Just off 1/10 Southern Caribbean Wonder cruise: any ?'s

[Dulcinea79]

I also just returned from the same cruise. I felt very safe in St Kitts. IMO, it's one of the lovelier, safer islands. Again, just my opinion. We took a 10 minute cab ride to Carambola Beach Club, which is a public beach. Rented a chair and umbrella for the day, it was just beautiful! It had a lovely restaurant and bar, nice area to snorkel.
My *one* disappointment with the cruise was that the photos taken onboard are now identified by facial recognition. However, it failed to recognize even one of my photos. I looked through hundreds of unidentified photos and was unable to find any. Luckily, I traveled with a group and was able to purchase some group photos. I was unable to find or purchase any photos of my husband and myself. Many parents were disappointed that they couldn't find particular photos of their children or family. I do hope their system improves or that they go back to the old way of scanning the KTTW card to make identification easier.

Just curious how much the chair and umbrella go for? I heard possibly that if you're eating at the beach club (which we plan to) you might get to use a chair for free?

 

[Dulcinea79]

Marly19,
Double check your departure time for Sail Away. They bumped up the time. I forget, but it was sometime between 5-6pm. We didn't get back off but enjoyed the low crowds by the pool instead.
Yes, you could sign up for Disney Jr breakfast, princess and Anna, Elsa, & Olaf m&g.
We brought our own snorkel gear, but didn't bring it for our Grenada & Barbados excursions since they provide them. You can rent at Carambola(St Kitts) for $10(according to my dh)

Wow, so they still had the Disney Jr breakfast with just one sea day? Great!

 

[jennifermcb]

Just curious how much the chair and umbrella go for? I heard possibly that if you're eating at the beach club (which we plan to) you might get to use a chair for free?

Lounge chairs were $10 for the day. The round chairs which could seat two were $20 and umbrellas were $20. I'm not sure about free rentals for eating at the club, but it's worth a try

 

[cedricandsophie]

We were also on Jan 10 wonder cruise. In the morning on Grenada my grand daughter and I did the kayaking excursion. It was great. Then whe we got back, the whole family Took a private cab in Grenada. Had a great driver and went to the waterfall and all over the island.

On Barbados we took a cab around. Our least favorite island. Very flat and uninteresting.


On st kitts my grand daughter and I did the ATv excursion. It was really fun and a little scary for me. The rest of the fsmily did an excursion around the island and loved it. M

Martinique was our fav island because it was so lush. We did excursion to zoo and botanical garden. Lots of fun and got some great views aling the way.

We didn't get off at Antigua...used it as a sea day.

We did no beaches, shopping or rum runs.

It was a wonderful cruise. We went to San juan two days ahead of time and stayed at the embassy suites by the airport. A little run down but we needed two rooms so it ended up being pretty reasonable, less than 400 a night for both and included breakfast. The pool was lovely. We took a cab into the old town the first night and had dinner. The second day we rented a car for less than $50 and drove out to the national park, did a hike to the waterfall. The next morning we left the hotel around 11 am and got to port around 11 30. We were on the ship before 12 30.

We had a palo dinner reservation beforehand but realized on board that it was the same night as our first night in Animators palate which we always like when everything changes colors. We were able to get a new reservation on board without any problem.

You do need to get tickets for some of the character meets ahead of time...as soon as you get on at the service desk.

 

[avgsuperheroine]

So are all the dining rotations set up that way, so the "three repeated" restaurant is on the 2, 3, and 6th day? If so I may need to change my Palo. I was assuming it was 1, 4, and 7. We've never done Palo or been on a 7 night before so I wasn't sure. We go this weekend!

 

[chirurgeon]

Who was the entertainment host? If you saw them did you like them?

 

[wrf2e]

Thanks for your update! I was looking for a trip report. We leave on the 31st. Can't wait!

We are on the 1/31 sailing. I noticed you used BNA in your name. Do you work at the airport? I work at Southwest in Dallas and spent 6 years working on the ramp at BNA at American Eagle.

 

[JeanfromBNA]

No, I just fly out of BNA. I luv Southwest! DH has a companion pass this year!

 

[JeanfromBNA]

Did y'all find that you needed Euros or other currency besides $USD? We were thinking of getting about $100 in Euros.

 

[linetbo]

Did I read your post correctly that the pirate's night fireworks were at 8pm? That totally screws up my Palo reservation. First I had the Palo dinner on Tuesday to match pirate night listed on the DCL site. Then it was changed to Thursday so I have a Palo dinner that night. Now, the fireworks are early and our dinner is at 7. Off to change it again.

