Just returned from first ever cruise, Mini (or not)Report on Southern Caribbean from San Juan Jan 28

We were on "your" cruise and the repo back to PC. Wonderful review! We truly enjoyed the ports, with Bonaire being our favorite...we actually rented an electric golf cart and toured the island with a couple of fellow cruisers. We saw so much from beaches to plantations to the donkey sanctuary and the salt mine ("pink" beach really did have a pink tint!). Our dining servers, Levent, Raka and Meena made every meal so wonderful...Palo was such a great experience with Luca, Simone and Alex, not to mention that chocolate soufflé is always to die for. Our cabin for all eleven nights was deck two midship and had a large porthole. It was a perfect and quiet location. We truly couldn't have asked for a better cruise and are booked on the Panama in February 2019, same cabins. :)

Oh I'm jealous that you got to stay on for longer!

Renting the golf cart seems like a good way to go. If we ever return we'll have to look into reserving one as soon as we know.

You know, I've been looking at the Panama Canal cruises. Do you know if those ones are a lot cheaper when they first come out? I know prices go up over time, wondering if those were majorly cheaper on the first day or if the difference isn't really that high.
 
I saw your post at an interesting moment. I was actually just looking at this itinerary instead of our Mexican Riviera and then this came up. And it's cheaper too... Hmmmm....

I saw your posts about PR itself. I keep hearing that they still don't have electricity, and other services yet, but that didn't seem to be the case for you?
 
I saw your post at an interesting moment. I was actually just looking at this itinerary instead of our Mexican Riviera and then this came up. And it's cheaper too... Hmmmm....

I saw your posts about PR itself. I keep hearing that they still don't have electricity, and other services yet, but that didn't seem to be the case for you?

I think some of the major hotel chains don't have it (just from what I've been hearing). We didn't stay at any of those. Everything in San Juan seemed to have power that we saw, we went further out into the mountains and some places there did not have power. There were some redlights that weren't operating farther away from the city.

People were worried about being able to get water and even out in the mountain towns all the grocery stores had bottled water at very cheap prices.

We had no issues in 2018, in 2019 I would hope that almost everything would be up and running.
 
You know, I've been looking at the Panama Canal cruises. Do you know if those ones are a lot cheaper when they first come out? I know prices go up over time, wondering if those were majorly cheaper on the first day or if the difference isn't really that high.
Yes, the PC cruises are significantly cheaper when they first come out. I was going to give you an exact number on our Oceanview for the EBPC this fall, but they're sold out now. Last I check it was well over a thousand more than when we booked at opening. That was as a Silver, so I don't know if it had already gone up from Platinum prices. The first one we took in 2013 was much cheaper and even had GT and MTO rates come out. They are filling up much more than they used to, unfortunately for us.
 


I really enjoyed your mini trip report. Lots of good information. We are sailing out of San Juan next February and was interested in the embarkation process at Pan American pier. We have sailed Disney before but always from Port Canaveral. Any tips or info you have for us? Thanks!
 
Great to hear a first time cruiser's point of view and I enjoyed your beautiful pics. Now you'll be hooked. We've also cruised with Princess, but prefer DCL.

I'm retiring next month and using my sick leave/vacation payoff to go on the trip of a lifetime for a full month. It sure paid off not to call in sick whenever I felt like it over the last 37 years.
 
I really enjoyed your mini trip report. Lots of good information. We are sailing out of San Juan next February and was interested in the embarkation process at Pan American pier. We have sailed Disney before but always from Port Canaveral. Any tips or info you have for us? Thanks!

Well, this was my first Disney cruise so I don't have Port Canaveral to compare it with. I did hear some fellow cruisers complaining about the process though.

We arrived at our designated arrival time, and I think everyone else must have randomly shown up at that time as well. There was maybe a 15 minute line to drop off our luggage. It looked very long but was almost constantly moving. It was outside.

Once we were done with that we went inside and thru the security check, which didn't have a wait. Then we went into our first time cruiser check in line, which was much shorter than the return cruisers line. People were even ditching that line to come over to ours.

We only waited a few minutes to get checked in.

After that we went into a big airplane hanger type space. We could have boarded right away but we decided to wait 10 minutes or so for a picture with Captain Mickey.

There were chairs set up for people to wait but we were able to go board right away.

There were a couple picture backdrops, since it was our first cruise I asked the photographer to take a picture with my phone and he refused. Which was odd to me since I'd never experienced that before, but there was no way we were paying that huge price for the photo package.

We entered the ship on the first level. I found out later that was weird, we didn't enter the lobby or get announced, but I didn't know I was missing any of that. Apparently the higher loading area had been damaged in the hurricane and not fixed yet, though I bet that would be fixed by next year.

Any other questions?
 


Hi! I saw in your opening post that you did a donkey and salt excursion. I have a couple questions about that excursion that DCL hasn't been able to answer for me. Was it the Donkey and Salt Safari?
 

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