San Juan City Tour - NCL GETAWAY

[sh1955]

Let me preface this review by stating that NCL’s excursion office told us we would be docking at the Pan Am Pier instead of Old San Juan, and it turned out not to be true.

Consequently, I booked the NCL San Juan City Tour for $85pp.

Don’t do it!!!

It was a 2 1/2 hour tour and I would estimate that well over half of the tour was spent riding around in New San Juan looking at nothing but apartment buildings and expensive hotels.
The first stop at was an unnamed private beach for a photo op. This was a Caribbean cruise, and we’ve already seen plenty of beaches. I think the main attraction of this stop was the fact they had a plenty of space to park the bus. It certainly wasn’t to provide anything new or interesting to the people on the tour. 
On the way to OSJ, we passed the public beach which would have been of interest to see but we didn’t stop there.

Finally, we arrive in OSJ and San Castillo.  
This is where the first mishap occurred. The bus driver didn’t pull up close enough to the curb so he puts out a step, and one of the elderly people tripped getting off.  The step would have been completely unnecessary if the bus driver had done a better job of getting closer to the curb.
Anyway, he parked the bus at the bottom of a steep hill which everybody had to walk up. It was so steep that we stopped at the top to catch our breath before going up another steep incline to get to the entrance of the fort. We were given 45 minutes to explore the most important stop on the tour. Not good. While we were at the fort, I saw another person trip near the canon. 
We get loaded back up on the bus and we go less than a quarter of a mile and we get offloaded for another photo op of statues of all the US presidents that have visited San Juan. Again, I think this photo op was included because they have a place to park the bus. I would have preferred seeing more of Old San Juan, but because of the size of the bus, we didn’t really see anything of importance in Old San Juan except San Castillo.
At the last stop, they  dropped us off in Old San Juan for shopping on our own. Our tour guide wanted everybody get off so they didn’t have to take us back to the pier, but several of us insisted on going back to the pier. They took us back, but they weren’t happy about it.

Apparently the big draw she was hawking for OSJ “shopping “ was a place that sold  T-shirts at the price of three for $10. 
Uh no. 
The lady that was our tour guide was German and you could barely understand what she was saying.I’m guessing she did a lot better job with European tourists. 
We didn’t get to see very much of OSJ, and consequently I was not particularly pleased with this tour, and I would not recommend it.

[Atlgator]

Sorry about your misadventure. I will be on the Getaway in a couple weeks, and I was curious if ya'll did dock at OSJ?  I had heard rumors about the Pan Am Pier, but no one knows for sure which pier we will be docked at?  I usually just do my own walking tour of OSJ.  Stay at your leisure and see what YOU want to see, not a tour guide.