Yes, Started at 7:30pm.

 

[jenny_nichole]

Enjoyed reading about this cruise. We were originally booked for it too, but had to cancel. Friends of ours did sail on your same dates and from their FB posts they also enjoyed it. A few questions:

1. What did you think about the balance (imbalance?) of sea days and port days?
2. Did you think the ports were similar or different from each other?
3. Any memorable or forgettable ports?
4. Did you have to pass up any on-board activities you wanted to do in order to see the ports?
5. Did you do any pre- or post-cruise nights in San Juan? What hotel and would you recommend it to others?
6. Did you tour Old San Juan? How was it?

1. We were a little concerned about the lack of sea days, especially since the sea days are my dh's favorite part. To prevent burn out with port days, we planned mostly half day activities and used Martinique as mainly a sea day. I booked our excursions privately and Martinique was very difficult to plan for since most of the online reviews are written in French. We just walked to town and visited Schoelcher Library(built and transported from Paris in 1889), then got back on the ship. We felt that the half day port days worked really well: the kids had plenty of time in Edge and we had plenty of time at Cove pool/upper decks enjoying the beautiful scenery.

2. It's hard for us to say if the ports were similar, since our excursions were varied and we didn't spend time at the actual ports. (We aren't shoppers, so I can't give input on that at all.)

3. Memorable ports: We would love to return to Grenada, Barbados, and St. Kitts. However, I think this is so subjective and is really influenced by the excursion you choose. For example, we talked with some adults on our cruise who took a Disney excursion to Mt. Pelee to see the volcano, tour the museum, etc. and they said it was their favorite port. But for us, we didn't book a tour, so didn't really have a favorable impression of Martinique. (busy city, lots of road construction, no one speaks English, only take euros). In Antigua, we visited a pretty beach but since our kids just experienced excellent snorkeling for two days prior, they were ready to head back to the ship after a short time. (The water is a beautiful, milky blue in Antigua but not great for snorkeling off the beach.)
Here's what we did in the ports that we loved:
Grenada: Seafaris Powerboat: snorkeled the underwater sculpture park. This was so easy. We met Suzanne in the port and walked to a dock near the ship for our tour. It was about 2.5 hr. tour.
Barbados: Calabazza Catamaran tour(9-2:30): My dh said that if we ever go to Barbados again, he definitely wants to book Calabazza again. It was a very easy all-inclusive day. They picked us up at port and dropped us off afterward and delicious food and drinks were included. Swimming with the sea turtles and at the shipwrecks was a highlight for all of us.
St. Kitts: We didn't plan an excursion, but took a cab for $4/pp to Carambola Beach Club and snorkeled right off the beach by the rocks. The visibility and number/variety of fish was excellent.

4. I don't think the port intensive itinerary negatively affected our time for onboard activities. If we planned full day excursions at all ports, I think this would've been a problem. But I really liked this itinerary because the port times that we spent on the ship, the crowd levels on the upper decks were low. Our kids had several opportunites to swim in uncrowded pools, dh and I had the Cove pool to ourselves a few times, and we never had a hard time finding a deck chair.

5. We stayed at Embassy Suites San Juan by the airport for 2 nights pre-cruise and 1 night post-cruise. We really like the location: 5 minutes to/from airport, ~10min to OSJ and port, 5-10min walk to the beach, walgreens, fast food. The breakfast and evening receptions were great and the kids really loved the pool. I would definitely recommend this hotel. However, we are a family of 5, which limited our choices. If we could have, we would've stayed at a beach front hotel like Condado Hilton, El San Juan, etc.

6. We took a cab to Barrachinas to have pina coladas on our first night. We wanted to go back to a restaurant that we loved(Punto de Vista) when we stopped for a port day on the Fantasy last year, but since we had the kids with us this time and it was a Friday night when wait times can be long, we felt that it would be too much for them. We walked the town for awhile, took photos in front of the Governor's House, which looked so pretty as it was still decorated for Christmas. We did not visit the forts this time, since we did so last year while we were on the Fantasy. The forts are really neat to see and there are lots of great photo ops.


HTH Jenn

 

[jenny_nichole]

Did y'all find that you needed Euros or other currency besides $USD? We were thinking of getting about $100 in Euros.

If you plan on spending money in Martinique, you will need euros. I read that you can exchange for them on the ship or even an atm in Martinique. We read that some places take credit cards, so we planned on just buying French pastries in town and hoped to use our visa. But this didn't work out, since the couples places that we walked past took euros only. It wasn't a big deal for us though...I think the kids were more excited about headed back to the ship for "free" ice cream anyway.

