2015 Carnival Glory
We took a taxi to the port to join our ship the Carnival Glory for a one-week Caribbean cruise. Neither of us where particularly excited about cruising but everyone we had spoken said how great they were so we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Considering the ship carried around 3000 passengers my biggest concern was having to hang around in queues for hours but I needn’t have worried. When we first entered the passenger processing building it was full and looked like a nightmare but the whole process including security and check-in took around 20 minutes. We were given our cabin number and as they didn’t accept cash on board they gave us a card to use and the next thing we knew we were in our cabin. I wasn’t expecting much but the cabin was big with a TV, sofa and little table. The only time I had been on a cruise ship was working on the QE2 in the early 70’s. We were given passenger cabins but they were the cheapest with no porthole and a bathroom just about big enough to stand up in. For this cruise, we paid extra for a balcony which was well worth it as we were able to sit out there as we sailed slowly out of Miami. People waved from their cars on the freeway and sounded their horns. I had read in reviews that it was a problem on ships when passengers smoked on their balconies as smoked got sucked into the balcony next door so non-smokers can’t sit on their own balcony. Carnival Cruises had just changed their smoking policy so there was strictly no smoking on balconies, in cabins and most of the ship. With that in mind, I was incensed when we were standing on our lovely balcony when the stench of cigarette smoke wafted in from next door. Five minutes on the ship and it already looked like I would have to wage war on our neighbour. Fortunately, as soon as we started moving I realised that his cabin was downwind so it was someone else’s problem and they could sort it out.
Before setting off we had to do the obligatory safety drill where after the disaster signal we all had to stroll casually down to our muster station on deck and line up while the crew pretended they knew what to do in the case of an emergency. I had heard that the captain was Italian so I told Federika that in case of an emergency we had to stay close to him. The drill was over pretty quickly and as everyone made their way to lunch at the same time I was surprised there was not much of a queue. There were several places around the ship where passengers could eat a wide variety of food but we ate in the self-service cafeteria which was not bad. For the many diners who appeared to value quantity over quality, it was paradise.
We had assumed that it was mainly old people who went on cruises but we were very much in the minority although maybe that was because the cruise was marketed as a “Fun ship.” Everyone was very friendly and there was no sign of any bad or drunken behaviour.
Finding our way around the ship was horrendous but all part of the fun. It had nine decks apart from the leisure decks on top and the problem was that decks three and four were blocked in the middle by dining rooms. On our first night, we went down to deck three and found a restaurant but it was not ours so we had to go up two floors to deck five, walk to the other end of the ship and then go back down to deck three on the other side. We ended up doing that most nights. We knew our restaurant was at the back of the ship but unless you are on deck looking at the sea how do you know which is the front and which is the back?
When we finally found the restaurant there was a large queue waiting at the entrance and so my fear of spending the week queueing returned as there was over 3000 people to feed every night. When they opened the door everyone walked calmly into the restaurant and it was only then I realised our table number was written on our card so there was no waiting at all. I had assumed that the lunch we had in the cafeteria was where we would eat all week so I was pleasantly surprised to find that evening dining was in a very nice restaurant where the food was pretty good with plenty of choice. With wine at $30 a bottle it was easy to see why the ticket price of the cruise was so reasonable as they intended to make money in other ways.
We found our table and introduced ourselves to two other English couples who we would be sitting with all week. Clive and Sue were about our age and we got on very well with them. The other couple were elderly with the man proudly proclaiming his 91 years. He was the spitting image in looks and behaviour of Victor Meldrew. For those not familiar with classic British comedies, Victor Meldrew was a character from an excellent TV series called One Foot in the Grave and victor played the part of a man who never stopped complaining. I will refer to him as Victor and his wife as Margaret. Not surprisingly, the first question we asked each other was if it was our first cruise. Victor said he had been dozens of them and the cruise we had chosen was “the bottom of the barrel.” Not a great start to our evening but being 91 years old I thought it might be not appropriate for me to slap him round the head and tell him not to be such a miserable old git. Fortunately, Victor and Margaret were on one end of the table and we were at the other end so Clive and Sue acted as a buffer zone. We did our best to include Victor in the conversation but the duty mainly fell on Clive and Sue which they performed admirably. We did hear Victor say proudly that he had refused to pay the 10% service charge they automatically put on everyone’s bill which we thought was compulsory. He advised us to go to the reception and refuse to pay and they would have to accept. It felt like a mean thing to do and entirely in line with Victor Meldrew’s character but a part of me admired his stand.
During dinner we were taken by surprise when the restaurant manager announced that the waiters were going to do a short dance. Scattered around the large dining room were small tables where waiters put plates when they were brought from the kitchen. Once they were cleared music started playing and a line of waiters danced out of the lobby dressed in white frilly shirts. Each of them jumped onto one of the tables and started a perfectly choreographed dance routine which clearly every one of them loved doing. It was absolutely brilliant and at the end of the dance the crowd went wild. We asked our very friendly waiter why he hadn’t danced and he said “It wasn’t my turn” with disappointment. In my experience, staff were usually press-ganged into doing these things but in that case, the waiters loved it so much they had to take turns. They performed a dance every other night and each time it was brilliant. 
After dinner we had a stroll around the ship to see what it had to offer and we were impressed. A huge theatre for musical productions, a comedy club and lots of areas where an assortment of musicians played. I had to feel sorry for the musicians. In my day we had a contract of two or three hours a night and had the day free to ourselves where we could mix with the passengers if we wanted. We were given passenger cabins and ate the same food as passengers in a corner of their dining room. It seemed that now they were contracted for a certain number of hours and they were used all over the ship so they had to pack up their gear and move it every time. In the morning they might play for half an hour on the pool deck, then move to a cocktail bar and onto a club at night. It looked like they were treated as normal crew so had to stay within the crew areas when they weren’t working and eat in the crew’s mess. One thing that did bother me was that the cruise line claimed that smoking was only allowed in certain places on deck and in the casino. What they didn’t say was that the casino was on one of the main entertainment decks and was open plan so we had to walk through areas where there was an overpowering stink of smoke.
The next day was spent entirely at sea and as the weather was good we sat on deck for most of it with the occasional dip in the Jacuzzi. Although the pool was very small, the area around it was large and with a great holiday atmosphere. Sometimes there was live music and other times some well-chosen tracks from a DJ. There was another pool at the back of the ship but that was even smaller and intended only for adults. Best of all there was an area at the top front of the ship called “Serenity” which was also just for adults and had two Jacuzzis built in. They even had cushions on the sun loungers there so they knew us oldies deserved a bit of comfort after a lifetime of heavy toil. 
We saw Victor and Mildred sunbathing in the serenity area, in exactly the kind of pose I would have expected from Victor Mildrew. 
At night we went to see a brilliant black comedian and I hadn’t laughed so much in years. What he said wasn’t even particularly funny, it was just the tone and expression in his voice that was so entertaining. A lot of his comments were very racist, making fun of everyone and picking on people from the audience but they all took in in good humour.
There were dozens of other little events going on all day for all ages but most of them we were not interested in. There was also a six-piece rock/pop band, two acoustic guitar/vocalists, a Filipino duo and a three-piece Latin band who were my favourites. I suppose the days of the big bands backing established cabaret artists were long gone.
2015 Caribbean Cruise
