icft

Should a person announcing to the world when they are out of their cabin tell their cabin number?

I also think that would be a major flaw. I did a little searching and found this: https://www.carnival.com/~/media/CCLUS/Images/pdf/securityalertpdf.pdf It says you can dial 911, but then it also says "The following information is provided to you in accordance with the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act." They have never provided this information to me - I had to dig deep to find it.

Wish I could help but we have never looked for the Chef's Table so I don't know.

We were on the cruise right after yours. I think your comment on the comedian being fired explains why we only had one comedian for the first three days. We also found the Glory to be in excellent condition. We sail her often and they did a two week wet dock in Freeport early this year and have continued to upgrade things. On our cruise after yours it was apparent they had resurfaced many of the table tops in the public ares and they were reupholstering the furniture on the Promenade a sitting area at a time when we were there. The Glory, at least, is a change from Carnival's past practice of fixing up a ship then doing no maintenance until it is a rust bucket. They are not only maintaining but constantly renewing that ship. The room safe thing is strange. They have been slowly replacing those card opened safes on Glory with keypad safes, but it has been at a snails pace. I think they wait until an old style breaks before they replace it with a keypad safe. We almost always stay on the same hallway when we sail Glory and we had though they had changed all the safes. But then we stayed in a cabin we had not been in before that was between two we had been in and it had a card open safe! The deck 3 dining area really is a mess since the galley blocks all ways forward from the dining room. But if you are willing to walk up one flight of stairs to deck 4 you can walk to the mid ship elevator bank. On deck four the first room forward of the aft elevators is the Ivory Bar. It is a very nice place that is seldom used. We sometimes go there to sit in silent luxury. The bar is only open for special occasions, but the room is wonderful and always open. Anyhow, if you walk through it there is an exit to a hallway on the starboard side that goes all the way to the mid ship elevators and the back entrance to the Golden dining room. Usually you the doors to the Golden dining room are open and you can walk all the way to the forward elevators.

You have a good point about the cruise industry avoiding excessively dangerous ports. But that is only partially true. They do dock in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York... 😁

Concerned about the violence in Mexico? It depends. We feel that Cozumel is pretty safe. Being a somewhat small island where people know each other, know when strangers are around, and quick escape from the area is not readily available tends make it less desirable for criminals. There are better places for criminals to operate, like just across the way on the mainland. But we try to avoid most of Mexico. One of our sons lived in the Tampico area for a year with little problem. But he had a bodyguard, driver and designated go and no-go zones. He told us our major risk in Mexico is kidnapping. Apparently it is a major industry, but they have it down to a science and things usually go smoothly.

We often sail on the Glory which is also a Conquest class ship. Our favorite location is Deck 10 forward of the elevators. Deck 9 forward of the elevators is also good. That is not to say there are not other good locations, but we do balcony rooms and have never had any noise problems. If the neighbors are quiet you just hear the wind and sea.

No tournaments on our Sept 18 - 25 cruise.

I think that is the new term for "they try to sell you a bunch of stuff."

AARP has occasional "senior moments."

I guess they are going to announce their new internet hours. I am told by experts that things like this are not "cutbacks." They are in fact "changes."

RCL might be interesting around $19 - 20.

I've never traded CCL, but looking at the chart I might be tempted to buy a few lottery tickets on it around $5.00 if it gets down there.

My wife always wears a camelbak full of water. No problems in over thirty cruises.

Premier cruise offers are legit. The only let-down you might feel is that the "free gifts" tend to be trinkets but other than that you get what they promise. They offer the low price in the hope that you will spend money in the casino but you are not required to even go to the casino. Of course if you don't gamble they will be less likely to make casino offers in the future, but I would not recommend gambling just to get future offers unless you truly enjoy gambling. We have gone on many Premier cruises, but then we really enjoy gambling. In the long run they get more in casino revenue than they give up in low prices, OBC and gifts from those of us who follow the casino offer path. But for those of us who enjoy gambling anyhow the casino offers are nice. Take the offer if you like the cruise. Don't gamble if you don't want to.

I thought that was cleanliness... but then I'm getting old and find it hard to keep these things straight.

I agree with everything you said. For us two things are keeping us with Carnival for the time being. One is we have a full line-up of free cruises through March and the other is the wonderful crew. But I fully understand if you chose other lines.

That is good to hear. I guess they were just a tad slow getting folks to their stations early on in the check-in process. New Orleans is almost always great for embarking and disembarking.

I think I saw ship-on-a-stick on the new room service menu...