Jenn

 

[jenny_nichole]

Did I read your post correctly that the pirate's night fireworks were at 8pm? That totally screws up my Palo reservation. First I had the Palo dinner on Tuesday to match pirate night listed on the DCL site. Then it was changed to Thursday so I have a Palo dinner that night. Now, the fireworks are early and our dinner is at 7. Off to change it again.

I did the same exact thing as you. When we got on the ship and found out that Pirate night was changed, I called the first day and changed our reservation. Then on Wednesday night when we were given our Navigator for the next day, we noticed the earlier time for the show/fireworks. I stopped at Palo the morning of Pirate night and they were able to bump our reservation up to 6pm. If you have a 6pm reservation, you'll miss the show but can catch the fireworks if your server is fast. Our server, Alvaro was amazing and told us he would do his best to get us to the fireworks on time. For us, we weren't really bummed about missing the show since we're anti-crowd people. It was nice to catch the fireworks from deck 10 though. (For our kids, we knew that they would see the show with Edge, so fortunately they didn't miss out on it either.)

 

[LeslieG]

Anyone back from the 1/17 sailing that has a report regarding the ship, excursions, etc.?

 

[bobbiwoz]

Our cruise is next week, 7 days!

 

[Snyders22000]

We just got off the 1/17 sailing. Had a blast! Weather was great! It was low to mid 80s most days.

For excursions:

Grenada: Hike to Bamboo Falls. 2 things to note. It was a long drive (about an hr) on some very steep and windy roads. The hike was slow paced and probably only 3/4 mile but very muddy and a few kind of steep parts. You had to cross a small river. Not deep but had a swift current. They had ropes to hold on to when crossing. At the falls you could swim in the falls for about 30 min. We were supposed to be back at port by 11:45, but didn't get back until closer to 2:00.

Barbados: went on the catamaran turtle encounter. We really enjoyed this. We made 2 stops to snorkel off the catamaran: one to see turtles, the other to see coral reef. Had lunch on board and then a quick swim to a local beach. Food and crew were great!

Martinique: Snokeling at Bat Cave: we really enjoyed this. They took us out (via boat) to some nearby cliffs with a cave. The seas and currents were a little brisk this day. We snorkel led outside the cave a bit then went right inside and saw the bats (a little further back, not right over us). With the rougher surf and snorkeling right next to cliffs would recommend only for kids that are strong swimmers and not timid in ocean waters.

Antiqua: we chose the catamaran and lobster cruise. It was a lot of fun. We stopped at a beach and had about 2 hrs to enjoy. They had chair rentals, local handicrafts and bar....bring cash if you want to enjoy any of these. Beach chairs were $5 and there were some areas of shade. Then most of the rest of the day was sailing along the coast. We were supposed to stop st 2 other beaches but surf was too rough so anchored and swam near the boat. There wasn't much seating with shade on this boat (get a shady seat early if you want one). Bring lots of sunscreen for this one.

St Kitts: Nature Kayaking excursion. We drove about 20 minutes to the bay where we would put in our kayaks. First we had about 30 min to snorkel (they provided gear and guide took us out). Saw beautiful coral reefs, octopus, and even a shipwreck. After snorkeling, kayaked about 2 miles. Enjoyed this one a lot too.

Other things to note on cruise. On pirate night we had an early showing of Star Wars (5 pm- we were late seating and shows normally at 6:15), followed by pirate show at 7:30 and fireworks at 8:00. In Grenada, they extended our time in port until 7:45. All other ports kept 4:45 all aboard time. Opportunities to get cash in ports were limited...we wished we'd gotten more cash in Puerto Rico before we left. Most cabs and vendors did not accept cards. Even in PR most cabs took cash only. Bring bring bug spray... Mosquitos got me in a few ports and Puerto Rico. We did a San Juan walking food tour when we got back to San Juan. Highly recommend!

 

[Snyders22000]

One more thing...pack a light poncho on port excursions, especially non water based ones. We got soaked and a little chilly with a few passing showers in Grenada and wished we'd had ponchos. For above port reviews I forgot to mention that we were traveling without our kids this time.

 

[LeslieG]

Which catamaran did you book with on Barbados?

 

[Jeanwill]

On the 1/17 cruise who was brought on for entertainment?

 

[honeybeesmom]

Anyone would needs to take a taxi to the airport,it was very easy. Walked off the ship,taxis waiting. We were at the airport 15 minutes later. $27.00 was the cost for 3 adults, including luggage( 3 large suitcases ,3 carryons.) Have a great cruise!