San Juan updates from Oct 22 2017 repo

I’m on the Summit repo cruise. I’m sure there will be more to say once we get to San Juan, but I’ll start with this.

Celebrity is giving all of us free airport transfers, and has refunded pre-paid transfers so that all have no cost.

I’m on the Summit repo cruise. I’m sure there will be more to say once we get to San Juan, but I’ll start with this.

 

Celebrity is giving all of us free airport transfers, and has refunded pre-paid transfers so that all have no cost.

Thanks for sharing this. That's nice of them. I hope they do the same on my cruise on the Summit on 11/4.

I am on the 10/28 cruise and I booked transfers and they charged me!

I am on the 10/28 cruise and I booked transfers and they charged me!

Why would they not charge you?

I am on the 10/28 cruise and I booked transfers and they charged me!

Celebrity is probably doing this on a cruise by cruise basis. It is quite possible that once onboard they might offer free transfers again or not.

I’m on the Summit repo cruise. I’m sure there will be more to say once we get to San Juan, but I’ll start with this.

 

Celebrity is giving all of us free airport transfers, and has refunded pre-paid transfers so that all have no cost.

Would love to know if there appears to be cabs available to and from the airport. We are on the Summit on November 18th. We arrive early and I would like to not wait for the Celebrity buses as they tell me they will not start until 6pm.

Would love to know if there appear to be cabs available to and from the airport. We are on the Summit on November 18th. We arrive early and I would like to not wait for the Celebrity buses as they tell me they will not start until 6pm.

From other posts in the RC boards, cruisers on the Adventure are reporting lots of cabs at the airport and port transporting passengers with no issues.

Janine

Why would they not charge you?

Probably as a thank you for what I'm sure they know has been a difficult lead up to these cruises out of San Juan. Hotels have cancelled reservations with and without notice and flights have been cancelled and changed multiple times (my flights have been cancelled twice, one lady reported have 8 changes made to her flights!). Also, there have been many questions about the availability of cabs at the airport.

Would love to know if there appears to be cabs available to and from the airport. We are on the Summit on November 18th. We arrive early and I would like to not wait for the Celebrity buses as they tell me they will not start until 6pm.

We are also presently on the Summit re-positioning cruise from Bayonne to San Juan. We are staying three nights post-cruise in San Juan, so have called our hotel to confirm that they are open and functioning (they are). We also asked the hotel concierge about cabs, and were told that we will have no problems taking a cab from the terminal to the hotel.

I am on the 10/28 cruise and I booked transfers and they charged me!

And???

It wouldn't a REFUND if they don't charge to begin with. OP clearly said pre-paid got refunds.

I hope your cruise is awesome! Can't wait to board in just 2 days for the 10/28 sailing! And yes, free airport transfers would be really nice given all of the general confusion/issues surrounding our cruise.

Looking forward to updates. We are sailing on Silhouette in November and they cancelled our San Juan stop. I hope things start turning around soon for them. They need a break

We're on a B2B departing 2nd december so will be following this thread with interest. I appreciate you updating us as I'm sure many others on here will do. :)

We are also presently on the Summit re-positioning cruise from Bayonne to San Juan. We are staying three nights post-cruise in San Juan, so have called our hotel to confirm that they are open and functioning (they are). We also asked the hotel concierge about cabs, and were told that we will have no problems taking a cab from the terminal to the hotel.

What hotel are you staying at?

I’m at the airport waiting for our flight.

The cruise port is open. The high gangways were seriously damaged so we disembarked at pier level on deck 1. It was a short walk to the luggage/immigration building. Inside there was a 30 minute wait for immigration/customs. That building has no A/C currently. There are ceiling fans but it’s quite oppressive heat and humidity.

We took the Celebrity transfers. They took our luggage to travel by van, and we boarded full size buses with A/C. The ride was about 20 minutes. It was weird to see the traffic lights off. Lots of building damage seen, particularly high rise apartments. The hotels that we could see were intact. We did not see the Old City.

Arrived at the port ahead of our luggage. We waited on the curb. By the time our baggage showed up 45 minutes later there were 6 busloads of people waiting. A serious Celebrity failure.

The airport is fully up and running normally. No TSA pre-check because they were using K9 sniffers. We were allowed to leave everything in our bags and our shoes on.

Cabs - outside the port we saw at least 70-80 cabs lined up all the way to the main road. No worries there.

Flights seem to be on time. A few cancellations.

The cruise itself was wonderful as always.

Thanks for taking the time to share this information, as I am sure many are concerned about these issues.

