I'll start with the bottom line first (for impatient readers ;-), my wife and I, both in our mid-forties, loved our cruise on the Glory. This is our second Carnival cruise. We stayed at the Quality Inn in Cocoa Beach the night before and were shuttled to the Port the morning of the cruise. The shuttle service is great and, despite the Glory arriving at port two hours late because of strong headwinds, we were still on the ship by 1:15 with our fu-fu drinks in hand. Embarkation: There are essentially two embarkation lines; the first is to activate you Sign and Sail account and deal with your Carnival documents. Once through that procedure, you are sent over to a short line to get your Sign and Sail cards. From that station, you get into the boarding line. The boarding line is divided into two sections; one below the escalators and one above. The hold up here is essentially the boarding photos that everyone must participate in. All-in-all, we were in various lines and such for about 45 minutes, but all kept moving and the process was quite painless.

Departure: The Glory left port about 30-45 minutes late because of late air arrivals. There was a storm in North Carolina (more on this later) that kept some of the fly and sail folks from getting to the ship for the 5pm departure. This did not affect our arrival in Nassau and was transparent to the passengers on board. We booked an 8-D balcony cabin on the Lido deck and were thrilled with the cabin and the access it provided to all the action and dining options there. Our cabin was on the port side of the ship. The twin beds were arranged together as a king sized bed and both my wife and I found it very comfortable. The cabin was roomy with a nice amount of storage area. We put 4 large suitcases under the beds. The sofa had two very large drawers underneath that I used for my clothes and my wife used the drawers in the desk for hers. The three closets provided plenty of room for our dress clothes and shoes etc. I was grateful to have read prior reviews regarding the lack of 110 outlets (only one in the cabin,) and the power strip we too came in very handy for my wife's blow drier and curling iron, as well as our camera battery and cell phone chargers. Another tip that really came in handy was the bungee cord that we used to keep our balcony door open with. Although we didn't want the door open all the time we were in the cabin, there were times, in the evening, when one person was on the balcony and the other was in the room, that it was nice to be able to carry on a conversation without having to go in and out. As I mentioned earlier, the Glory was late arriving in port because of strong headwinds, and passengers were late arriving because of a storm off the NC coast. This system affected our entire trip to Nassau causing rough seas and cold temperatures on deck. A lot of passengers became sea sick as well. My wife and I took Bonine a couple of hours into the cruise and were glad we did. Neither of us became sick. Fortunately for all, the seas calmed around midnight and it was smooth sailing to Nassau.

Nassau: It was cool in Nassau, because of the cold front, and the seas were quite choppy. We were scheduled on the Athol Island Snorkeling tour, but it was cancelled due to high seas. We booked the Pearl Islands Snorkeling adventure and it was quite disappointing. The Pear Islands area was a private island that was about a 30 minute water taxi trip from port. The crew and staff of Pearl Island were friendly and the trip itself was enjoyable, but the snorkeling was terrible. One of the staff members told us that they were not able to take us to the reef that was their normal area for snorkeling because of the winds and high seas, so we basically snorkeled next to the swimming area. We made the most of the trip however, and spent time on the beach. Because of the early departure (2pm, must be ship board by 1:30), we didn't do any shopping or other sight seeing in Nassau. The ship set sail at 2pm for St. Thomas. Read more