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A GLORY-OUS week 03/01/20 - 03/08/20


byrdbrain55
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I am dying for another cruise so I have been enjoying reading a bunch of old reviews and thought I would try my hand at a review of my latest cruise on the Carnival Glory on 3/1/20 to 3/8/20.  A little about the group that was on this trip:

 

Me:  42 year old female, my boyfriend, L, who was celebrating his 50th birthday on this cruise.  We were traveling with three other couples as well; B and C are experienced cruisers who are just shy of Diamond status, J and D, this was their 2nd cruise and J and S, who were cruise virgins.  S and I work together and she has never traveled out of the country so this was a whole new experience for her.  

 

We booked this cruise in August 2019 so we had plenty of time to plan and talk about what we wanted to do in each port.  Our itinerary is as follows:

 

March 1    New Orleans

March 2   Fun Day at Sea

March 3   Fun Day at Sea

March 4   Roatan, Honduras

March 5   Belize City, Belize

March 6   Cozumel, Mexico

March 7   Fun Day at Sea

March 8   New Orleans

 

We all flew in the day before the cruise.  L and I picked up J and S at about 5 am and we got to the airport, dropped our luggage off and had no problems going through security.  We had a short flight to Seattle and then a non-stop to New Orleans.  I had arranged for ground transportation from the airport to our hotel through Alert Transportation with a 14 passenger mini bus.  I arranged it easily through email and it was $20 per person, which I paid up front and everyone paid me back.  As we were coming down the escalator to baggage claim, our driver was waiting for us with a sign.  Once everyone had their bags, we loaded into the minivan and had a pleasant drive into New Orleans to our hotel at the Omni Riverfront (booked on Expedia for $188.21 with tax.  L and I ended up in a room with 2 queen beds and everyone else had rooms with a king.  I don't know how we got so lucky, lol.  It is a running joke with my family that L and I have separate bedrooms since we aren't married and "living in sin" so I made sure to send a photo to my dad to show him even the hotel made sure we were separate.

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Once everyone was settled in their rooms, we all decided to walk around and see if we could find someplace to eat for dinner.  We ended up walking a block or two to Mannings, which is a sports bar/restaurant owned by Peyton and Eli Manning's family.  There was about a 30 minute wait so we spent time taking photos and just enjoying the sights.  I am not an adventurous eater so I got a Buffalo Chicken Wrap without the buffalo sauce and L had the fried seafood platter with a side of red beans and rice.  The food was good and several people had Bloody Marys, which were apparently very spicy.  I ended up eating most of L's red beans and rice and I wish I had just gotten a bowl as my entree, they were so good.  After dinner, L and I with J and S decided to take an Uber to Walmart to pick up wine and soda for the cruise.  It was about 5-10 minutes to Walmart and the area seemed a little sketchy but everyone was very friendly.  After finishing our shopping, we Ubered back to the hotel and went back to the room to reorganize our bags so the wine and soda were in a carry on.

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I knew it was time for bed when I looked up at L in one bed and a suitcase open on the other bed and asked, in all seriousness, "where am I supposed to sleep."  Thank God he loves me because he just looked at me and my brain finally engaged and I crawled into bed and promptly passed out.  Tomorrow is our long awaited: Embarkation Day!

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50 minutes ago, NC_Cruisin said:

Thank you so much for starting a review, I am looking forward to following along!

I agree, me too! You may inspire me to finish my review which I began but haven"t finished yet. Mine 's was from New Orlean's too, but 2/16/20-2/23/20 on NCL Getaway. Thank you in advance for your review....enjoying it!

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2 hours ago, Moonglo said:

I agree, me too! You may inspire me to finish my review which I began but haven"t finished yet. Mine 's was from New Orlean's too, but 2/16/20-2/23/20 on NCL Getaway. Thank you in advance for your review....enjoying it!

Thank you!  I will have to look for your review.  I’ve never been on any of the NCL ships.

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Hi all!

 

byrdbrain55 ~ thanks for starting the review. I'll be on Glory after Breakaway in February if all goes well. Looking forward to see how the cruise virgins enjoyed cruising & what you all did in the ports.

Waiting patiently for your next instalment.

 

~ Jo ~ 😊

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5 hours ago, retiring soon said:

Hi all!

 

byrdbrain55 ~ thanks for starting the review. I'll be on Glory after Breakaway in February if all goes well. Looking forward to see how the cruise virgins enjoyed cruising & what you all did in the ports.

Waiting patiently for your next instalment.

 

~ Jo ~ 😊

 

Spoiler alert... the cruise virgins loved it and are looking forward to cruising again.  

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Embarkation Day has arrived!  Our plan was to walk from our hotel with our luggage since it wasn't far from the cruise port, drop our bags off and then walk down to Mardi Gras World.  However, that is not what we ended up doing.  B and C wanted to get on board as soon as possible and since they have priority boarding, they walked with their luggage.  B texted me and told me that it was a difficult walk with narrow cobblestones and lots of traffic to dodge.  We decided to just catch an Uber to the port from the hotel.  J and D took an Uber and let us know that it would have been a long walk.  What they didn't realize is that the cars have to drive all the way around the Convention Center before coming back to the cruise port.

