Carnival Glory

The pre cruise hotel stays would have been better if we had spent more time in New York and missed the South Beach stop completely. We were travelling most of the time and didn't have enough time to take in the sights that we wanted.Consequently by the time we had boarded the ship we were exhausted. Delta Airlines Comfort+ was little more than economy and didn't offer the value expected. They had our booking wrong and tried to put us in economy, and charge us for the 2nd case which we had already paid for. It was only when I was very persistent that we were given our correct seats. After a call home and my partner calling Iglu was I assured that the return journey would be sorted out. This was a concern throughout the holiday and did tinge our enjoyment. This was my fourth Carnival Cruise, The previous ones were some time ago and the first thing that I noticed was the embarkation process is much quicker and not the chaos that I experienced in the past. Unfortunately that is the only one of a very few positive changes that I saw. One more positive point was the evening meals in the dinning room were lovely, a good choice and cooked perfectly. The waiting staff were wonderful and couldn't do enough for us. They remembered our names, likes and dislikes. Our cabin steward was also very good and made himself available 24/7. However the ship was shabby and our balcony was filthy. I had to use some of the towels supplied to give it a good clean just so that we felt comfortable sitting outside. Robes are no longer supplied in the staterooms which was a great inconvenience. had I known we would have taken our own. The buffet was the same menu every day of the cruise which made breakfast quite repetitive, we tried breakfast in the dinning room but the food was the same as the buffet, only we had to wait longer for it to be served. Also the buffet closed at 3:30 every day, so when returning to the ship all that was available was burger or pizza. We avoid junk food so had to order a sandwich from room service. Two of our Shore excursions were cancelled at short notice. We were refunded but no recompense offered. When we tried to book alternatives, anything decent had been fully booked. The shore excursions that we did get to go on were very expensive for what you got. We had been on an everglades tour in the past, but the one booked on the Glory was very commercialised and seemed more interested in racing the airboats rather than showing us the environment and wildlife. I would not recommend Carnival Glory for a typical cruising experience, but it would be OK as a lower class vacation so long as the prices reflected that. I will be looking at other cruise lines for the future.

Room was clean, bath nice size, cabin steward did an excellent job. Restaurant head waiter was very attentive. Food was not very appetizing, not alot of options. Fruits were not fresh nor presented in an appetizing fashion.  Did not like eating on deck 9, it was buffet style and was not very sanitary with all guest hovering over food. Felt like eating at a hog trough. Lay out of ship is confusing elevators were hard to catch, walked a lot of steps. Night time entertainment was pathetic, the entertainment that I would have enjoyed was always on deck 5, smoking area. I have a really bad reaction to cigarette smoke as a matter of fact my eyes were swollen from the few times I just walked through deck 5. Smoking was permitted in center of 5. We chose a room with balcony but people on either side of us were smoking so limited our use of our deck, what a waste of money! Pool area was geared for rapping music and vulgar dancing. I felt like I was on spring break at the adult pool no music for our age group (60) very unhappy with cruise.