Please tell me about sailaway on Freedom (SJ)

We will be sailing on Freedom out of San Juan in late May 2019. Typically, we enjoy participating in sailaway fun, like out on a top deck, listening to live music, watching the scenery, toasting with other passengers, etc.

That said, we've never sailed away from any home port any later than 4:30pm, so this 8:30pm puts a snag in our "traditional" plans. Normally, we do sailaway, then dinner, then the welcome aboard show...or reverse the welcome aboard show and dinner, depending on the timing of the show. We are doing specialty dinner on day one, so if we want to catch both the sailaway and the show, how early will we have to eat dinner? Is it worth planning our dinner around these events or should we skip one or both?

I just booked BOGO for 7pm, hoping for Giovanni's, but wondering if I should make it earlier? Or should we just watch sailaway from Giovanni's?

If you have had experience with this, I would love to hear your opinions!

Eeyore

I'd book dinner no later than 6pm to catch the sailaway.

Our dining time is shown for 6 PM on my Invoice. We have main dining.

Sailaway out of San Juan is awesome! Our favorite port to cruise out of. It is so gorgeous leave from there in the dark and seeing all the city lights and the light from El Morro Fort. You will love it!

What about muster drill time? Does that interfere with early dinner the first day? This will be my first cruise ever in Dec on Freedom. So looking forward to it.....

What about muster drill time? Does that interfere with early dinner the first day? This will be my first cruise ever in Dec on Freedom. So looking forward to it.....

We will be on this cruise next April. I doubt that muster drill will in anyway interfere with dinning. They must close the ship down for the drill, as far as the bar/dinning and guest facilities are concerned and they use a ton of staff to man the drill. They have it planned to make sure everything stays on schedule. We also have 6:00 PM main dinning.

We too are very excited about sailing out of SJ in the evening and the wonderful new islands we will get to experience.

What about muster drill time? Does that interfere with early dinner the first day? This will be my first cruise ever in Dec on Freedom. So looking forward to it.....

They usually delay dinner by 30 minutes on the first night only to accommodate the early muster drill.

Thanks for the info. We have a 5:45 pm MDR time on sail away day. Getting very excited!!

Thank you all for your quick responses! We are also extremely excited!

I wasn't sure if the dark would put a damper on sailaway, and I wasn't even sure if it would be dark or not. Now I know more of what to expect and we definitely change dinner to 6 pm so we don't miss anything!

I am excited for the daughter as this will be her first Caribbean and Freedom Class. It will be a first for the both of us out of San Juan so planning on coming in 2 days early so we have a full day to enjoy Old San Juan. Checking out possible Hotels now.

Thank you all for your quick responses! We are also extremely excited!

 

I wasn't sure if the dark would put a damper on sailaway, and I wasn't even sure if it would be dark or not. Now I know more of what to expect and we definitely change dinner to 6 pm so we don't miss anything!

On time we had to sail out of St. Thomas very late due to an unexpected issue. We had gone to dinner at Chops, has a beautiful window seat. We finally started to leave about 7:00 or so, it was beautiful watching the lights on the mountains come on and the colors of the sunset. We can't wait to have an evening sail away.