Valor Review – March 16 thru 23, 2014 (w/ a few photos)

I haven’t done a review in a few years and I’m not sure I can remember how to do the photos, but I will do my best. I took these photos with my Kindle as that was most convenient, so I hope they look okay.

Ports were:

• San Juan
  
• St Thomas
  
• Barbados
  
• St. Lucia
  
• St. Kitts
  
• St. Maarten
  

My DH and I decided to do a parent-only vacation (the second one in 20 years) and go during the college spring break of our 21-year old son, and left him to take care of our 13-year old son. It seems that they survived, but the younger son said the older son will not make a good parent when he gets married because he only allowed one hour of x-box per day. Our family has cruised before and this vacation was the best cruise I’ve ever done, which I think maybe 10 or so. My head is still spinning from all these islands. I don’t have high expectations insofar as I only need a view, shade, and a book or magazine and I’m good to go. Since we were trying to keep in touch with home via email and I wanted to send pics through the Kindle, it was important that I try to find free/cheap wi-fi.

I haven’t used ship-sponsored excursions in years and so all excursions were through private companies. When I first started cruising again in 2009, I’d get off the ship & just “wing” it, and that did not work well at all. Since then, I’ve really made an effort to line things up with private individuals/companies and feel quite comfortable doing that now. Using these tour operators has been great and we were back in plenty of time before sail-away. I had no anxiety whatsoever in terms of whether we’d return to the ship on time. The weather was sunny & breezy most of the week, except a few sprinkles while in St Lucia. Below is a short review of our vacation.

San Juan: We flew Delta into Puerto Rico on Saturday, arriving at 2pm. My husband’s ticket was free from frequent flyer points from a zillion years ago I think, but mine was $800, then they hit me up for a $25 baggage fee. Southwest Airlines should have been the way to go, but I’ll know better next time. After arriving in San Juan, after you get your baggage at baggage claim, get in the “que” for the taxis. It is a line with about 20 people in it but moves quickly.

I had booked a room for 1 night pre-cruise at the Caribe Hilton, using points. Unfortunately, we were short on points so I had to sign up for a HH Visa card and they gave us enough points. By using points, not only did we not need to book the 2-night minimum, but we also avoided that crazy resort fee, so total spent on the room itself was $0. We had a room on the 10th floor ocean front. Nice clean room and balcony and here is our view. Free wi-fi in the room & common areas, and even outside on the beach area, I think.

After checking in, it was almost 3:00 p.m., and we were starving. I heard about a Subway right on the edge of the property, however, based on the TripAdvisor reviews and the looks of the outside of the building, we decided to try the Pina Colada Club instead, situated right on the property. Inside the Pina Colada Club was really loud, the seating was wooden benches, and the service was lousy. And expensive. We bought two sandwiches, 1 beer and an ice water and our bill, with tip, was $40. Also, despite walking in at 3:00, we did not get our sandwiches until 4:15. Do not eat here. Totally not worth it. I had to pay in cash, otherwise we might still be there now, waiting for our bill. There is a Starbucks right near the hotel front desk which offers lots of wonderful things to eat. I had no idea they’d have so many options. They had Malorcas which were delicious. They also had pastries, juices, other sandwiches. Then you just walk out into the lovely open-air lobby, to the pool, or where ever you wish to eat. They had a kitty wandering around which I loved.

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Great start!!!:D:D

Thanks for taking the time to do this....

Love the pictures....keep up the good work!

You're wetting my whistle!

Our group of sixteen board the Valor April 6.

Embarkation day --- On Sunday, since the Valor had had delayed boarding until 3:30 (no one was allowed on the ship due to “routine testing”) and it was about 12:00, we checked in and received our S&S cards, then we jumped back off and walked the 10-minutes to Café Berlin for lunch. I asked some guy on the street where it was and it appears it is pronounced Café “Berleen.” This place has vegetarian dishes and meat dishes. The reason I chose it was because the prices are very reasonable and they had vegetarian dishes. I had some kind of Puerto Rican Tofu wrap and it had lots of flavor and was perfect. Service was great.

http://www.cafeberlinpr.com

I think they have a Sunday brunch for $20 pp, but we just bought sandwiches & drinks and they were wonderful. You can see the restaurant on Google maps and their menu is on line.

