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Texasgalsa

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

    in Carnival Cruise Lines

    Posted

    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.

     

    CarnivalLegend-Aft-IMG_0745.JPG

     

    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

    My Carnival Valor Southern Caribbean review!! With 2 days in Old San Juan !

    in Carnival Cruise Lines

    Posted

    We didn't but I would imagine you could request one. I'm sure he has them but I would email him to be sure. I posted more pics after you posted this question but if you want to see a ton of pics from all his tours you can go to his facebook page(google "Javin's MyIsland tours) and there's a link to his shutterfly account where he posts all the photos that he takes of his tours.

     

     

    Just saw how Javin post tons of pictures each day for his tours! That is crazy and such an amazing perk for this tour!!! Eeeee! Can't wait! : )

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