I’m at the airport waiting for our flight.

 

The cruise port is open. The high gangways were seriously damaged so we disembarked at pier level on deck 1. It was a short walk to the luggage/immigration building. Inside there was a 30 minute wait for immigration/customs. That building has no A/C currently. There are ceiling fans but it’s quite oppressive heat and humidity.

 

 

The cruise itself was wonderful as always.

Thank you for your post! Am hoping you can give us additional advice. If we only have carry on bags, do you think we would get thru the hot building faster if we get off early and do self debark. Or should we get off last with our carry ons? We do not fly out till 10pm so we had planned to stay on as late as possible (which is about 9-9:30am.) My biggest concern is standing in extreme heat. Am definitely going to stick a cold bottle of water down my shirt!

Thank you for your post! Am hoping you can give us additional advice. If we only have carry on bags, do you think we would get thru the hot building faster if we get off early and do self debark. Or should we get off last with our carry ons? We do not fly out till 10pm so we had planned to stay on as late as possible (which is about 9-9:30am.) My biggest concern is standing in extreme heat. Am definitely going to stick a cold bottle of water down my shirt!

If you pay to use a porter their line moves faster.

Being first or last is certainly a good strategy.

We also departed the Summit this morning, and are checked into our hotel -- the El Covento. Bouhunter -- this is the hotel I referenced in my prior post. The El Convento is up and runnng -- our room has AC, the hotel has power and water, the hotel restaurants are operating (with a smaller menu) and the Internet is fast. They do seem to be generating their power, but have enough generator power so the elevator is operating.

We left the ship about 9:30 AM, and one of the last to leave Michael's Club. Since we were in a suite (and are also Zenith Captain's Club members) the MC concierge escorted us to the priority customs/immigration line. We essentially walked right through customs/immigration (past a fairly long line of others) and were quickly outside in the taxi line. We waited about 4 minutes for the next taxi -- as Smitty83 has mentions there were taxis in abundance.

While we were still in MC one couple texted friends who had taken one of the first complimentary shuttles to the airport, and by 8:45 they were inside the airport, bags checked and waiting for their flight. Given Smitty's description re bags I wonder if an earlier shuttle allowed them to retrieve their bags before any pile-up.

On the drive in to Old San Juan we also saw the non-functioning traffic lights, some buildings with significant damage (i.e., no roofs), trees down and so forth.

Last evening several of the MC passengers realized they had a serious problem. One couple received an e-mail late yesterday afternoon that their hotel had suddenly canceled them (despite re-assuring them earlier that their reservation was fine). A second couple were booked at the same hotel, and, after hearing this information, they then tried to re-confirm their reservation; they were suddenly informed that they too were cancelled. And a third couple were trying to reach their hotel repeatedly (and had been doing so for several days) but no one was answering the phone. One couple decided to book the next cruise (some staterooms are available) and they will try to leave the ship at one of the port calls. As of 9:30 this morning one couple doesn't know what they are going to do -- MC hostess Anastasia had called Miami shoreside assistance last night to ask Miami to try to find an available hotel room, and none can be found; also there are no two seats on any flight out of here for today (at this point this couple are willing to fly anywhere in the US). The remaining couple took a cab to their hotel (which wasn't answering phone) and hoping for the best.

What can I say -- we are thrilled to be sitting in our room at the El Convento.

I was also given free transfer to the airport and yes there were cabs! Those who had prepaid were to be given credit but not sure if that will be the same going forward. The baggage situation at the airport was chaotic to say the least. Busses arrived before luggage and vice versa with no organization whatsoever. This was followed by more chaos at the Southwest check-in. People with boarding passes wanting to use express baggage check were in the same herd as those needing full service No organization, lines well into the hallway to the next terminal. The cherry on top was the security issue with unattended bag and the lines shut down for the K-9 bomb sniffer to come. I have to say that I knew things would not be up to par, and can understand that our inconvenience is nothing compared to those without clean water or electric. Our transport driver said that 50,000 locals have flown out since the airport reopened. However, Southwest was the only airline with such disorganization and I would say this is on the management. Mostly good to excellent experience with Southwest in the past. From the time we arrived at the airport till the time we actually got to our gate was four and a half hours. I too heard that many who had planned on staying had hotels cancel. One couple that got bumped from a United flight were being put up at an AirBNB and I wonder how that went. On a happy note, our cruise was great!

Would love to know if there appears to be cabs available to and from the airport. We are on the Summit on November 18th. We arrive early and I would like to not wait for the Celebrity buses as they tell me they will not start until 6pm.

