Victory Christmas Cruise 2009 review

[pjhootch]

Sail dates 12/20-12/27

 

We had a really great trip despite getting off to a bumpy beginning. I'll try to add in details that might be helpful as I remember:

 

December 18th- We flew out of the midwest and into Orlando. We were still flying into San Juan on the morning of the cruise but there are 5 of us so I was really picking and choosing airfare. As it turns out, we were lucky to be in Orlando on the 19th, because that is when the weather fell apart on the east coast. There were 60 flights cancelled in Orlando on the 19th, so when we arrived at the airport early in the morning on the 20th it was already quite a mess. We took the three "kids -18-18 and 28" to Universal Studios on the 19th and stayed at the Marriott Airport hotel the night of the 19th. I managed to get two rooms on priceline for $37 each and the hotel was really great for an airport hotel with a beautiful pool. There were already people staying there that had been stranded from the airport nightmare.

 

December 20th- Arrived at MCO two hours before our 7:30 a.m. flight with boarding passes already printed out. Checked the bags and strolled towards security. It looked busy but I've seen worse, so I wasn't concerned since we had a long time until our flight boarded. UH OH. Silly me. The day I don't worry about making our flight is the day everything goes wrong!

 

Security was seriously understaffed that morning and the line wasn't moving to go through the screeners. Our party of five was directed into a security line to the far right. The kids were making comments about picking the wrong line but I still refused to worry. Finally we realized the line we had been sent to was the line being used for special screening for folks in wheelchairs and therefore it was moving very slowly.

 

Two of the kids and I got through the machines and were putting our shoes back on, and I looked around for my husband other kid. They had been right behind me at the x-ray machine. By this time, we were only about 20 minutes away from our flight departure time and I was feeling pretty uptight. I saw my daughter and husband still on the other side of the x-ray machine. They had brought a group of people in and stopped my husband and daughter so they could hand search the four wheelchairs.

 

I turned to the other two kids and said "GO". "Tell the people at the gate we are coming but stuck in security." The kids jumped on the tram to the gate and I waited for the rest of the family to come out of security mess. We probably were only about 7 minutes behind the two kids, but after the tram and the run down to the boarding gate, we arrived to find the door closed and the gate attendant telling us we would have to take another plane. She just about blew a gasket when I said that two of my kids were on the plane and yelled at me we shouldn't have separated. I told her they were adults and security actually separated us, but that didn't change the fact they were about to land in San Juan without any money, credit cards or their cruise tickets. She threw a hissy fit but opened the door for us. There were standby passengers waiting in the jetway and they had to pull them out instead of giving them our seats. Wayyyy too close for comfort.

 

After a nice smooth flight we arrived in San Juan no problem. We found a taxi that quoted us a $24 dollar fare to the pier for the 5 of us. We jumped in at about 11:30 San Juan time. We pulled out of the airport and as we got close to the pier we ran into pure parking lot. I could see the Victory way off in the distance. There were several ships in port that day and traffic was crazy. Our very nice cab driver (grin) jumped a couple of curbs and deposited us by the nearest ship with our bags and peeled out. We couldn't find the carnival baggage handlers so my husband trotted off to ask where we should go. He came back with the news the cabbie had dumped us at the wrong pier and the Victory was about a mile away on the other side of the bay. It was now 12:30. The Victory wasn't set to sail until 10:00 p.m. so I wasn't bothered. By that point I was just relieved we were actually in San Juan :-) The three kids were hungry, hot, frustrated and wanted to get to the ship. As my husband and I plunged back into the crowd looking for a taxi, my 18 year old daughter stepped in front of a taxi van, held her hand up and yelled stop. :D

 

For an additional 22$ we jumped in and sped off to the correct ship, this time.

 

We arrived at the correct pier at 1:00 p.m. and everything went very smoothly from there. At the duty free shop I bought a bottle of wine and my husband bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. We stashed both in our carryon and started to board the ship. A customs official was searching carryon bags, and after digging around and feeling the shape of the alcohol bottles he attached a red plastic band to our bag. Once on the ship we were directed to a table on the outside deck, where the plastic band was cut off and the Jack Daniels was removed with the promise to return it to us the night before we arrived back in San Juan. Since this is normal on other cruises I wasn't bothered by it. It seems like everyone else having their alcohol removed (and there were a LOT of people) were not terribly nice about it however. That is NOT a job I would want to have- taking people's alcohol away.