Hold my beer! We just got back from a most enjoyable cruise on the Glory but one thing was so absurd we had to laugh. We like bacon and over-easy eggs for breakfast. On sea days that was no problem as we would eat at seaday brunch. But after two sea days we had three port days in a row. So we went to Lido the first port day. They had bacon on the serving line but when we went to the omelet station they were out of fresh eggs. The second day we again went to Lido and there was no bacon to be had but the omelet station had fresh eggs for our over-easy. The third day we went to Lido and there was bacon on the line but they were out of fresh eggs. That third day I complained to the guy at the station saying I knew it wasn't his fault, but Carnival was messing us over and we were not happy. The response, "If you got here when we open at 6 we would have eggs."

We got back Sunday from the Glory September 18 – 25th cruise and thought anyone with an upcoming Glory cruise might be interested in our observations. Embarkation seems to have had a bit of a problem, though it didn’t really have much effect on us. Usually when boarding in New Orleans there is a steady stream of passengers proceeding from the ground entrance then up a floor to the check-in stations then security and finally seating until boarding. This time they held folks at the ground entrance and only let 30 or so go up at a time. We were in the 10am arrival slot and only had about a five minute wait and when we got to the second floor we saw the problem. They had the usual number of check-in stations set up but only half were in use. Our best guess is they could not get enough people to man the other half. While it was a small delay for us it could have been a bigger problem for later arrivals. They started boarding at 10:45 while their normal target in New Orleans is 11am. Ship’s condition is great! Early this year they did a two week wet dock at Freeport. We cruised on Glory just before and just after that and the amount of work they did in that two weeks amazed us. They replaced public area carpets, wall treatments and many ceiling treatments among other things. The last we cruised on Glory was in April and on that cruise we were pleased to see they were constantly painting, and not just throwing paint over rust but using power tools to get the rust off, then priming then painting. On this cruise they were reupholstering the seating along the Promenade deck starboard side and they had obviously recently refinished table tops all over the ship. About the second day I realized I had not seen any rust so I started looking closely. Yes, if you look closely you can find nooks and crannies with touches of rust, but there is no such thing as a ship without some rust, even on its first cruise. Last week’s Glory was the most rust-free ship we have ever sailed. Mid-cruise, maintenance knocked on our door. They were there to replace the screen where the water comes out of the faucet in the bathroom sink. Obviously they are taking routine maintenance seriously on Glory. We have never been fans of the production shows on Carnival and having seen them so many times we haven’t been to one in a while. But this cruise there was something called “Amor Cubano” that we had not seen. We went and found it quite enjoyable. It is billed as sounds of Cuba and is well worth seeing. The amazing thing for us is that most Carnival shows manipulate the sound to boot high and low frequencies and suppress the middle with resulting screeching female vocals and a headache. That was not done for this show and you could actually enjoy the singing voices. If only we understood Spanish… 😁 Punchliner comedy shows are very subjective but they only had one comedian the first three nights and two the rest of the cruise. The one for the first three nights did not click with us so overall we felt the comedy was weak this cruise overall but very good the last part of the cruise. They really should have two comedians every night to avoid the “doesn’t click with us” problem. The crew on Carnival ships is always wonderful and this cruise was no exception. It doesn’t seem right to leave how great they are to those few words since they are a major reason that we keep coming back despite management’s cutbacks but it is just something you have to experience. Glory is not immune to the cutbacks that have been widely discussed on this forum, but it is no worse and thanks to the crew probably better than the situation on other ships. So I will leave that discussion to other threads. But I will mention one thing that worked well for us. The Glory is sailing with a full passenger load these days. With the cutbacks that can create lines at the Lido food buffet, deli, etc. We avoided a lot of that by eating breakfast at sea day brunch and dinner in the main dining room. With your time dining and making reservations on the app there was no standing in line or being forced to eat at inconvenient times. We also had no problem getting good food though you might have to improvise or order an additional dish if you one you first ordered wasn’t up to snuff. One evening I ordered several appetizers because the main course offerings did nothing for me. Another evening the main course wasn’t to my taste but the soup that had been one of the appetizers was outstanding. So I sent back the main course, ordered more soup and was quite full and happy by the end of the meal. All-in-all, we had a great time.

We were on that cruise. If I had known you were there I would have climbed up the whale tail and waved.

I agree that Carnival's production shows leave something to be desired. I have never been to one I liked so after seeing each one once I stopped going.The biggest negative for me is the sound quality. I think the screechy female singers is because they seem to pump up high frequency and low frequency sound and suppress the mid range. But there are those who enjoy those shows until they have seen them too many times and I too find it sad that they rarely change.

Looking forward to it. Posting now to get auto notifications when you post and to let you know someone is following. 😁