I don't think the 6 pm start time is correct. We land on 11/11 (Day of Departure) at 2 pm and were advised by phone call to Celebrity that the shuttles will be running every fifteen minutes UNTIL 6:00 pm. That is when the last shuttle leaves to make the 8:30 sailaway.

We also departed the Summit on October 28th. We had originally booked airport transfer as there were no tours with airport drop off available pre-cruise. We had planned to spend two nights in San Juan after the cruise but all of the hotels that I booked, cancelled us. Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton etc. We received notice of the refund of our prepaid airport transfer and noticed that they had added tour of old San Juan with airport drop off. We decided to book the tour with airport drop off. I think it was about $45.00 each.

We were number 3 group to depart the ship. Perhaps because it was earlier, we did not find too much confusion gathering luggage. We also did not find it hot but again, there were not very many people at that point retrieving their luggage in the terminal We hired a porter as we wanted to help out local workers and he escorted us immediately through customs. We did not wait in any lines.

Our luggage was left outside on the sidewalk by the tour bus and we were told it would be at the airport when we arrived. They were correct. When we arrived at the airport, the luggage was immediately adjacent to where we disembarked the tour bus. It was very easy to retrieve.

We embarked on our tour of Old San Juan with a 20 minute stop at the Fort along the way. We noticed a lot of downed trees, damaged high rises, homes etc during our tour. Old San Juan area was deserted. We saw very very few people in the area. Starbucks was open as well as Walgreens. We did not walk the side streets where the shops are as the tour driver told us he didn't think any or very few were open. We noticed that the police had the main street by the San Juan pier closed off. The US hospital ship "Comfort" was in port as well as a Viking cruise ship. Having been there a few years before the hurricane, it was surreal to see no activities or people along the sidewalks and roadways near the San Juan pier.

The tour guide was excellent and very enthused about tourists returning. He was very proud of his island and really gave us a good tour.

We couldn't tell which hotels were open other than the Vanderbilt. It looked perfect with no damage. I did notice a lot of damage at the Renaissance with work underway. We travelled on the road behind Embassy Suites and couldn't tell what shape it was in. Also noticed no line ups at gas stations.

The airport was crazy. It was so busy with the Summit and Royal C. ship in port and thousands of people coming and going the airport. As mentioned TSA pre check was closed due to K-9 explosive dog doing searches but all in all, I thought the lines went pretty quick. Again, no removing of shoes or opening phones or iPads through security. Air conditioning was good. Duty free, convenience shops, restaurants etc were all open but very busy. I waited in line 40 minutes for some refreshments. Our flight was with United and was delayed 30 minutes which wasn't a problem for us.

I also noticed a very long line of available cabs at the port when we departed the ship.

We were very happy that we took the tour with airport drop off rather than spending long hours at the airport. I thought that the departure went very smooth for us and the airport was no problem at all other than the crowds.

And the cruise was great!

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your experiences. It really does help me know what's likely to happen.

We also left the Summit on October 22nd and are still in San Juan. We had booked three nights at the El Convento (who actually honored our reservation) and are one of the few tourists actually staying here. The hotel is filled with Coast Guard personnel, other relief personnel, and some local families who had their homes destroyed by Maria.

Taxis are available in abundance, but there are no (as far as we can tell) operating traffic lights. The El Convento desk clerk told us this morning to expect an hour in transit to the airport tomorrow morning due to the lack of traffic lights.

While there are some very large (the size of a small travel trailer) generators in some of the OSJ streets, much of the area has no power unless they have their own generator. The El Convento is operating on power from their own generators, not generators brought in after Maria. All in all, it is a very fluid situation.

But regarding the cruise -- we boarded the Summit on Setember 24th so were on a B2B2B. We were very pleased with the staff and positive attitude on the Summit. And we felt some of the music entertainers (not the guest entertainers at the 7 and 9 PM shows) were much better than we've heard in recent cruises.

We were also on the Oct. 22 cruise and flew out from San Juan Oct. 28. We had signed up and paid for the Celebrity transfer worried if there would be taxis at the pier. We received a credit on our stateroom account when they changed to free shuttles. The situation at the airport was horrible, as others stated the luggage was delivered in a truck separate from passengers. We waited 90 minutes for our luggage, it was mass chaos and no Celebrity staff there to assist. Several passengers actually organized and off loaded the luggage. Paid or free do not take the Celebrity transfer. I actually felt bad that we did not take a taxi as there were so many there waiting for our business, much better option all around to take a taxi.