Quick Review of Glory 9/26 and plug for Dreams Photo Studio

[EricaR]

I did so much research here before choosing a cruise, so I figured I'd return the favor. I'll probably break this up into a few posts, and I will try to include some photos (which are all of the animals I cuddled at each port).

 

Pre-Cruise: My husband and I booked this cruise in February. I chose an aft extended room on the 7th deck and started choosing excursions. We were most excited about the stop in Cozumel - 6 years ago we got married in Playa del Carmen (directly across the water from Cozumel) and were so thrilled to get the chance to return to Rio Secreto. Of all the things we did on our honeymoon, this was by far our favorite.

 

Little did we know that in May I was going to get pregnant. Whoops! Thankfully I was only 21 weeks at the time of sailing, just missing Carnival's strict 24 week cutoff. BUT it also meant that Rio Secreto was out because they have a strict no pregnancy rule. Boo. I'll go into what we ended up doing at each port below. About two months before we left I noticed that one of the aft wrap cabins on deck 8 became available. I immediately dropped everything to call and book it. I also managed to snag FTTF at the same time. Being pregnant, it was nice knowing our room would be available immediately in case I needed to lay down for a bit early.

 

We flew into Miami the day before, and took a taxi from the airport to the Intercontinental Hotel. The taxi ran the two of us $40, which we thought was insanely expensive for a 10 minute ride. The hotel itself was gorgeous. We were on the 33rd floor with an amazing view of the harbor. This made it great to watch the ships pulling in the next morning.

 

Embarkation was extremely easy. We requested a car from Uber. It arrived in 5 minutes, and cost $5 for the two of us to get over to the terminal around noon. We sailed past most of the lines in the terminal and were on board in maybe 20 minutes?

 

Stateroom: Our stateroom was amazing. Absolutely amazing. The layout is different than the standard rectangular. Carnival's website says it is the same square footage as most of the rooms but it for sure felt larger. And the balcony? Wow. We had two loungers, two chairs, and two tables out there, spread around the whole length of the balcony. We used the heck out of this space, spending time out there every evening on port days and a huge chunk of time during sea days. Our room was spotless and the room steward fabulous - he always seemed to know exactly when we left the room so he could sneak in and service it.

 

Dining: Lido was OK. Repetitive, but both of us were always able to find something to eat. The MDR was the real star of the show. We did Anytime Dining. The first two nights we had so-so service and so-so food, but on the third night we were lucky enough to be seated in Lemsem's section. Lemsem took a great vacation and made it awesome. She was so friendly, warm, personable, and engaged with not just us but everyone in her section. Night after night we saw the same people requesting to be seated with her. There were even several times that we opted to wait for a table in her section rather than taking immediate seating somewhere else. Every morning we'd run into her in the Lido restaurant and she would ask us about our plans for the day, then that evening she'd ask how everything went. I really cannot say enough good things about her and what she brought to the entire experience.

[EricaR]

So I intended this to be a quick review, but I guess I had more to say than I had anticipated!

 

Sea days: This cruise had two sea days and four ports. Since we for sure cruise for the ports, this was a perfect combo for us! Both my husband and I have introverted tendencies, so we are the kind of people that tend to hang around the room vs being out and about on the ship. The sea days were mostly spent lounging around. My husband purchased the value internet package, so he would sit at the desk in the room working (LAME!) while I sat out on the balcony. I would sit out on the loungers and nap or read. Then read and nap. Followed by a bit more reading and/or napping. I work a crazy stressful job, so it felt so amazing to be lazy like this.

 

Cozumel: Since Rio Secreto was out for me, we opted to go back to our second favorite place from our honeymoon - Akumal. We knew it involved quite a bit of travel, so we booked the Turtle Cove excursion through Carnival. It rained as we boarded the ferry to go across to Playa del Carmen, but by the time we got to the mainland the weather was perfect. The day started out with a bit of snorkeling at a Cenote, then off to Akumal beach. The beach itself was gorgeous, but visibility in the water was extremely disappointing. It seemed that all the storms swirling around in the area had stirred up the water. We still managed to see a few turtles, a sting ray, and a bunch of fish. All in all, quite an enjoyable day.

 

Belize: Sigh. This was the first big hiccup of the trip. We had scheduled a trip to some Mayan ruins but that didn't happen. Breakfast at the Lido was quite busy, so my husband suggested we sit upstairs near the fish and chips. We got up there and realized we forgot to grab silverware so he headed downstairs to grab some. By the time he came back up he was limping. I asked what happened, and partway through telling me about having twisted his ankle he passed out! I yelled for help and another very kind passenger came over to help me while his wife ran to find an employee. Within 45 seconds or so he was back awake and completely aware of what was going on but boy was I scared.

