How much we loved the 5/22/11 Victory, and why I'll never sail from San Juan again...

[bcs819]

:) I think you had the right idea--it would have been easy to spend all my vacation money there. I did end up buying two floral batiks (about the right size for the front side of a throw pillow), but instead had them framed when I got home. I was planning to hang them in the sewing room, but they ended up looking so good, they're in the living room.

 

what a great idea!!!!!

[BOOGALOO509]

This may be of help to anyone interested in this cruise but who doesn't want to fly into and out of San Juan. You can join the ship in Barbados and do the whole cruise from there. In effect you do the second half of the cruise first and then the first half second, if that makes sense.

 

My wife and I are doing this cruise that way next March, adding a few days in Barbados before and after the cruise.

 

Reagrds.

 

John

[Juanita56]

Hi Bernie, great review so far. I had to chuckle when I saw you were on the 9:40 US Air flight from Philly to SJU. We had that same flight last March and we too were delayed. That flight is always delayed:mad:. I had started tracking it about 3 months out and noticed that it never took off or arrived as scheduled. We always fly in the day before, so it didn't matter to us, but there were others on the flight who were cruising on Serenade of the Seas, which was leaving port that night at 7pm, who were in a real panic. What I found odd was that flight was only late on Saturdays and on time more or less all the other days of the week.:confused:

OMG. When I saw that. my heart dropped. I have a group of 20 flying out of Philly on Dec. 4th for San Juan. We are on USAirways but we're on the 7:40 a.m. flight. I pray that we don't have that problem.

[cruizinwoman]

That's so weird that you had difficulty getting out of San Juan. We cruised out of San Juan twice and didn't have any trouble, but we were on Princess and not Carnival.... that shouldn't make any difference though, should it?

 

We went to that same fort and we loved it too. Very beautiful views there. Could almost imagine myself defending the island......

[bcs819]

That's so weird that you had difficulty getting out of San Juan. We cruised out of San Juan twice and didn't have any trouble, but we were on Princess and not Carnival.... that shouldn't make any difference though, should it?

 

We went to that same fort and we loved it too. Very beautiful views there. Could almost imagine myself defending the island......

 

 

The problem wasn't with Carnival, it was the lack of customs agents and chaos at the airport. Unfortunately, there isn't really another option to get to the pier. We experienced chaos in Miami and won't fly in/out of Miami anymore for cruises, but Fort Lauderdale is a close, cheap option.

[bafinegan]

3 years ago, they had a luggage program. for $20 dollars, they took our luggage and forwarded it to our flight. We just kept our carry on with us. Worked great!

We so loved the itinerary, that we just booked again for may 2012:)

baf

[bcs819]

yes, we've seen that on other cruises, but I don't think it was available for this one. We definitely would have taken advantage of it since we had several hours to kill, but it wasn't there.

[cruiseclues]

Thanks for your photo review. :)