Carnival Glory with infant in tow - 12/12/10-12/19/10

[rin1]

The cruisers - myself, DH and DD (8 months old). It was DH and my 3rd cruise, second with Carnival, and DD's 1st. :-) By and large, I can't remember what we had for dinner on a night by night basis and did not participate in most of the activities, so this is an overall review from that perspective.

Embarkation - We arrived around 1:00 hoping to avoid the line. The line found us anyway. I will say that it moved at a reasonable clip and we were on the ship within the hour, despite all of the people in front of us. Carnival was also using these yellow balls on lanyards to time the line, so they are definitely trying to be mindful of it and it shows.

Day 1 - Miami - DH and I plopped our stuff down in our Lido balcony room (which we loved, would definitely recommend) and went to explore the ship. The layout was reasonably familiar from the Victory (including the "you can't get there from here" dining room - Deck 5 is your friend to get to that one). I liked the colorful decor and did not find it overdone, as it was broken up by solid black, at least in the flooring, but that's just me. We watched sailaway from our balcony for the first time ever and met up with some Roll Call folks for a M&G. We had Your Time Dining and arrived in the dining room just after it opened and got seated right away, by a window as I requested. The waitstaff doted on our daughter and tried to keep her happy (no easy feat).

 

Day 2 - "Fun" Day at Sea - You know you're in for quite a day when you wake up around 5:30 AM because you are queasy. I laid around for a while, willed it to stop, and took a Bonine when willing didn't work. I tried to eat something, which caused my stomach to say "Ha! That's what I hoped you would do!" and cause me to return to bed and the fetal position. The second Bonine (you can take up to 2) did the trick, though, and I managed to make it to lunch in the MDR. I had a good steak salad. Walking around in heels that night for Elegant Night was...interesting. Sawdust had already appeared on the floors by the time seasickness bags were taped up near the elevators. Little slow on the uptake there. It just wasn't a very pleasant day. I believe I told my husband that I wouldn't be cruising again, a statement I had reversed by the end of the week. Fun Fact: Another guest was told by a crew member that the rocking we experienced that day was 10% of what the ship could handle. Yikes. DH and DD were unaffected by the waves, so they had a decent day.

 

Day 3 - Cozumel - I was glad that I had brought a hoodie when we got off the ship in Cozumel. The nation's cold front had followed us south. It wasn't cold, but it was colder than I'd expected in the Caribbean. DH and I had been to Cozumel before and snorkeling, etc. is not practical with an infant in tow. We decided to walk around in port and couldn't really get to much besides the nice little tourist area because the main road just stretches around the island and you'd have to walk for a ways to get to city per se. We were back on the ship by lunch and enjoyed the Mongolian Wok restaurant. The Thai BBQ sauce was not what either of were expecting, but it was tasty nonetheless.

 

Day 4 - Belize - We definitely should have scheduled an excursion for this port. The tender ride was perhaps enough of an excursion for us; I didn't realize how far away we would be. We waiting past the initial rush and ended up walking almost directly on to a tender without much in the way of lines. I wanted to go cave tubing, but again, infant. Maybe in a few years. We decided to walk around and some of it was interesting, but there were some areas that felt kinda sketchy to us. Pretty decent police presence, however. We were a little wary of the barbed wire around the port area and elected to shop for a little bit, but spent the bulk on the day on the ship.

 

Day 5 - Roatan - This was by far our favorite port. We were at the Mahogany Bay port and and it was artificial as heck, with a lovely shopping area and beach restricted to cruise ship passengers, but it served our purposes just fine. We skipped the ski lift chairs and took a lovely little walk past the Duty Free shopping to what seemed like miles upon miles of lounge chairs. We even got to enjoy some time in a hammock. DD got to dip her little toes in the ocean for the first time (to say that she hated it would be putting it mildly) and DH had a nice swim. I did my best to take as many physical and mental pictures as I could to last me through this cold winter. Ahhh...paradise.

 

Also of note was that this was the Past Guest party day and we had received no invitation for whatever reason. A quick trip to Guest Services resolved that issue. I don't know if it was that we were traveling with an infant for the fact that we were on Your Time Dining. <shrug> DH and I had been saddened that the Captain's Dinner did not also have free drinks, as we could have sworn they did a few short years ago, but rather $1 off. Maybe we are losing our minds, but it seems like Carnival is cutting back a bit.