 

A medical team was upstairs within 5 minutes. They did a quick evaluation and determined that his ankle wasn't broken and that passing out was probably a vasovagal response to the initial injury. My husband used to do martial arts and said that it had happened to him two or three times in the past. We were given a few options - a wheelchair was already on its way. They could take us down to the medical center for a full evaluation or we could go back to our room and decide to go down by ourselves later, if necessary. I left the decision up to DH and he opted to go back to our room. The wheelchair was there a few minutes later and we were on our way. We passed our room steward, and he quickly ran over with extra pillows and a bag full of ice.

 

I stuffed DH full of advil and insisted he elevate his leg. After a few hours he was going stir crazy and insisted on tendering over to Belize City. What can I say - the man is incredibly stubborn. I would probably still be in bed, enjoying being waited on hand and foot. So off we went. Thankfully there was a pharmacy right at the tender dock, so I ran in to grab some ace bandages and some 800mg ibuprofen. Once he was all wrapped up, he asked to walk around a bit and see what there was to see. Not too much there in the tourist village, but we did stumble across a "train" tour of the city for $30/person. There was no walking involved so off we went. We were the only ones on this tour, and it was great to get a one-on-one tour of everything. Needless to say, after our crazy morning plus the tour he was exhausted so we were back on board fairly early.

[EricaR]

Roatan: Did I mention that my husband is stubborn? If not, he's stubborn. He was determined not to let his ankle impact the rest of our trip. And it really didn't, except for us taking elevators more than walking. Yes, we were the annoying people using the elevator to go up or down one floor but stairs were really really tough on him.

 

For Roatan I had booked a private tour through Victor Bodden. We did opt to take a taxi from the port up and over the small hill to where the independent tour operators gather. Generally we would have walked such a short distance, but that would have been way too much for DH. We found Victor Bodden's group easily and 5 minutes later we were in a car and heading off into the jungle. This was a great day - we went to the iguana sanctuary, DH zip lined, and we hung around with some monkeys. Possibly the highlight of our entire trip was getting to hold Fluffy the Kinkajou. DH was smitten with her. Now all he can talk about is getting a pet kinkajou. I keep telling him that he'll have a pet baby in a few months, but he's still stuck on Fluffy. He's actually changed the background of his laptop and his cell phone to photos we took with Fluffy.

 

Grand Cayman: Here was hiccup #2 for the trip. As we pulled into Grand Cayman the captain came over the speaker to announce that the port had been closed due to the size of the swells, but that we were going to attempt to stop over at Spotts Bay. Spotts is about 6 miles down the island from George Town, so not too far. Trouble was that I had booked a private excursion through Moby Dick tours and that morning my phone decided to act up. Would Mark from Moby Dick know that we had moved? Would we be able to find him??? Well, all my worries were for naught because I spotted his banner as we got off the tender. Whew.

 

We were a very small group as one of the ships due into port that day had opted not to stay, so there were just two ships worth of passengers. There were approximately 14 of us on a boat big enough to hold 50! Off we went to snorkel on the reef and to Stingray City. The water was very very rough. I opted not to snorkel on the reef because I am not the strongest swimmer and with being pregnant I wanted to make sure to conserve enough energy for the rays. This was absolutely the right choice because the rays were spectacular. Thanks to the odd currents plus the extra high tide from the super moon, the water out at Stingray City was sometimes higher than even my husband's head and he is 6'3"! We had an amazing time swimming with the rays, feeding them squid, and just overall enjoying being surrounded by such cool creatures.

 

After the rays we headed off to the Turtle Farm. Turtles are my husband's favorite animals, and even knowing that they are raised for food we didn't want to miss the opportunity to see them up close. We had been walking around for about 30 minutes when I noticed that the sky had started to get dark. Finished up holding the small turtles and it started sprinkling. I looked at my phone and saw that we had about 1.5 hours to get back and knew that Spotts was about a half an hour drive, so I recommended we leave. My husband tried to say that we still had time, but something just felt off to me and I insisted we go. By then it was raining pretty hard. We ran out front to try and catch a public bus - no luck. Apparently they stop running outside of George Town once it starts raining. Headed back inside the turtle farm and begged the gals at the front desk to call a taxi. They were reluctant to, since so many tourists request taxis and then catch a public bus, leaving the taxi driver high and dry. I went through my wallet and pulled out $40 to show the gal, promising that we'd wait inside and give it all, plus a tip, to the first taxi that appeared. Ten minutes later we were on our way. By then it was POURING. And I mean pouring. Since the island is flat as a pancake, the roads started flooding immediately. The 30 minute drive took about 45 minutes and we got back to Spotts about 15 minutes before the last scheduled tender. I NEVER cut things close like that and was flipping out. So thankful I insisted we leave the turtle farm "early"!!!!! We had to wait in line for a tender, in the rain, and both of us were completely soaked through. Thankfully it was a warm rain, and it made the hot shower once back on board feel even better.

