Crown- Pan Amer Pier Store question

[snowmo]

We will be on the crown leaving from the pam american pier. Is Princess allowing you to buy beer and liquor at the duty free store and bring it on? I haven't sailed out of San Juan in 4 years and I know they allowed it back then. I don't want to buy a bottle of vodka and not be able to drink it. Because it is my understanding that you can't bring it on the plane either. Thanks in advance.

[EviesCruisin]

I second this question!

 

We will be on the crown leaving from the pam american pier. Is Princess allowing you to buy beer and liquor at the duty free store and bring it on? I haven't sailed out of San Juan in 4 years and I know they allowed it back then. I don't want to buy a bottle of vodka and not be able to drink it. Because it is my understanding that you can't bring it on the plane either. Thanks in advance.

[robtulipe]

It use to be that with Princess you could bring liquor, beer and wine for consumption in your stateroom ( not in public area except for wine in the dining room with the payment of a corkage fee ), but that was BC ( before Carnival ). Now the official policy is that you are only allowed to bring onboard two bottles of wine each.

We sailed from San Juan's PanAm terminal on the Regal last month having arrived two days early to sightsee which also allowed us to shop a bit. I had a 12 pack of beer ( protected with our beach towels ) in my carry on bag which I cheaked in for delivery to our cabin and had 4 bottles of wine that we carried on. The beer arrived with no problems along with our regular luggage. After completing embarkation and dropping off our carry on bags in cabin, I when back to the duty free store with a beach bag with towels, dive mask and snorkel and other odds and ends in it and bought two one liter bottles of rum, wrapped them in the towels and returned to the Regal with no problems or questions asked. This is what one employee in the duty free store was suggesting to people to do when asked about this. He said that ship's security only takes for storage and return at the end of the cruise, obvious liqour in duty free bags/boxes or store bags but not when in personal bags. I also carried on the cans of Coke to go with the rum. Rum is also good with OJ which the ship has a good supply of. All you have to do is bring a empty water bottle, which we also had a case of delivered to our cabin , to buffet breakfast and fill from supply there. I am very good at pouring OJ from a glass to bottle. We had a rental car which we used to transport our stuff to pier before returning it.

I also have brought on liquor and beer many times before onto other cruise ships and in different ports using this method with never a problem.

I have not seen anything limiting the number of times you can bring wine on so in Aruba I carried on board another two bottles with no problem.

[snowmo]

Thanks Rob. I am still trying to figure out if you still have to go thru the xray machines to get on the ship at the pan amer pier. I would assume they would see the beer and bottles in the machine. But if all the xray machines are before the duty free store, then it would be really easy to fill your personal bag with liquor from the store and bring it on. The worst case is you buy a liter of water and fill it with the vodka. The plastic doesn't show up in the bag. You can also do that with 2 liter bottles of soda. I just remember (quite shockingly) that I could just go down and buy beer at that duty free store and just carry it on. I had a suite on that cruise so it worked out great. It is just nice to have some drinks in the room when you have a balcony.

[robtulipe]

The x-ray mc is after the duty free store, just before boarding the ship so your carry on bag will be x-rayed. My beach bag with two glass bottles of rum was x-rayed and I was allowed to bring them on board. I could even see the outline of the two of them on the screen when I passed thru security.

I notice the same when going thru ship's security when boarding in other ports and was always allowed to carry on my booze as long as they were in a personal carry on or beach bag.

The only time I had liquor taken was in St. Martin and had two bottles of Bailey's to take home and had them in a duty free travel box. I didn't care since we were not going to drink these on board. In fact our cabin had limited cabinet space so these were not taking up space during our cruise and of course they were returned to us the last full day of our cruise.

There are some PET (plastic) bottles in the duty free store but I didn't look at vodka so can't advise you on that product. FYI plastic bottle outlines do show up on x-ray especially when full. I like them to take home in our luggage as they are more durable. I still wrap them in a towel and place both in a sealed plastic bag when transporting in cheaked luggage for our flight home.

Also I didn't hide the bottles in our cabin and simply left them with the ice bucket. The cabin steward seeing the wine supplied us with wine glasses without being asked to.

[amsmom11]

Just got off the Crown yesterday. The Xray machine is after the shop, but had no difficulty getting some rum, water, and soda on board in my carryon. Just covered them up to be somewhat discreet, and didn't let it "clink" when I set it on the Xray machine.

[billybob123]

I noticed the same thing on multiple cruises. My guess is that the security guys could care less about your "contraband" - they're looking for security violations (Firearms, knives, fireworks, etc) rather than the booze. I've noticed a second "honour system" table usually set up where you're supposed to drop off your liquor. Never noticed the security guys complaining about booze or anything, really, in your bag. Could just be my experience.

 

I also wasn't planning on consuming on board, but you know how it is, I had to make sure to sample everything to make sure it all tasted ok before I got it home........

[Nana G]

Does anyone know if the duty free store has beer? 2 years ago it did but last year in OSJ pier it didn't. Had no problems 2 years ago going thru x-ray with a CASE of beer not wrapped or put in any kind of carry on.

[robtulipe]

The duty free liquor at the PanAm terminal did not have beer when we embarked there on Oct.28. We bought ours along with wine at the Publix (sp?) supermarket on Calle Ponce de Leon in nearby Miramar section of San Juan where our precruise hotel was.