 

Day 6 - Grand Cayman - This was our first time at this port as we had to skip it on our last cruise do to sea conditions. We elected to try to get to Seven Mile beach on our own. I had heard that you could take a bus there and we didn't have our car seat in port with us so that seemed like a fine idea. Apparently their "buses" are indistinguishable from their taxis (think 15 passenger vans), except they display the letters "WB" and only cost $2.50 pp. We would definitely bring a car seat and try to arrange for a vehicle with seat belts next time as riding around on Grand Cayman, as with almost all island driving, scares the daylights out of me. I think it is worse for me mentally when they drive on the "wrong" side of the road.

 

We thought we told the driver "Sea Grape Beach", but we missed the sign for the restaurant at Sea Grape Beach and he thought we wanted to go to the Turtle Farm. DH and I can now officially say that we enjoy long walks on the beach (pity neither of us is currently writing a personal ad), as we walked at least 2 miles back along the beach to get there. We made the best of it, picking up shells, etc. along the way. Tried the water at Pebbles Beach. DD continued to find the ocean to be a terrible, awful idea and couldn't understand why people enjoyed it. We got some great pictures.

 

Day 7 - Actual Fun Day at Sea - DH and I thoroughly enjoyed our last Sea Day. We even got our lazy selves to the jogging track! There was lots of eating and lots of sleeping to be had. The temperatures and the sea conditions were perfect. We did learn that Camp Carnival had apparently shifted the open play time for infants from 12-2 to earlier in the morning. No mention of this was made in the Fun Times, I guess we had to get some sort of Camp Carnival newsletter? Oh well. We went back to the for a nap. In an effort to squeeze the most out of our vacation, I decided to hit the hot tub before dinner. I decided to check out the Serenity hot tubs and found them full of people with buckets of beer acting anything but serene and a few uncomfortable-looking passengers just trying to relax. It was from there that I spied the hot tub in the spa area with attached against-the-current pool. Aside from not being outside, I loved that hot tub and wished I had found it sooner. The temperature was the best on the ship (I tried the aft ones that night before and stuck a hand in a few others to check temperature) and Carnival really did its best to make the area serene. Would definitely go back.

 

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing day, but it just made me sad, as the last day usually does.

Debarkation - We elected to do the Relaxed Debarkation option, which I really liked. The only problem was that they announced a whole group of zones while we were in the MDR for breakfast and I guess the gangway got jam-packed because there was a significant pause in which we had no idea which zones were free to go because we couldn't hear any announcements in the Platinum. Maybe a display somewhere or simply an announcement in-between would have made us feel less like we had missed a significant memo. All in all, it was pretty smooth. Customs took forever for reasons we still cannot fathom because we got through us in under 2 min. and we waited 45 min for about 10 families in front of us. <shrug>

 

Your Time Dining - We really liked this option. Having a baby on vacation with a variable nap schedule, we ate dinner all over the map, from 5:45-8:30. Flexibility was really key for us and we would have happily had most of the staff for multiple nights, it just didn't work out because our dining times were so sporadic. DD clearly made an impression on the waitstaff as she was greeted warmly by name all over the ship for the entire week. It was really nice. The only downside was that our variable time confused the heck out of our room steward who had no idea when to make up our room. After a few days of unsuccessfully putting the "Cruizin'" sign outside of our door, we just took to calling housekeeping to let them know when we left our stateroom, which worked fine.

Food Overall - We both liked the food in general. DH and I had a few favorite starters. I loved all of the cold soups, especially the peach one which I almost didn't order as peaches are not my favorite fruit. I enjoyed the presentation, as they were poured at the table with a little garnish island in the middle. They really got me the first night when I ordered the gazpacho and this little island of greenery in the middle of an empty bowl came out. "Here's your gazpacho" said the waiter. I immediately looked confused and he laughed and poured my soup - he got me good! DH liked the Spaghetti Carbonara and the scallops as part of a seafood starter I liked the filet mignon and my husband particularly enjoyed the Basa fish (apparently it won an award), the Norweigan salmon and the lobster, although he wished there had been more of the latter.