On our way back to the ship, we stopped off at CVS for our (my) wine. It is about a 10-minute walk from CVS to the ship. Since it was hotter than blue blazes and I was still hauling around my carry-on, I was ready to get on the ship. We wanted to go to the Forts, but knowing that we had to unpack & get cleaned up for dinner at the Steakhouse, we were running low on energy by then.

We had Cabin 6487, which is an Aft cabin, situated above the Eagles Aft Lounge, which is where the comedy happens and also some smaller evening shows. We were originally in a mid-ship deck 6 balcony cabin, but I saw this aft cabin open up for an additional $77 so I jumped on it. I must say, I really enjoyed the aft cabin. I’ve had everything from an interior cabin to a grand suite and the balcony for this aft cabin is quite roomy. I like shade and there were only small portions of the day where I could not sit outside. It was nice not having so much wind on the balcony and you can stretch out be more comfy. The view is so much more wide and you can see a lot better. It was definitely noisier though, in that you hear a lot of people talking on their balconies around you but that didn’t bother us at all. At night it was nice to see the stars so clearly and it was very quiet. There was only one evening where they must have had a band in the Eagles Lounge because at around midnight we heard drums and a bass. I had a fan running and watching a movie on my Kindle, using noise cancelling headphones and I still heard it in the middle of my movie. That was only one night though, and we really liked the location. Our cabin steward did a decent job and we tipped extra. We did not get ice at all. I would have asked him but he was never around. I think he must have had a lot of rooms to take care of.

Oh good another Valor review! We leave on her 5/4 can't wait!

St Thomas:

First stop was St. Thomas. We’ve both been here before. Thanks to fellow CC member, Marie, (Thanks again for your help, Marie!) I was able to get a reservation with Luen Anthony at Luen's Island Tours for $25 pp. He takes a few days to get back to you but here is his email address: yellofevah @ yahoo. com. He is a firefighter / tour guide. He gave us a nice tour on his open-air yellow bus. The fact that it was not air-conditioned was no problem at all. He was entertaining, witty, and knowledgeable, and had this great loud voice which could be heard above traffic when we were outside the bus. We did a little shopping in town and some sightseeing. There really wasn’t enough time to get anything to eat, so I probably should have brought along more granola bars or something. Luen did a great job and was very much interested in what his passengers wanted to do and gave us different options.

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Barbados:

Loved Barbados the most. Please note that 1 US dollar equals 2 Barbados dollars here. Here, I was in contact via Facebook with the Tiki Bar on Rockley Beach. I especially wanted to go investigate this Rockley Beach, of which fellow CC member, Aplmac, had posted outstanding photos. Mine are not as nice but here they are.

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You are charged $60 BDS ($30 USD) for two chairs and an umbrella. You receive $60 BDS in "play" money which is laminated paper, for use at the Tiki bar and restaurant. I don’t know that I’d call the restrooms spotless, but they were useable. The $60 Barbados dollars you should spend in exact amounts so that you get no change back b/c you’ll be paid back in Barbados dollars. Basically, you can get 2 mixed drinks by paying 3 of your $10 Barbados dollars, I think - - therefore it shouldn’t take long to run through that “play” money. I bought a kid’s fish /chips basket and it was delicious. My husband got the chicken fingers which were good as well. We spent a good part of the day here. They kindly called a cab when we were ready to leave, and we stood at the street for exactly one minute before it arrived.

