Nothing glows red hot. The Cruze uses an electronic thermostat and tends to run cooler in the summer. If more cooling is needed, for high load situations, knocking, etc, it will open that thermostat fully and the engine will cool right down into the 190 deg range.
The radiator is hugely oversized for the small engine, and the reserve cooling capacity is great - even pulling a long grade with the AC on last summer, I saw the engine coolant temp continue to drop for the reasons mentioned above.
Like many other small-engined cars I've had, the AC on full blast does create a lot of drag on the engine, so expect a small performance hit under 3000 RPM. You've driven it already with the AC on - so you know what it drives like. Flooring the gas pedal will cut out the AC compressor temporarily for maximum power - the car assumes if you're flooring it, you're trying to merge or the the heck out of the way of something, so it'll give you all it's got. Once you let up on the gas, the compressor turns back on. Many 4-cylinder cars going all the way back to the 1980's do this, the Cruze isn't the first and it isn't the last.
93 octane is essential on any turbocharged engine in very hot temperatures; with gasoline with lower knock resistance, the cars will dial back timing and performance goes down the drain to protect the engine from destroying itself.
Hope you don't have a dark-colored car though. Had a dark blue car before the Cruze and my Cruze is black. Opening the door after the car has been sitting is brutal even in 100 deg temps. I think I'm going to put a thermometer in my car this summer and see what it gets up to. Once the AC gets going and cools the car down though, it'll keep the inside of the car quite cold, even on a 105 degree day we had.