 

We walked into the main lobby which was nicely decorated for Christmas. My husband and I both took a glass of champagne from a waiter with a convenient tray, and my 28 year old who HATES champagne tossed back one, took another and gulped half of it before handing it off to me. I guess she was more stressed than I realized.:eek:

[katiecat]

What a stressfull start to a vacation.:eek:

 

I hope it gets better after the champagne! :)

[Denicewu]

We have gone out of San Juan on this cruise twice now and they have always let us have booze from the duty free in our carryon. Have they changed this now? Can anyone confirm we have not had any issues the last 2 years doing this. Just want to be prepared.

 

Sail dates 12/20-12/27

 

We had a really great trip despite getting off to a bumpy beginning. I'll try to add in details that might be helpful as I remember:

 

December 18th- We flew out of the midwest and into Orlando. We were still flying into San Juan on the morning of the cruise but there are 5 of us so I was really picking and choosing airfare. As it turns out, we were lucky to be in Orlando on the 19th, because that is when the weather fell apart on the east coast. There were 60 flights cancelled in Orlando on the 19th, so when we arrived at the airport early in the morning on the 20th it was already quite a mess. We took the three "kids -18-18 and 28" to Universal Studios on the 19th and stayed at the Marriott Airport hotel the night of the 19th. I managed to get two rooms on priceline for $37 each and the hotel was really great for an airport hotel with a beautiful pool. There were already people staying there that had been stranded from the airport nightmare.

 

December 20th- Arrived at MCO two hours before our 7:30 a.m. flight with boarding passes already printed out. Checked the bags and strolled towards security. It looked busy but I've seen worse, so I wasn't concerned since we had a long time until our flight boarded. UH OH. Silly me. The day I don't worry about making our flight is the day everything goes wrong!

 

Security was seriously understaffed that morning and the line wasn't moving to go through the screeners. Our party of five was directed into a security line to the far right. The kids were making comments about picking the wrong line but I still refused to worry. Finally we realized the line we had been sent to was the line being used for special screening for folks in wheelchairs and therefore it was moving very slowly.

 

Two of the kids and I got through the machines and were putting our shoes back on, and I looked around for my husband other kid. They had been right behind me at the x-ray machine. By this time, we were only about 20 minutes away from our flight departure time and I was feeling pretty uptight. I saw my daughter and husband still on the other side of the x-ray machine. They had brought a group of people in and stopped my husband and daughter so they could hand search the four wheelchairs.

 

I turned to the other two kids and said "GO". "Tell the people at the gate we are coming but stuck in security." The kids jumped on the tram to the gate and I waited for the rest of the family to come out of security mess. We probably were only about 7 minutes behind the two kids, but after the tram and the run down to the boarding gate, we arrived to find the door closed and the gate attendant telling us we would have to take another plane. She just about blew a gasket when I said that two of my kids were on the plane and yelled at me we shouldn't have separated. I told her they were adults and security actually separated us, but that didn't change the fact they were about to land in San Juan without any money, credit cards or their cruise tickets. She threw a hissy fit but opened the door for us. There were standby passengers waiting in the jetway and they had to pull them out instead of giving them our seats. Wayyyy too close for comfort.

 

After a nice smooth flight we arrived in San Juan no problem. We found a taxi that quoted us a $24 dollar fare to the pier for the 5 of us. We jumped in at about 11:30 San Juan time. We pulled out of the airport and as we got close to the pier we ran into pure parking lot. I could see the Victory way off in the distance. There were several ships in port that day and traffic was crazy. Our very nice cab driver (grin) jumped a couple of curbs and deposited us by the nearest ship with our bags and peeled out. We couldn't find the carnival baggage handlers so my husband trotted off to ask where we should go. He came back with the news the cabbie had dumped us at the wrong pier and the Victory was about a mile away on the other side of the bay. It was now 12:30. The Victory wasn't set to sail until 10:00 p.m. so I wasn't bothered. By that point I was just relieved we were actually in San Juan :-) The three kids were hungry, hot, frustrated and wanted to get to the ship. As my husband and I plunged back into the crowd looking for a taxi, my 18 year old daughter stepped in front of a taxi van, held her hand up and yelled stop. :D

 

For an additional 22$ we jumped in and sped off to the correct ship, this time.

 

We arrived at the correct pier at 1:00 p.m. and everything went very smoothly from there. At the duty free shop I bought a bottle of wine and my husband bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. We stashed both in our carryon and started to board the ship. A customs official was searching carryon bags, and after digging around and feeling the shape of the alcohol bottles he attached a red plastic band to our bag. Once on the ship we were directed to a table on the outside deck, where the plastic band was cut off and the Jack Daniels was removed with the promise to return it to us the night before we arrived back in San Juan. Since this is normal on other cruises I wasn't bothered by it. It seems like everyone else having their alcohol removed (and there were a LOT of people) were not terribly nice about it however. That is NOT a job I would want to have- taking people's alcohol away.

