Cruise-ginity lost on Carnival’s Victory – 10/7-10/14 Review

[MarkandJen33706]

Great review. I may have missed it, what time do you think we can board? Did you spend any time in the piano bar?

 

Thanks!

[Catrin]

Thanks for your review from a fellow Rhode Islanda!!

 

We are about to cruise our 13th Carnival cruise later this month, but we have never cruised out of San Juan. Thanks for your detailed review of the islands!!

 

Hope you made out ok with Hurricane Sandy!

Catrin

[beachbride91011]

Thank you for a great review! DH and I were booked for the victory over our anniversary, but had to cancel due to a family crisis. Your review brought me on the cruise we missed. Great pictures! Thanks again!

[trippingpara]

Great review. I may have missed it, what time do you think we can board? Did you spend any time in the piano bar?

 

Thanks!

 

I believe that they will start accepting luggage around 10:30 am and generally will start calling out boarding numbers around 12:30 pm. However, since the ship leaves so late at night, one can board anytime up to 8:30 pm. You can also board early and then disembark to visit San Juan.

 

The piano bar is located in the Irish Sea bar. It is very cool if you like piano music and don't mind singing along or listening to a bunch of drunk people sing off key! Of course, we never sang off key!! Or so my Guinness soaked brain told me!

[trippingpara]

I don't usually read the longer cruise reviews, but you had me captivated from the start....and your pictures are awesome!

Ever thought of becoming a travel writer??:)

 

Thank you so much! You just made my day!! Being a travel writer would be the ultimate dream job for me! "What do you do for a living?" "Well, I travel around the world and then I tell people about it." Hmm, seems like a tough life!! Thank you again!

[trippingpara]

Sunday, October 14 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

 

Blah, the dreaded day has finally arrived. The day of departure. The day our long awaited cruise comes to an end. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. But we're not going out without a fight! On our first day aboard the Victory, we booked the Rainforest Tour for disembarkation day since we had such a late flight back to Boston.

 

We had special tags to put on our luggage that we had left outside our the night prior and were instructed to meet in the Caribbean Lounge at 8:30 am. Of course, as usual, we were early (we're one of those people that refuse to be late for anything). So we kicked back and watched I Bought a Zoo that they were playing on the big screen. Around 9 am, they called everyone that had a Carnival excursion to depart the ship. So we meandering our way off the ship and waltzed through the terminal to collect our luggage. Nice and easy, all of our luggage was sitting there together. We then walked outside and a gentleman quickly came up to us to again take our luggage away. He put all of the luggage onto a waiting box truck (which he would deliver directly to the airport). Just outside the terminal were parked all of the buses for the various excursions. After waiting a few minutes next to our bus, our tour guide let us board the buses and headed out.

 

We made our way out of Old San Juan, through the resort district, through the crowded streets of San Juan into the beautiful countryside of Puerto Rico. About 30 minutes later, we arrived at El Yunque Rainforest (the only rainforest in the US National Park Service). Yes, that's right. If you weren't aware previously, Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, hence why a national park in Puerto Rico falls under the US National Park Service. (sigh...)

 

We stopped briefly at the Visitor Center, watched a short movie on the park and of course, took some photos (I know, I know...what a shock!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before we left the visitor center, my wife stopped at a booth of handmade jewelry that a lady was selling inside. There were beautiful necklaces, bracelets and earrings. She ended up buying a really pretty necklace. We then boarded the bus and headed further up the steep mountainside. Near the top, we stopped at a trailhead. This was where we would start our hike. Our driver and tour guide, Menullo, stayed with the bus and drove it further down the mountainside to meet us at the end of the hike. Along with Menullo, was a young lady that was an apprentice studying to become a tour guide. She went with us on the tour to make sure none of us wondered off on our own (rainforests are not a good place to go off wondering on your own).

[trippingpara]

Beautiful! That's all I can saw about El Yunque.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[trippingpara]

Here's a few more shots during our hike:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A not-so-little-critter that we found on the bus windshield

[trippingpara]

After we finished the hike (it was a very easy hike on a narrow paved walkway through the rainforest), we boarded the bus and headed back down a little bit and stopped at the Yokahu Tower for some more pictures.

 

 

 

 

After a few minutes, we headed down the road and then stopped at Cascada La Coca waterfall.

 

 

 

As I said earlier, B-E-Uuuutiful!! Unfortunately like our cruise, this tour ended way too soon. The tour group slowly climbed aboard the bus and quietly sat down. Menullo, started the bus up and headed down the mountainside and to the airport. Shortly after we entered San Juan proper, Menullo suddenly pulled the bus over and ran off the bus. Confused, we just stared out the window wondering what the heck he was doing. A couple minutes later, Menullo hopped back onboard with a great big smile on his face. In his hands was a bundle of blue crabs hanging from a stick. They were all quite alive. Menullo then went on (being ever the tour guide), and explained the story of the blue crabs. Unfortunately, seeing that no one happened to have a bonfire on them nor a pot of water, Menullo handed the bundle back to the gentleman on the side of the road. Great, now my stomach was grumbling for some steamed crabs and all I had to look forward to was some airport food. Somehow, I doubted that there was any succulent crabs in a garlic and butter sauce in my immediate near future!

