Cruising from San Juan - hesitations and ???

[Host CJSKIDS]

We're about to take our 4th cruise out of San Juan, our third on the Crown. I live near the Miami, Fort Lauderdale ports and all other in Florida are a quick drive but I'm paying for airfare and hotel and cruising out of San Juan again so we must love it.

 

Honestly, the rudest people on one of our cruises out of San Juan were on the 11/4/06 sailing and they were from the New York/New Jersey area. Don't mean to offend anyone and I am a New Yorker who just happened to have moved to Florida in Julyl 1999, but we New Jersey/New Yorkers are a loud and pushy bunch!

[Pomperaugrr]

We just returned from our cruise on the Serenade of the Seas two days ago. We love sailing out of San Juan and make a point of arriving at least a day or two early to enjoy Puerto Rico and the local culture there. There were no disruptions or rude people that I noticed on the ship or on land there. San Juan is our favorite port to sail from. Embarkation and debarkation is swift. We have sailed on the Adventure and Serenade from San Juan. Both are great ships. We're booked again on the Serenade next year. Try it at least once. You will not be disappointed!

 

Eric

[karen&roy]

Now SJU is another story....:eek: ...;)

 

Joey

 

Okay I am curious?? What does SJU is another story?/ I am going there in a week for a week.......no cruise involved.

[ricntina]

Kruznkanuk:

I'm not doubting what you have posted, but why did you allow people to get ahead of you in line. I work at the DFW Airport and have never seen that happen, and can't believe any airline would sanction that kind of behavior. You should have demanded to see a supervisor.

[howe34]

This will be our 5th cruise... our last being last year out of Puerto Rico. We love Puerto Rico. I have nothing bad to say about the people or the place. If I can, I'll cruise out of there again. You can not beat the itineraries anywhere... take a chance and enjoy!!

[kruznkanuk]

Kruznkanuk:

I'm not doubting what you have posted, but why did you allow people to get ahead of you in line. I work at the DFW Airport and have never seen that happen, and can't believe any airline would sanction that kind of behavior. You should have demanded to see a supervisor.

In reply to ricntina...we did complain at the time and in writing on return home. The airline tells me they have changed taken steps to ensure it does not happen again and "applied sanctions" as it was also a security issue. The airline staff were telling select passengers to come under the tapes, and three times motioned us back after our turn had arrived, one staff member standing in front of us with arms spread to hold us from going forward (after 75 minutes waiting). We were all quite sure we had done nothing to offend and we had all the documents in order, etc. Initially we were a group of happy travellers. I don't speak enough Spanish to be comfortable using it for something like airport check-in but do speak enough to understand when one agent said "&&%*$ english can wait". There were about 12 other groups treated the same way. While we were trying to get our luggage checked in, the agent who was at that station interrupted serving us 7 times (I started counting) to serve other (spanish-speaking) passengers, who bruised our daughters' legs by pushing them physically out of the way with their luggage and at one point shoved my purse off the counter to push their passport in front of the agent. Anyway, enough of that.. this little box is not big enough to report the whole dreadful experience. If it were the only problem in SJ I would just chalk it up to really bad luck. But on top of bad experiences at both restaurants, the Holiday Inn Express, and a tour guide who did not show up at the pier for a pre-paid tour... the fascination of Arecibo and beauty of the Riu Camay caves are not quite enough to make up for the unpleasantness.

[tnsail]

Now SJU is another story....:eek: ...;)

 

Joey

 

Okay I am curious?? What does SJU is another story?/ I am going there in a week for a week.......no cruise involved.

 

Sorry I haven't posted back to you sooner...:( .... SJU is, well, to put it politely, different from any US run airport that we have traveled thru.... I'm speaking as a cruiser now... We flew in a day early for our sailing on US Air... The flight in was uneventful and we departed the acft to go to luggage pick up..... After a 45 minute wait and 3 different unloads of luggage from our flight (1 piece of luggage in each different group of bags to arrive at the pick up) we were on our way....

 

The taxi stand is a good idea. You approach the stand and the attendant counts your bags and your destination, write it on a slip and you give it to the next available taxi driver... No haggling, works well....

 

We do our cruise and debark from the ship to head to SJU for the flight home... (Us and about 5000 other cruisers) ... 2 ships unloading at the same time does not make for easy travels thru an airport that is only used to about 1/4 of that crowd at a time....

 

We arrived at the US Air check-in... 2 lines, 1 for planes to CLT and other to PHL.... Only the CLT line is not checking passengers through, everyone must go thru the PHL line....We did the online check-in on the ship so that helped get us thru that maze, then came the TSA maze.... Already had about 50 passengers in line ahead of us... 1 line to go thru the sniffer machine..... After the line had grown to over 300 people they open up the 2nd line, no sniffer machine, just xray.... We were the lucky choosen ones that got the 2nd line.... TSA folks there move at a different speed than any I've ever witnessed.... SLOW....Took us 1 hour and 45 minutes to clear check-in, TSA, and arrive at the gate.... We were in front of the line...:eek: ... Some of the folks on our roll call spent over 2 1/2 hours following behing us....

 

I didn't notice the pushing and shoving mentioned in earlier post but then again the wife says that I don't pay attention...... On that day SJU was more controlled chaos than a airport. I don't know if its the TSA station chief... I didn't notice a communications problem but I did notice an airport that is not prepared for a rush of folks leaving on the same day, every week, out of San Juan.... JMO

 

Joey

[phoenix_dream]

We have sailed out of Puerto Rico at least six or seven times and I just don't see the problem. I love to sail out of that port to get to the islands you don't see on other cruises such as Aruba. Overall we have had a very good experience. On occasion we have experienced a rude person here or there but that is definitely the exception and I think can happen anywhere. My only issues sailing out of San Juan is the expensive airfare (certainly not the fault of the people living there!) and similarly the expensive hotels. But other than that, we have had absolutely no problems worth mentioning and always enjoy our stay.

[Tex_Jen]

I love sailing out of San Juan and am about to cruise for the 4th time from there. As for the airport snafus, I've seen worse in Atlanta and Florida so really not any different.

 

Jen

[gregj359]

I'm planning on sailing the Caribbean Princess out of San Juan in January 2009. Is that a good time to go as far as kids and whatnot? I don't speak Spanish at all, will that be a big problem anywhere?

 

Thanks,

Greg

[phoenix_dream]

As far as a good time to go with kids I am not sure what you are asking. There will not be too many kids on the ship at that time, and they will be mostly very young. You will have no problem at all without knowing Spanish. Virtually everyone speaks English as well as we do

[gregj359]

As far as a good time to go with kids I am not sure what you are asking. There will not be too many kids on the ship at that time, and they will be mostly very young. You will have no problem at all without knowing Spanish. Virtually everyone speaks English as well as we do

 

Sorry I wasn't clear. I was asking if it was a good time to go when there wouldn't be too many kids and you answered that. It's not that I don't like kids it's just that too many gets out of hand. I don't want everyone to think that I am a kid hater.

 

I will cancel my order for the Spanish speaking audio tapes. :)

 

Thanks,

Greg