 

We walked into the main lobby which was nicely decorated for Christmas. My husband and I both took a glass of champagne from a waiter with a convenient tray, and my 28 year old who HATES champagne tossed back one, took another and gulped half of it before handing it off to me. I guess she was more stressed than I realized.:eek:

[Weddingcrasher]

We have gone out of San Juan on this cruise twice now and they have always let us have booze from the duty free in our carryon. Have they changed this now? Can anyone confirm we have not had any issues the last 2 years doing this. Just want to be prepared.

 

 

I cannot confirm/deny (we sailed last Feb), but if you get a red bag attached to your luggage, just remove it before you get to the alcohol table. You have to go through the long gangway and would have plenty of time to stash the bag in your pocket ;)

[pjhootch]

Champagne makes everything better.

 

We had a hiccup with the rooms once the doors opened, and the three kids only had two twin beds that met in the corner of the room. Eventually a roll away was found, but that actually made things worse because it took up the entire floor area and the kids had to crawl over the roll away to get to the bathroom.

 

We were still about 600 passengers short and the ship was being held until midnight to try to get guests from the east coast on board. My husband started an hourly trek to guest services to see if we couldn't get a room that actually had a bed for each of the people we'd paid for. The guest services people were under a lot of pressure with the weather problems but were very nice. At about midnight they agreed to upgrade the kids to a balcony room for $100 and we woke them up and dragged all their stuff to another floor. We still wound up with one kid sleeping on a short couch, but at least they all had their own space. They were just happy to be cruising and I was quite relieved when we pulled out of San Juan and everyone had a place to sleep.

 

[pjhootch]

This will be a boring review for shoppers ;)

 

We did room service breakfast and avoided the buffet this morning. We all slept in quite late. The ship docked early in St. Thomas and we only planned to wander around the port area. We eventually made our way off around lunch time. We found a taxi into town and rummaged through stores looking for trinkets. Since we left below 0 windchills in the midwest, and even Orlando was pretty chilly, we were still acclimating to the heat and humidity and the kids didn't want to spend too much time trudging around in the heat.

 

The shopping here is obviously good if you shop, but we don't. At least not for expensive things or gems, which seemed to be the main focus of the intrepid shoppers around us.

 

We finally stopped for a beer at a little bar outside where exhuasted cruisers from the U.K. were preparing to board with all their packages.

 

From our balcony:

 

 

 

Relaxation...

 

We cabbed it back to the ship ($4 per person each way) and had a snack before preparing for our first seated dinner in the dining room.

 

Dinner was wonderful, by the way. I cannot possibly remember what we ordered each night. We never skipped the dining room at night. The meals were consistently excellent with a little bit of let down a couple of times with a beef entree not being rare or medium or whatever was ordered. Our waiter and assistant were on top of everything all the time.

[framerman]

thanks for your review....Keep it up...I can see you are on-line right now and prob. working on it as I post!!

[phinfan63]

Goodness, I found this on page 6! Please come back and finish your wonderful review ~ I know it's alot of work :eek:

 

We took this cruise last March and I'm reliving it thru your review ~ it sounds like you enjoyed it as much as we did.

[travelqueen555]

Great Review so far, please come back and finish. We are leave one week from Sun. Every little bit of information helps

[atlsteve]

I love the pic of St. Thomas from your balcony. What was your cabin number? I was mostly wondering if it was on port or starboard side.

 

Thanks in advance

[canner2u]

Awesome review so far, can not wait to read more.

[pjhootch]

I'm going to finish :-) The work week started for me so plowing through pictures slowed down a bit. The cabin was 1066 and it was port side. We found that we faced the port in area in most of the islands.

 

I'm going to try to get some more photos up this afternoon before I start getting confused about dates and what happened when. I can remember WHAT we had for dinner, but no memory of all about what was offered when. I didn't save the capers either since our luggage space was so precious. This $20 a bag for the airline really bums me out. We only brought 3 bags for 5 people because I was feeling cheap!

[phinfan63]

Looking forward to hearing more!

[pjhootch]

Work really got in the way, but I'm going to try to finish this for people who are going to be cruising soon.

 

Tuesday the 22nd was Dominica. We had the three grown kids with us and I thought they might like to see some of the rain forest. I really was in the mood just to hang out and didn't want to be crowded into a bus on winding roads, so my husband and I decided to just walk around the port. I didn't want to send the youngsters out without us unless they were on a Carnival excursion, so we booked the emerald pool excursion for them. They were looking for something a little more strenous, but when we booked on the night before there wasn't much left. If you want to do a ship's excursion in Dominica my suggestion is to book before you board or as soon as you can after boarding.