 

Our bus eventually pulled into the airport and dropped us off next to a gentleman that was guarding our luggage. Looking like we were on a death march, we slowly made our way to our luggage and accepted the fact that our vacation was now over. So we grabbed our luggage and entered the airport and went through the USDA checkpoint. Since there was no line, we quickly passed through and headed for our gate (we were flying JetBlue so we had our own terminal). We soon arrived at our gate and took a seat by the window and stared out at San Juan trying to soak up all that we could. And that is when we noticed some movement across the street. In disbelief, we watched a female iguana crawl out of the gutter across the street. How did we know that it was a female you ask? Easy...a few seconds later, a giant male iguana crawled out of the gutter right below us. Next thing you know, the big boy was sitting in the middle of the road and giving us a full blown mating show. And boy was he in the mood (if you know what I'm saying!)

 

 

What a stud!! Unfortunately, a Ford Fiesta pulled up and proved to be too big for the manly iguana and he slumped away, defeated. The female iguana appeared to be rather pleased with this new development and decided to bask in all her glory in a nearby bed of grass. At that, my friends, is how our lovely Caribbean cruise vacation came to an end.

[Dirkgun]

Thanks again for the time and effort with this review.... It was great. It makes our time until our Victory cruise seem bearable. Glad you survived Sandy....:eek::D

[LONGTIME WAIT]

You are hillarious! The stories of the slide butt scooting and the iguana's were so funny I was crying and trying to share with the husband. Loved it and thank you!

[trippingpara]

You are hillarious! The stories of the slide butt scooting and the iguana's were so funny I was crying and trying to share with the husband. Loved it and thank you!

 

Thank you so much. I'm glad to see that I could spread some joy around.

[trippingpara]

Final Thoughts:

 

As I review our vacation, it becomes rather apparent that many things did not go very well for us (late cancellation of excursions, double billed for excursions, not being able to use excursion tickets because company is closed, no port call at St. Maarten due to Tropical Storm Raphael, and injuring my back during tour of St. Lucia to name just a few). But the real kicker is…it didn’t bother us in the least! We are still running around saying that this was an awesome vacation.

 

This was our first cruise and it left a great impression on us (so great, we’re already planning our next cruise – to celebrate my DW’s 40th birthday next year). Here are just some tidbits of things that we noticed, observed, remembered, forgot, remembered again and then quickly forgot again, and other useless pieces of info that is floating around in my jumbled up mess of a brain.

 

For having over 3,600 people onboard the Victory, we never felt crowded. There were many times that we were waltzing around the ship and there would be less than a handful of other passengers running around. Even during our two sea days, I figured that the Lido Deck was going to be one giant swarming, sticky, stinky mass of human bodies (sorta like Times Square in NYC on New Year’s Eve). Although there were a lot of people hanging out and enjoying the Lido Deck’s pools, chairs and giant screen television, it was still very easy to move around and finding a lounge chair was never a problem (granted it may not be right next to the pool, but there were always plenty of lounge chairs lying around).

 

One other thing that we noticed was the lack of chair hogs (or ‘chogs’ as I believe they are referred to here). There were plenty of signs announcing the new policy of policing the chairs; this never seemed to be a problem. I was very surprised by this considering all of the chatter that I’ve read on CC concerning the rampant and flagrant acts of chogs. Maybe we just had a great crowd on the Victory with us, or maybe the policy is actually working or maybe I’m just blind and never saw the 600,000 chairs with towels, books, hats, etc., reserving them for people that would never show up. We used the pools quite often during our sea days and we would both grab one chair to put our towels, shirts, shoes, etc. on. We tried hard to make it as convenient for others as possible. I wish that they had some sort of rack or set of bins where one could put their stuff when using the pool instead of having to use a chair for it. Neither of us are real big into laying out so we just go there to frolic around the pool and generally act like little kids again. I hated having to take a chair just to put our stuff but there isn’t anywhere else to leave it (we usually swam in the Siren Pool aft on the Lido Deck). Of course, we may just be the only oddballs like that, so my idea may be mute.