 

J and S walked down the street to find a cafe so they could get their caffeine fix and we waited for them to get back.  S wanted photos in front of the plantation shutters in their room.  Their room was set up completely different from ours and they had huge windows overlooking the parking lot for the Outlet Collection at Riverwalk.  After finishing their photo shoot, we grabbed an Uber for the four of us and headed for the ship.

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Once we arrived, we handed off our luggage to the porters.  I think we gave them a $5 tip for our 3 bags.  On our last cruise, one of my luggage tags was ripped off so I had gotten all of us luggage tags with a metal ring to secure them to our bags (from Amazon).  There was a very long line of people waiting to get in to the building to check in.  They were doing heightened medical screening, which made me laugh since what that meant was we had to fill out a paper saying that we felt healthy and were no experiencing any illnesses.  We stood in line roughly an hour before finally making inside to check in and go through security.  When we put our carry-on through with the wine and soda, they didn't blink and we walked from security straight onto the ship.  DSCN2031.thumb.JPG.15ab773905dec4ddfd1b28385d25807c.JPG

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I'll post the Fun Times and Important Info here before moving on to the rest of the review.  Both of us had the HUB app on our phones and chose to add the $5 chat feature for the cruise.  It was nice to be able to communicate with each other if we weren't together.  

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Once onboard, we headed up to the Lido to meet up with the rest of the crew and to get some food.  I was starving since I hadn't eaten breakfast.  Thankfully, B and C and J and D were just finishing up with their lunch so they had seats saved along the windows behind the Red Frog Rum Bar.  L and I both got our first Guy's Burgers of the cruise.  I always go for the Pig Patty and love that I can pick my own toppings from the Toppings Bar.  I love the Donkey Sauce for dipping my fries.  

 

I'm going to confess now that I did a horrible job on this cruise of taking photos of my food or the menus or the ship for that matter.  I took a ton on our Journeys cruise in January 2018 and I never ended up doing a review and I didn't think I would end up doing a review this time either.  Sorry in advance!

 

After lunch, they announced that rooms were ready so we headed down to our room to drop off our carry-ons and get the sodas into the mini fridge.  We met our room steward, Aurelio and told him that we only needed to have our room serviced once a day.  We chose am service and requested an ice bucket with ice.  He did a good job and even refilled the ice in the evenings even though we didn't have pm service.  All of our group had rooms on Deck 1 and all but J and D had inside cabins.  

 

S and I booked at the same time and we had rooms next to each other on Deck 1 Forward, J and D were just down the hall in an outside cabin just past the forward elevators midship and B and C were on the opposite side of the ship in the last aft inside cabin.  B and C said that there was a LOT of noise in their cabin and they would never book the last aft cabins again.

 

After dropping our bags, we went off to explore the ship (insert imaginary ship photos that I didn't take).  One of our first stops was the secret decks on Deck 6 and 7 forward.  We took some photos of the New Orleans Skyline and each other on the benches up front as well as the Crescent City Connection (bridges).

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We spent some time wandering around and exploring until it was time for the muster drill.  We got there early, went out on the deck and they sent us back inside since they hadn't sounded the tones.  We went into the 4th floor of the lounge to wait and they tried to shoo us out of there since it was time for the muster.  They eventually let us stay until the tones sounded.  Muster seemed to take forever and then they released us in stages so we were one of the last groups released.  It was chaos but we eventually made it back up to the Lido Deck for the Sailaway Party.  

 

Like I said in the beginning of the review, I had about 6 months to plan for this trip and had researched and printed out a list of all of the sights we would see as we sailed down the Mississippi and I was very excited to follow along.  We waited and waited and waited and we never left the dock.  They never told us why but we eventually decided to go change and head to dinner.  We finally set sail around 7:30 pm, after dark and while we were at dinner 😞

 

We all had chosen Any Time Dining (or so we thought) but once we checked in for a table for 8, they told us that J and S had late dining and could not eat with us.  They said they would put a request in and we should hear by tomorrow afternoon if they would be able to get Any Time Dining.  I felt awful that they weren't able to eat with us.  We ended up with a table for 6 with Head Waiter Gavin from South Africa, who was hysterical.  We ended up asking for him each night.

 

I have no idea what I ate since I didn't take photos of the menus or the food.  I am not adventurous so I would guess I ate the chilled fruit soup and mac and cheese.  If you have never tried the chilled fruit soups, they are amazing and I strongly encourage you to try them.  It is like having a fruit smoothie served in a bowl :).  

 

After dinner, we played Bingo and then watched the Welcome Aboard show.  We were not terribly impressed with the singers and dancers on this cruise.  I think they tried really hard but some of the song choices did not suit their voices.  We were complete slackers and ended up going to bed shortly after that.

 

Tomorrow is a Fun Day at Sea!

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Edited by byrdbrain55
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Apparently I took a few photos of the Colors Atrium/Lobby.  From the upper decks, it looks like a giant marijuana leaf on the floor.  Yes, I know that the other part of the design is hidden by the stage, I'm just being a smart a$$.  Also, I enjoyed taking photos of the ceiling changing colors.  

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1 hour ago, jas1178 said:

We sailed 3/8.  Enjoying following a reminder of life before the world erupted into chaos.

B and C and J and D stayed onboard for a back to back so they were on the 3/8 sailing as well.  I wish I had done the same.

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