt. All bartenders were really good about giving us receipts for match play drinks (Classic Cocktails). I think that we only had to ask for it once or twice throughout the entire cruise.

I used this time to bring our e-gift certs printed out to Guest Services. Score FTTF. Only one other person in the FTTF/Platinum line. About 30 in line in the other line. It took all of 5 minutes and a couple of signatures and our CHEERS plus some was paid for! (remember, I got these discounted by 10%- free money!)