 

Another thing I was surprised about was the pleasantries of the passengers. With such a wide array of people from every slice of life, I imagined us having to deal with plenty of irate, inconsiderate, rude, disrespectful and downright ignorant people. I don’t recall ever seeing any. Now maybe I was wearing my rose colored glasses again which prevented me from seeing any of them, but I doubt it. I’m sure they were around someplace, but we (luckily) never saw them. Nor did I ever see anyone cutting in line during the buffets (in fact, the lines never seemed to be horribly long either). Whatever lines were there in the buffet for both breakfast and lunch, moved fairly quickly.

 

Photos. Okay, now this was a bit of pet peeve of mine. Now I certainly did enjoy walking around viewing all of the pictures, especially the debarkation pictures each morning from the ports of calls. Some people must have stayed awake all night thinking of ingenious ways to pose for those photos. Some of them were downright riots! But I have to agree with many on CC that complained about the wastefulness of printing all of the photos up only to have 80 to 90% of them thrown away. Having a kiosk like many amusement parks have where you can swipe your Sign and Sail card and then review just your photos (of course, this also means the photographers would need to either take your cabin number or swipe your S&S card as well) seems to be much simpler. Since Carnival (and just about every business in the world) is trying to reduce costs and maximize profits; this seems like a great way to achieve such a reduction in costs. Anyways, enough of my soapbox!

 

Shops. Being a serious shopper (yes, I am a male and yes, I am the shopper in the family - probably because I was raised with all sisters and forced to go to the mall with all of them as a child might have something to do with it. That, and the fact that my mother [God rest her soul] has perfected shopping to an art form which I feel is my duty as a father to ensure that I pass that talent on to my family). Anyways, being a serious shopper, I had to check out the stores (multiple times!) to review the quality of their wares and the prices. I was informed (thank you CC!) to watch for sales later in the cruise. Of course, like a true shopper, the word "sale" always perks my ears. Not quite as much as "Clearance" does, but pretty close. The really big sales that I was looking for never really seemed to appear. Now maybe its because I envisioned better sales then they actually had, or they just don't discount stuff as much as I was hoping. However, they did have some sales, especially when we were forced to have that extra sea day on our last full day of the cruise. That coincided very nicely.

 

That is about all that I can think of right now. I’m quite sure that I will think of more as soon as I fall asleep. It always seems to work out that way. My poor wife is always being startled awake as I shout out something in the middle of the night that I was trying to squeeze out of my brain all day to no avail. That poor woman...I do love her dearly!

 

If any of you have any questions about our cruise, excursions, experiences, shopping tips, recipes or my favorite movie villians, please do not hesitate to ask!

Cheers!!

[msjazzymiss]

All I can say is WOW! Your review was fabulous, entertaining and enlightening. I too am book on the Victory sailing in Dec 2012. I read your review from start to finish and each new post got me so excited I can hardly wait to board the ship to start my adventure! Thanks so much for sharing,

[trippingpara]

All I can say is WOW! Your review was fabulous, entertaining and enlightening. I too am book on the Victory sailing in Dec 2012. I read your review from start to finish and each new post got me so excited I can hardly wait to board the ship to start my adventure! Thanks so much for sharing,

 

Thank you so much for the very kind words. You are going to love the cruise!!

[El Yunque PR]

So happy to see a new Victory review. Also glad to see it was a great trip. I've read a few others lately that didn't seem to enjoy it as much due to the Puerto Rican's on the boat. Can't wait to continue reading. We leave in less than 3 weeks.

 

If people don't like Puerto Ricans this is not the place to be !!! Expect a lot of Puerto Ricans in a port of call from Puerto Rico !!! We are very friendly and respect everybody so we do love other people to respect us !!! It feels so bad when people talk like this about us, it's like all places ... their's good people and bad people and you can't judge everyone because of a few !!! I'm so sorry to read this kind of comments in a so great review !! Sorry for my comment but I could'nt let it pass !!! Thnx for your great review and I'll keep enjoying it !!! Thnx again !!!

[El Yunque PR]

You're going to have a great time! Not sure why people would not enjoy the cruise simply because some Puerto Ricans were aboard. Were they not aware that the ship is ported in San Juan, Puerto Rico? Did they not expect that people living there might actually want to go on a cruise in that big white ship that docks there every Sunday??

 

Anyways, I would say that about 20% of the passengers were Puerto Ricans, 55% were Americans, 10% were Canadian, 5% British, and the remaining 10% mixed with a healthy dose of Caribbean Islanders such as Curacaoans and Bajans. That was just my impression of the breakdown or at least who I had ran into. There may have been a large contigent of French aboard hiding that I did not see (I actually did see one French couple so at least they came out from hiding!).

 

At no time did I ever feel uncomfortable due to a certain population of individuals being onboard. I have never seen such a large slice of the world population in one place before. I believe that I saw a person from every race, gender, size, age, sexual orientation and just about every country if you include the staff. I was having a blast running around looking at staff member's name tags to see where they were from. Being a guy, I would advise any other males to be careful doing this with female staff members. I was waiting to get slapped by some as I stared (with my half blind eyes) at their name tag which just so happens to be placed in a location that many men are accused of staring at just a little too much! As a geography and history buff, I can honestly swear that I was looking at their name tags only!! They really do need to make the writing on their name tags larger. If I remember correctly, there were 47 different countries represented by staff members on our cruise.