 

We liked the buffet, as well, but would have liked longer hours, particularly in the evening, since we ate so early. Right around sailaway would have been nice, too. The specialty restaurant lines just got really long then and I didn't want to go in for a whole burrito/burger, etc., but I just wanted a little bit of fruit or something. As you can imagine, I ate a lot of ice cream. I'm afraid to step on the scale. Wish me luck.

 

With high points unfortunately come low points. I don't know if recipes have changed fleet-wide, but the desserts were not as good as they had been on the Victory. I was super excited to see the Mango Marscapone Mousse that I remembered so fondly from embarkation day. It was just okay and they had inexplicably added a chocolate crust. The key lime cheesecake a few days later tasted like cheesecake, but not key lime and again had an inexplicable chocolate crust. I was also saddened by the lack of variety in the sorbets. I thought it was Carnival that changed up their sorbets to interesting things like honeydew and coconut, but I may be confusing it with our Princess cruise. The most adventurous sorbet was pineapple, which was good, but I wanted more variety. The other low point was one day for breakfast I thought I was getting a delicious piece of olive foccaccia and ended up with some sort of fish bread that had no label to indicate its true nature. Going in for olives and getting fish was quite unpleasant. Even my husband, who had been forewarned by me and enjoys fish, took a bite and found it to be inedible. You have been warned.

 

There were a few dessert highlights. The creme brulee was tasty and HUGE. There was a chocolate amaretto cake which was more fudge than cake, quite tasty. If you're a chocolate melting cake fan, just stick to that, as that was still good. I ended up hitting the ice cream machine a lot, particularly for strawberry (when available).

 

Entertainment - Traveling with an infant you can bet we didn't go in much for the entertainment. We didn't spend time on Lido during the day and couldn't hear it from our balcony, which was honestly a good surprise as we wanted to hear the ocean. Towards the last few nights I made it out for a few of the R-Rated comedians. I particularly liked Happy Cole. DH made a brief and not-so-fruitful foray into the casino. Roulette will do that.

 

Overall we had a great time. We would definitely do it again. Feel free to comment with any questions. I plan to review the specific kid aspects on the family board, but I figured I'd post the overall review here. :)

[Tbay-eh]

I usually don't read reviews as they are usually insanely long and walk you through every minute of every day. I am not scheduled nor have sailed the Glory but for some reason I opened it and was pleasantly surprised. You were concise and to the point and covered most aspects without being a yawn. Also another fact I appreciated is how you are going to post the kid stuff on the kids board - kudos to you. I wish others would follow your lead. Excellent review. Have a great Christmas - we are getting snow right now but beautifully mild - living in Northern Ontario we expect this and want it.

[rin1]

Awww...thanks! :o That's exactly what I was trying for.

[makeup face]

Thanks for the review....I'll be on the Glory in.....(see below)

[Carolin]

Thank you for your review. I had wondered how your cruise went with your little one with you. It went about what I had expected. I'm so glad you enjoyed your balcony as well as some of the other amenities on the ship.

[Julitta]

I liked your review too. I'm always interested to hear how people cruise with young children. We'll be on the Victory soon with our 3-yr-old DD.

 

I'm totally going to get the creme brulee, it's my fave! :)

[Cruise, J.D.]

Thanks for the review!! It is a different experience with a young'un. The gazpacho trick is a good one - they got my mom with it last cruise.

[embpsu03]

We were on the glory the week before you with a 15 MO. I was so impressed on how the staff was with the baby it was wonderful. he to was known all over the ship. We did get to take advantage of camp carnival a few times and it was great. Although i agree we missed a lot of the entertainment, but overall gave us more time to relax!!

[rin1]

Thanks, everyone!

 

Julitta - If you end up getting the creme brulee, save room - it was huge!

 

Cruise J.D. - It's definitely a different experience, but still great. I'd definitely do it again and I wouldn't change a lot of what we did.

 

embpsu03 - DH isn't big on the entertainment in the first place, so I don't think he "missed" it at all. ;) We watched a lot of movies in the room, actually because we weren't amazed with the selection at the Seaside Theater, and that was honestly pretty nice. Doesn't take much to make us happy. :)