The people here are so friendly and delightful. Some guy approached me from off the beach and sold me a necklace, and we chatted for quite a while and he was hilarious. We really enjoyed our day in Barbados. I’d like to retire here, however, on one of these tours this week, they said Barbados is the most expensive island on which to live. I can see why … it’s just crazy beautiful here.

St. Lucia:

We’ve never been here before. We had a reservation at The Rendezvous Resort. This is a real sweet deal at $65/pp day pass – I really wanted an all-inclusive at one of our stops and chose this one. It is a couples resort, no kids. You pay at the front desk, but make reservations ahead of time via email. The resort sent me an email, stating it is a $10 total (+ tip) taxi ride one way to the resort.

It was a little strange getting a taxi here. Some guy asked us if we wanted a taxi. I said yes, to Rendezvous Resort. He said “Oh …. Oh …. Oh … You have to have reservations there.” I said Yeah, I know. I do. So reluctantly he takes us to another dude who says his name is Patrick. Patrick really has a hard time getting into this place. It’s like it is Fort Knox. The guard didn’t want to let us in for some reason. Perhaps because Patrick’s car had no markings on it to indicate it was a taxi. At any rate, ultimately the guard relents, and Patrick drops us off at the front & says “$15 please”. Lesson learned --- and I should have known this --- agree on the price before you get in the taxi. While on the way, I was motioning for my husband to tip him extra dollars because of the guard thing stalling us, then I find out he overcharged us. Real nice.

Anyway, this resort has lovely cushy lounges. When we communicated via email, they originally told me either a half-day until noon or a half-day after noon, which included lunch. I told them we would rather to be there kind of in the middle of the day, from about 10:00 a.m., include lunch, then leave a 2:00 p.m., and they said that was fine and confirmed the reservation. I brought the email with me in case there were problems. The lunch was very good and was buffet style. I accidently on purpose dropped a little piece of fish for the kitty cat which was wandering around.

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Unfortunately, we did not realize that unlimited alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks were also included in this amount[/U]. Nonetheless, I was able to knock back a few Bahama Mama’s in record time and they were great. Specialty house wine is not included though. When it was time to go, they called us a cab, and the taxi was there within 30 seconds, which I think was already parked outside because he was actually looking for us. This time … we paid $10 plus tip to go back to the pier.

St Kitts

We’ve never been here either. Some say tours are better than beaches here. I read other reviews by CC members stating Thenford Grey’s tours were great, so that’s what we did. We had Sackville Grey, Thenford’s brother. Total time on this tour was about 5-6 hours it seemed, which was a great deal for $48 pp. We visited the Batik factory also on this tour and I purchased a few things there. I am sorry that I did not purchase more from the Batik factory as I bought a ladies’ sleeveless top for $30 and a couple of scarves for $12 each. Now that I’ve tried it on, the sleeveless top looks great and the fabric is very nice, so I should have bought a few of these. I would definitely recommend Thenford Grey’s Tours. They do a lot of talking about plants and flowers on this tour. Top notch outfit, run very professionally. We were back to the pier in plenty of time before sail-away.

St Maarten

I went on Bernard’s Tour ($45 pp) a few years ago with my friend, and enjoyed it so much I decided to do it again. Meeting Bernard’s Tours is very easy as there are several people wandering around the town square with shirts showing the logo. We met in the area at 8:30 a.m., to begin our tour at 9:00: This was DH’s first time, and he liked the tour as well. The only problem with Bernard’s Tours are his buses. They are Nissan busses and the aisle to walk down is barely 6-8 inches wide. The bus is air conditioned though. Our tour guide this time was Mailman and he was excellent. Over the years, I’ve heard people talking about Mailman so I am glad he was our guide, as he did an exceptional job. When we come back as a family in June, I’m planning on asking for Mailman again. This tour gives you a little bit of everything from sightseeing, to shopping, to beach time (1 & ¾ hr) at Orient Beach (Kahao Bar on the family friendly side, w/ $6 mixed drinks & free wifi). You can find them by looking for the bright blue umbrellas on the beach. There was a kitty here too, napping in a restaurant chair at the bar.