Edited October 8, 2015 by EricaR

[EricaR]

And finally - photos. We had said that one of our goals for the week was to get a good photo of the two of us together. We tend to have a lot of bad selfies or goofy photos our friends have taken, but no really good photos since our wedding (and we don't even love most of those). We hopped in line at every photo opportunity we saw, and had a lot of fun sorting through our pictures in the gallery each day.

 

During the evening after Roatan, one of the photographers mentioned the Dream Photo Studio to us. This is a private photo studio in the back of the Ebony lounge on deck 4. They were set up to take black and white photos in there, in a more formal setting that the random photo setups around the various decks at dinner time. We opted to sign up for a session the evening after Grand Cayman, which was also the second formal night.

 

This added a bit of extra stress to our insane Grand Cayman day. There I was, snarled hair from being in the ocean PLUS soaking wet and filthy from the rain, knowing we had a scheduled photo shoot in an hour. NOT my best planning. Even with all that stress, this ended up being such a cool experience.

 

You meet the photographer by the photo gallery on deck 4, and he takes you to his studio. We sat down and chatted with the photographer, Bojan, for a few minutes. He was extremely nice, so conversation flowed easily. The actual photo session was pretty quick, maybe half an hour? That night we got a card in our mailbox with our appointment to view the photos the following night.

 

I was extremely nervous because what if I hated the photos? Or even worse, what if I loved them but they were so expensive I couldn't afford them???

 

I shouldn't have worried because the photos came out amazing. I usually hate photos of me, but these I loved. Absolutely loved them! LOVE! After you look through the photos they present pricing. Of course they start with the most expensive packages, then work down from there. I've had professional photos done, and the pricing here was about 20% less than I've seen from local photographers. Plus no sitting fee! In the end we selected 4 photos we both loved, and they will be delivered in 4-6 weeks.

 

The day we flew home I realized that I really really wanted two additional prints. I quickly reached out to Bojan to ask him to save his digital files, then reached out to Carnival customer service. We are in the process of working out the details to add those two to my initial order. Whew. I think I'd always regret not getting them had I not at least tried.

 

All in all, this was a great experience. One I highly recommend to anyone looking to get memorable photos taken.

[Babycat]

Sounds like a great time😀 You know you're gonna have to post those photos right? 😆😆😆

[EricaR]

I won't have them for 4-6 weeks! :( I'm impatient and want them NOW!

[cruiseclues]

Thank you for your additional review comments. :):):):)

[Bsbllmom]

Sounds like a great time😀 You know you're gonna have to post those photos right? 😆😆😆

 

LOL I was going to say the same thing.

 

So glad you had a great time and I can't wait to see the photos.

[silvercrikhix]

Great review!

Congrats on your pregnancy!

So do tell, how much for 4 photos (you must post--LOL) ?

I am seriously thinking of doing this on our upcoming cruise.

Edited October 9, 2015 by silvercrikhix

[Patbeth]

Yes please. Do tell us how much. Our family is all going to be together, so I would love to do this. I would like to know if it is a doable dream, or just a dream. Thanks so much. Also not sure if it matters or is the same on all ships or not, but we will be on Conquest.

[EricaR]

Great review!

Congrats on your pregnancy!

So do tell, how much for 4 photos (you must post--LOL) ?

I am seriously thinking of doing this on our upcoming cruise.

 

The four photos were $500, I think? And they come printed and ready to mount on the wall. We saw a few different options and were really impressed with how nice these looked. I saw similar at a local photographer for $200 each!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[trixiegal]

First, congrats on your pregnancy! Do you know if it's a boy or girl, if you feel like sharing. [emoji4]

 

My sister had a baby last year and he's the light of my life, as my two kids are getting all grown up and independent now. I just love babies !!!

 

I'm glad you had a nice cruise despite your husband's injury to his ankle. Sounds like you made the best of it and it all worked out well.

 

We also took photos with the Dreams Photo Studio in 2013 on the Carnival Dream and I was very impressed. My DD was starting her senior year of HS and I wanted some nice photos of her and all of us together. I usually spend a lot on photos because I'm very picky and pay close attention to detail. It's a keepsake item that lasts a lifetime so I feel like it's worth it to spend some $$. Our pictures came out so beautiful, especially one of my DD on the promenade deck with the sunset and her long hair blowing in the wind. I wanted all of them but I chose 3 and it was a little under $400.