Cruisers Me Jess 30 5th cruise, 1st RCI DH Dave 31 4th cruise, 1st RCI Julie and Glenn early 30s have done a few cruises, 2nd RCI (they did the Aruba route on the Adventure for their honeymoon 3 years ago) Cara and Scott early 30s 2nd cruise both on RCI (first one was a family cruise to Alaska 5 years ago)
Julie and Glenn and Dave and I flew out of Hartford on 9/17 (embarkation day) and met Cara and Scott at the ship. They had flown down from Boston on Friday. Flight was uneventful, landed at about 11:30. We had our luggage, grabbed a cab and were at the pier in less than an hour. The longest part of that was waiting for them to get the luggage off the plane, and our garment bag was the LAST piece to come out! The cabs are really well organized in San Juan. We got in line, told them how many, how much luggage and where we were going, and they gave us a ticket with a price already on it. For 4 of us, 6 pieces of luggage and 3 carry-ons it was $25 to the pier, we gave the driver $30.
Once we got to the pier it was a little confusing, none of the lines are marked. We figured out which was the luggage line and got in that, then got in the line to get through security. We had our Set Sail pass already filled out online so we got right in line to check in. It looked really long&but from the time we got out of the cab to the time we were checked in and had our Sea Pass cards was no more than 20 minutes!! Once we had our cards we headed to the ship&through security again to get our pictures taken (for security), up the gangway to get our pictures taken again (to buy later), and then through another security check point and then we were on the ship!! Total time from landing to walking through the doorway to the ship just about an hour and a half! On a side note we had thought about buying booze in the duty free shop at the port, glad we didnt, they were taking it at the last check point before you got on the ship. Cara and Scott did get a couple bottles on in their checked bags though.