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Photo ops on Bernard’s Tours:

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I don’t think there is a better value out there as far as this type of tour. This tour lasts many hours and his people do a great job. Again, we returned to the pier in plenty of time at 3:15, for our 5:00 sail-away.

Misc

Steakhouse – I asked DH if he wanted to give it a try since we’ve never gone and we had no kids this trip. Since I’m not really a red meat person, I had no interest, but I said that I didn’t mind trying it if he would like to do that. He did, and we went. We both had surf & turf. Filet was nice. Lobster was just ok. I had better lobster on the Fantasy on formal night. Cost is $35 pp (tip is included), but we included an additional cash tip. DH said he’d go again. Me -- not so much. Free bottle of wine the first night. It was okay. The place was pretty dead at 6:00 so we were able to be in and out in no time. Service was exceptional.

Soap – I couldn’t understand all the fuss on CC about the white bar soaps. I have had the green ones which are nice, but they switched them to white a few years ago. I had a couple white ones in my upstairs bathroom so a few days before we left, I decided to open one. I love the smell of these. So … we get on the ship and I notice there were 3 extra bars in my dish! Score! Yay! So I opened one. OMG … nasty! They have changed the soap. Now I can see what people are talking about. It’s simply disgusting. They need to get rid of this putrid smelling soap.

Anytime Dining – We had Marcello and his 2 assistants, based on recommendation of a fellow CC member. He was okay. We tipped him extra, along with his assistants, although service was very slow. I had high expectations because on the second night, we were in and out of the dining room in about 45 minutes and I think that may be a record. The rest of the week was slow, slow, and slower still. Since my family eats together at home every single night at the dinner table, I do not wish to spend so much time at the dinner table during vacation. There weren’t that many people eating in the MDR some of these nights, so I don’t know if the hold-up was in the kitchen or what. Sitting there with nothing but water for 25 minutes after being seated is just wrong. There were tons of empty tables around us, and we had our menus closed and resting on our plates, indicating that we were ready to order, but still sat and waited, and waited, and waited some more. I have had ATD in the past and haven’t ever had it this slow.

FTTF – I bought Fastest to the Fun but it was kind of a waste here unless you have an early flight to return home. I bought it so that I wouldn’t have to haul around my carry-on bag, but that was pointless since they had delayed boarding, so by the time we boarded, everyone was already on the ship. Our luggage did not show up until around 5:00 even though we had FTTF and checked in at noon-ish. And yes, we tipped the people who took our bags. At the end of the cruise, we were able to get off the ship at about 8:00 and were at the airport waaaaay too early for our 11:35 flight. Tip: Remember when flying home from Puerto Rico, you need to run your luggage through the Agriculture screening so that you can get a little yellow tag put on your luggage before checking in. The Agriculture screening area is a little hallway directly across from the row of check-in counters. I would have missed this completely had my husband not flown through PR many times for business. They will send you back to the Agriculture screening if you miss it.

Comedy Shows - Usually I skip the adult comedy shows as I don’t think the comedians work very hard as they do with the family shows. This has been my experience at least. This trip, however, I just couldn’t get my act together, so I kept missing them. I did catch a few adult shows and they were somewhat funny so it has renewed my interest in the adult shows a little, but I still like the family ones a little better. The problem with so many islands on this cruise, we were pretty exhausted by the end of the evening so we did not make it to any of the other shows.

Fish & Chips. Tried the fish (no chips) upstairs from the Lido the first day. Decent fish but a little greasy. I wanted to try it again but never got around to it.

Seaday Brunch – Since there was only 1 sea day, we figured we should give this a try. Service in the dining room was slow again. Our waiter didn’t seem too thrilled we were there. Food was okay.

