Just back from the Carnival Glory(sail date March 31st) and thought I'd share my impressions. My husband and I traveled with a group of 30+ people. All are in our mid 30-50's. There were several children as well.

Our embarkation was a disaster. We booked our air through Carnival because holiday air rates(Easter) on our own were too expensive. We flew from Phila. to Atlanta to Melbourne. The flight didn't arrive in Melbourne until 2:30(delays) and there was no transportation waiting for us even though we had vouchers from Carnival for them. By time we arranged transportation for the whole group, it was after 3pm and the ship was due to sail at 4pm. Travel time to the Port was at least 45 minutes. Needless to say, there were many frantic calls to Carnival to hold the ship. We arrived at the port and hurried on board. They pulled the gangways while we were walking to our rooms at about 4:15. I'll never do this again(fly the same day). Air travel is a unreliable mode of transport. I am still working with Carnival to obtain reimbursement for the trip to the port and to find out what went wrong. This start left a bad impression as we always felt we had to hurry back to the ship so we didn't miss it when we were in port.

Our room was great. We had an inside room with plenty of closet space and bathroom space. Our room steward was very friendly and accommodating. We had pre-ordered some liquor and it was in the room when we arrived.(this was nice) The bed was very comfortable and I would have slept great except for the rocking(more on this later). Our room was directly above the casino and there was very muted noise from it--not a problem at all. I was concerned about the smell of smoke from the casino being in our room and this was not a problem. Smoke was not a problem anywhere on the ship. Read more