First part of my long AOS vacation review

I can’t believe that our cruise is finally over but I am excited to provide details and helpful information by reliving our wonderful vacation. I will type as much as this as I can right now and add to it later.

My husband, Jeremy, and I took this cruise together. We are both 23 years old and have been married almost 3 years. We currently live in Lock Haven, PA and are relocating in a few months to the Daytona Beach area in Florida for my husband’s schooling. He is pursuing his commercial pilot’s license. I was a Travel and Tourism major in school and we are planning to open our own business in South Florida or the Caribbean.

Anyway, enough background. We left our snow covered home the morning of Friday February 25 to drive to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. We chose to drive there to fly for two reasons. The biggest reason is that Jet Blue flies out of JFK and they are our airline of choice. We flew nonstop, roundtrip to San Juan for a total of $450. I don’t know if I could fly without their individual TV at each seat with DirecTV programming. I am spoiled by that. Flying to Puerto Rico, you lose the signal after about an hour but you still have movies and classical music to choose from. There is also a channel that shows a map with your altitude, speed, and location. I really like that feature too.

We arrived in San Juan at about 3 am on Saturday morning. We chose not to pay for another night in a hotel and instead “camped” on the floor at SJU. This airport has NO CHAIRS anywhere except for at the gates. People were sleeping everywhere on the floors. The good thing is that it is quiet there at this time of day.

I made reservations for a hotel through Hotwire.com. I chose the 3 star option for $150 and was given the Park Plaza Normandie. I did not read many good reviews of this property. Most people did not appreciate that they were in the process of remodeling. We loved this hotel and would definitely stay there again. It was a beautiful art-deco setting. Our room had the most comfortable king size bed complete with big fluffy pillows and a down comforter. We arrived at the hotel at 8:30 am because they had said that they would store our luggage. We were exhausted and really wanted to shower and sleep but check in was not until 3 pm. I mentioned to the girl at the desk that we had been at the airport all night and she checked for a room and told us to come back at 10 am. We went and had breakfast and came back and they let us into our room for no extra charge. It was incredibly nice of them! We slept from 10 am until 4 pm.

After we woke up we walked from our hotel, which was right next to the Caribe Hilton, to Old San Juan. The walk is not too far and we passed Fort San Cristobal and El Morro along the way. We ate at a small restaurant on Calle Fortaleza called Tio Danny Restaurant. I had the garlic shrimp and my husband had mashed plantain and it was wonderful.

The next morning we took a cab to the Pan American Pier for $13 plus tip. We arrived at 11:15 and were checked in by 11:30. At noon they started letting us on the ship. We were among the first 30 people on. The ship is amazing. It was beautiful and the staff is incredible. We went to our room at 2 pm, the earliest they would allow. We had an interior cabin on Deck 10 Starboard Forward, cabin 1235. It was as far forward as possible and located next to the Captain’s quarters. We met our room steward, Betrand from Grenada, and we really liked him. He always greeted us by name and made our room look clean even though we always left it messy. Our luggage arrived by 3:30 pm.

The cruise director was Richard Spacey. He is from the UK and I loved his accent. He did a wonderful job. He was very funny and talented. It takes a lot for me to be impressed by a CD. The one on our Carnival cruise last year just annoyed me. I enjoyed Richard and so did my husband.

The first night at dinner we met our waiter, Milton from India, and our assistant waiter, Kardi from Indonesia. Milton was great! Kardi didn’t say much. Milton always had recommendations that we found very helpful. He was also very funny. Our table was in the Vivaldi dining room which is the lowest level of the 3 story dining room. We were at table 316 which was pretty close to the entrance, about 3 tables away from the Captain’s table. Our tablemates were Dan and Jenna from New York, who were on the second week of their honeymoon, and Dawn and John from Cleveland, a dating couple. Dan and Jenna only ate with us the first two nights because they preferred the buffet. We missed them the rest of the week; they were a lot of fun. Dawn and John were there most nights and we really enjoyed them too. We spent time with them watching some of the shows. I will break down what we ate in the day by day portion of the review.

I need a break. More to come.

Hi Vanessa,

Thanks for posting ... your review is great so far! Can't wait to read more about the food, shows, and islands. We're leaving on the 20th and are getting very excited! :)

Enjoying your review so far. We had Richard Spacey on our 1st RCL cruise on the Majesty. I also loved him. He is my favorite CD so far,of any ship I've been on. Do you happen to know how long he is going to be on the AOS?

Thanks for your review so far Vanessa. Looking forward to the rest of it, especially the breakdown of the menu/food.

Richard just started on the aos in feb 05 so he should be there for a while.