Mongolian BBQ – Fabulous. I love this place even though it is a long wait, it is totally worth it. At a fellow CC’s suggestion, I tried just asking for Black Bean sauce, with a touch of the Szechwan sauce, but it was still way too hot. Delicious nonetheless. I am skipping the chicken next time because they just don’t put the quality parts of chicken in this and it had grizzle in it. They had “seafood” with clams, mussels, etc., but I passed on that. I have had it in the past with just plain salmon on other cruises and loved it.

DH says this cruise exceeded his expectations. I was glad to hear this because most of these ports I had no clue what we were going to do when I booked the cruise. My way of gathering the information was to first get 3-4 options in each port, then DH and I went through them to decide which excursion in what port, based on what we were doing in all of the other ports.

I’d say this was probably the best cruise since it has so many very interesting ports.

As most people say after taking this cruise, I’d love to do it again …

Thanks for reading my review. :)

Excellent review!

Thank you for your review! We're on the Valor in July and have also booked tours with Thenford Grey and Bernard's so I was happy to hear you were pleased with both of those.

Embarkation day --- On Sunday, since the Valor had had delayed boarding until 3:30 (no one was allowed on the ship due to “routine testing”) and it was about 12:00, we checked in and received our S&S cards, then we jumped back off and walked the 10-minutes to Café Berlin for lunch. I asked some guy on the street where it was and it appears it is pronounced Café “Berleen.” This place has vegetarian dishes and meat dishes. The reason I chose it was because the prices are very reasonable and they had vegetarian dishes. I had some kind of Puerto Rican Tofu wrap and it had lots of flavor and was perfect. Service was great.

 

http://www.cafeberlinpr.com

 

I think they have a Sunday brunch for $20 pp, but we just bought sandwiches & drinks and they were wonderful. You can see the restaurant on Google maps and their menu is on line.

 

On our way back to the ship, we stopped off at CVS for our (my) wine. It is about a 10-minute walk from CVS to the ship. Since it was hotter than blue blazes and I was still hauling around my carry-on, I was ready to get on the ship. We wanted to go to the Forts, but knowing that we had to unpack & get cleaned up for dinner at the Steakhouse, we were running low on energy by then.

 

Or is there a new pier now?

 

Thanks again!

Drew

Thank you for your review! We're on the Valor in July and have also booked tours with Thenford Grey and Bernard's so I was happy to hear you were pleased with both of those.

On Bernard's Tour, my DH was not in the mood for waiting until we reached Maho Beach to eat at the Sunset Bar & Grill, so during the shopping stop, we had to get sandwiches at Sarafina's which is known for its pastries, bread. The sandwiches were great but really if we could have held off until Sunset, it would have been better. We spent the entire time standing in line at Sarafina's instead of doing any shopping.

I think you'll be happy with both of these tour companies.

Great review!

Thanks!

Question... the picture above... does not look like the pier I've been to in Old San Juan... isn't there an overhang there or something? (and liquor samples... lol)

Or is there a new pier now?

 

Thanks again!

Drew

Good eye, Drew! You are correct. I think this photo was taken in St Maarten, as we went through the entire cruise until I realized that we had no photo of the ship. This is such a fun itinerary and so busy that it was hard to keep remembering to take photos along the way.

hanks for the great review and pics.

Thanks for the review. We sail in July. I am glad to see you take photos of cats. I take them of dogs and cats on our cruises as well.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Forums mobile app

Excellent review.

I'm amazed at the great quality of the photos you took with your Kindle!

Amazon has put excellent 'optics' in that device, it would seem!

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Here are a few short VALOR videos I shot, mid-February

when we were on board!

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Lido Deck 9 - Aft

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Old San Juan Harbor at sunset

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Scenic St. Thomas USVI

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I love the photos of the kitties. Thanks for taking the time to post your experiences.

Thanks for the review! Great pictures and videos!

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Water slide fun!

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Havensight area - St.Thomas USVI

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OK so I was playing in the elevator... :D

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Fun review and good read! We board the Valor on 4/13. Can't wait...