Anna Golderese

Age: 46
Occupation: Office Manager
Number of Cruises: 1
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Glory
Sailing Date: August 21st, 2004
Itinerary: Eastern Caribbean

This review is on the Carnival Glory - Sailing date 8/21/04 with port stops in Nassau, St. Thomas and St. Marten.

The Glory is by far a beautiful ship, however, this cruise was not.

All elevators were not working the moment we got on the ship. They never really worked properly the entire week.

Our cabin was very uncomfortable due to the lack of proper air conditioning that was never rectified. The cabin staff was nice but could not fix the problem.

Excursions for Nassau were sold out by the afternoon we arrived. We attempted to go to Nassau on our own and had three different people try to steal our camera in a ten-minute span. We stayed on the ship for the rest of that stop.

Excursions on St. Thomas were overpriced. Snorkeling was not worth the money due to overcrowding and a lack of anything to see underwater. The bus was crowded and the driver was a maniac. The Carnival representative was nasty and the trip we paid for was a 3-hour excursion that only gave us 1 hour and 15 minutes at the beach.

St. Marten was not much better. Snorkeling was not worth it due to a lack of anything to see. Shipwreck Cove is a few small boats that sank during a hurricane. There is no live reef or any fish to speak of.

The first day buffet for lunch and dinner were good but not great and very crowded. Lines were a constant and the average wait was between 15 minutes to 30 minutes everyday. The food went down hill progressively. By Friday we were sure we were being served leftovers. The infamous Chocolate Buffet was a joke.

The first 2 days the ship was kept somewhat clean but each day seemed to deteriorate.

Our cabin staff was friendly but the overall staff lacked knowledge of the ship. It seemed they could not provide directions to different areas and often times there were language barriers.

The arcade for the kids was a nice size but most of the games did not work. There was no supervision and many kids were out of control in the arcade.

Be warned, you will pay excessively for everything on this ship. If you do not use the dining room every night be sure to adjust your tip at the end of the cruise. You are paying for a tip for the entire cruise if you use the dining room or not. We had $38.00 each removed off our bill since we didn’t use the dining room more than one night. If you see a bottle of water in your cabin, don’t touch it. They charge you almost $4.00 each and you don’t know it until the cruise is over.

The Lido Deck was nice looking when not packed solid. This ship had 3500 passengers and that amount seemed excessive for the amount of space provided. The three pools available were small and very crowded. The one water slide was nicer than the pools.

The Amber Palace is where they have the shows and numerous Bingo games. It's a beautiful design, great sound system. Only one show was bad and that was the Justin Illusion Show. Due to technical issues the audience saw how most of the stunts were done.

The Casino is small but maintained a decent size crowd. Spilled drinks and overflowing ashtrays were abundant. The Casino also displayed gifts available for the points earned during the cruise. When we went to redeem those points most of the display items were not available and the casino director was not very pleasant about it.

Inside Cabin Paging System is something that should only be used for important announcements. Carnival felt the need to disturb us all every morning by having the Cruise Director make Sale announcements, over and over again. That was extremely annoying and eliminated the potential to sleep past 8:30 am.

Disembarking was fairly simple until we tried to get our luggage and had a 2-hour wait.

I emailed my complaints to Carnival and spoke with a representative that told me they could give me 15% off my next Carnival Cruise and nothing more. I was then told I should have taken Cruise insurance that would have flown us home at Carnivals expense after the first port if you weren't happy. The first port was the second day. Things did not get real bad until that night. This is not good customer service.

This was our first and last cruise experience with Carnival.

Sincerely,
Anna Golderese

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