 

( trippingpara )Thanks for your comment about us ( Puerto Ricans )!!! It is nice to see people like you and we welcome you to our country !!! This is one of the best review I have ever read !!! Have a splendorous live !! And Thanks again !!!

[trippingpara]

( trippingpara )Thanks for your comment about us ( Puerto Ricans )!!! It is nice to see people like you and we welcome you to our country !!! This is one of the best review I have ever read !!! Have a splendorous live !! And Thanks again !!!

 

El Yunque, thank you so much for your nice comments about my review and I couldn't agree more with your comments about your fellow islanders. My wife and I had a fabulous time visiting San Juan and El Yunque rainforest. PR has quickly jumped to the top of my must visit again list! The people were very friendly and hospitable, the sights and sounds were fabulous and the food was amazing! I can't fathom why people wouldn't want to visit (of course, the really hard part is having to leave!)

[Hitcher13]

Loving your review - excellent job! We will on the Jan 6/13 cruise and are so looking forward to it! Keep the great pics coming!:)

[El Yunque PR]

El Yunque, thank you so much for your nice comments about my review and I couldn't agree more with your comments about your fellow islanders. My wife and I had a fabulous time visiting San Juan and El Yunque rainforest. PR has quickly jumped to the top of my must visit again list! The people were very friendly and hospitable, the sights and sounds were fabulous and the food was amazing! I can't fathom why people wouldn't want to visit (of course, the really hard part is having to leave!)

 

Obviously people who get to know Puerto Rico better and it's people notice that all what is talked about us is not so true but fortunately with people like you and your wife are our best testimony and can help the others change their mind about PR !!! Thanks a lot and keep the good work with your reviews!!! It was a pleasure to read it and to see all your fabulous photos !!! We are taking this cruise in 16 days and with all that you mentioned we are so anxious to get on the Victory and start our trip !!!

[Dirkgun]

Obviously people who get to know Puerto Rico better and it's people notice that all what is talked about us is not so true but fortunately with people like you and your wife are our best testimony and can help the others change their mind about PR !!! Thanks a lot and keep the good work with your reviews!!! It was a pleasure to read it and to see all your fabulous photos !!! We are taking this cruise in 16 days and with all that you mentioned we are so anxious to get on the Victory and start our trip !!!

 

El Yunque is right... the Puerto Ricans that we encountered every time we were there have been awesome. San Juan is one of my favorite places in the world. I certainly do not understand the people that have the bad experiences other than to say they are just closed off to other culture and people.

[gottogetaway2]

Thanks for the great review! We are taking this cruise in 16 days and I am so excited! I think I will get the suitcases out tonight and start packing:)

[Halftocruz]

If people don't like Puerto Ricans this is not the place to be !!! Expect a lot of Puerto Ricans in a port of call from Puerto Rico !!! We are very friendly and respect everybody so we do love other people to respect us !!! It feels so bad when people talk like this about us, it's like all places ... their's good people and bad people and you can't judge everyone because of a few !!! I'm so sorry to read this kind of comments in a so great review !! Sorry for my comment but I could'nt let it pass !!! Thnx for your great review and I'll keep enjoying it !!! Thnx again !!!

 

Great post El Yunque!!!

 

We are doing this cruie for a 2nd time in 57 days!!! We loved Puerto Rico and really want our boys to see this great country! Our DS is a sophmore in college and is majoring in history. Can't wait to show him the fantastic forts!!!

 

People are so narrow minded, there are jerks on every cruise, so you just ignore them or treat them the same way that they deserve!:eek:

[El Yunque PR]

Thanks for the great review! We are taking this cruise in 16 days and I am so excited! I think I will get the suitcases out tonight and start packing:)

 

So, we are going to be in the same cruise !!! Hope you enjoy our Island of Puerto Rico and the Southern Caribbean Islands as well !!! With reviews so awesome like this one and watching the extraordinary pictures with it, you can't expect no less than a very, very exiting trip !!! Have fun !!!!

[El Yunque PR]

Great post El Yunque!!!

 

We are doing this cruie for a 2nd time in 57 days!!! We loved Puerto Rico and really want our boys to see this great country! Our DS is a sophmore in college and is majoring in history. Can't wait to show him the fantastic forts!!!

 

People are so narrow minded, there are jerks on every cruise, so you just ignore them or treat them the same way that they deserve!:eek:

 

Hope they enjoy the Forts and all the history that is behind the Old San Juan !!! Welcome back !!!