 

The kids enjoyed themselves but the lines were so long down to the emerald pool they gave up and never got to the water. They loved the scenery. I loaded the girls up with dramamine before they got in the van but my son has never had motion sickness and declined. He was sorry, because speeding up the mountains on winding roads got to him, while the girls didn't have any problems.

 

My husband just strolled around town. There weren't many tourists in town even though multiple cruise ships were in port. There was a line of vendors set up along the sea wall with the usual tourist items (many of which were made in China :o). The area is quite poor, but there was the requisite KFC not too far from the pier. We bought a couple of things from local vendors but didn't find a comfortable bar to just sit and people watch. There were a couple of places that would have worked for us, but they were already full with folks from the ships that had the same idea and beat us to it!

 

 

From our balcony

 

 

[pjhootch]

Unfortunately, I don't have too many photos of Barbados. We had a great day here, but so much of it was spent in the water that I didn't take a lot of pictures. There were some great photo ops, but I forgot to buy an underwater camera and was too busy doing things to be digging out the camera much!

 

We had a private tour set up with Shasa Catamaran Tours, to snorkel with sea turtles and a ship wreck. We met the driver on the dock just outside the port entrance, and were whisked away to the beach where we boarded the cat.

 

Jason from Shasa tours has a small catamaran and he takes no more than 12 people at time. The water was milky that day although the weather was hot and beautiful. He said the water around the shipwreck wasn't clear enough to see anything, so he took us to a man made reef near one of the resort hotels instead. We had the greatest time, and I can't even describe it. The sea turtles were very interested in their snacks and were not shy at all. The water was warm and lovely and clear. I don't like to wear a snorkel or a mask, but I was able to see the turtles all around us very clearly by just sticking my face down close to the water. The water was calm enough that I could do this without worrying about getting a face full of salt water.

 

 

Jason from Shasa Tours at the sea turtle sight

 

 

 

Our neighbors in Barbados

[pjhootch]

Again I didn't take as many pictures as I should have. We booked another Carnival excursion this day, thanks to a win in the casino. :D I did do this the day before and there were still plenty of tickets, but it was a bit pricey so if the casino hadn't helped me out it wouldn't have happened.

 

We did the "pirates" sail on the Brig Unicorn, a ship that was used in a few movies. It was hokey and touristy and it didn't make a bit of difference because it was also a lot of fun. The rum punch was good and strong, the Piton beer was ice cold and tasted great, and watching the crew sail the ship was a blast. The "host" Chad was really great with all the young kids on the ship and it was an excellent way to spend Christmas eve. We sailed from the same pier where the Victory was docked, and tendered into a little pier at Pigeon Point. There was a treasure hunt for people that wanted to run around, and there were two small beaches for swimming for the rest of us. I rented a couple of beach chairs for $2 a piece and basically bobbed around in the waves for the hour and half we were there. There was a small restaurant/bar with good food and local beer where we relaxed waiting for the small boats to take us back to the Brig Unicorn.

 

 

Pigeon Point beaches

 

 

The Gazebo next to the pier at Pigeon Point and a "pirate" guide

 

 

The Brig Unicorn

[pjhootch]

What would a carnival review thread be without the menagarie?

 

 

 

 

[pjhootch]

I'll try to get to St. Kitts and Antigua tomorrow. I think it is a shame that Carnival won't be going to Antigua anymore since this was one of our favorite islands on the cruise.

[Momto2PrncChrmgs]

Great review! Sorry the beginning was so stressful! Sounds like you all had a great trip (and what great parents taking your adult kids)! My mom and step dad are taking us on our first cruise July 4 (hubby and I and our two boys 7 and 3). Can't wait to read more about the ports~we're still trying to decide between excursions and hanging out on the ship.

[beachchick24]

Great review ! Your pictures of Dominica ( i think ) of all the houses etc near the port during the day,and night are AMAZING! ! ! ! !

Sorry off topic...Cruise ships are ending their stop in Antigua ?!

[bzymom22]

Great review so far! Looking forward to reading more.

[gjsmth]

How did you like the Victory as a whole any pros and cons?

We are trying to decide between the Victory/Southern cruise or the "new" Dream/Eastern in Aug. Victory is an older ship (2000) but Southern itinerary.

[1stimescardy]

We take this cruise in April and I am soaking up all the info!!! Thanks!

[CruiseLover824]

I am excited to read about the rest of your trip! We are doing this cruise in 80 days!!!

[Joanns6569]

Thank you SOOOO much for the review and information. We leave in 164 days(not soon enough), but love your insight on what to do and were to go. The pictures in Dominica are great, I stole one as my screen savers, to remind me each day, what is to come.