This review is for the sailing of 9/26/2004.

We booked this cruise ourselves since my wife and I are both travel agents. Airfare was booked through the cruise line, since discounts to San Juan are rare. Our flights from Baltimore to Charlotte, NC and from Charlotte to San Juan were rather uneventful, though probably more crowded than usual because of people changing from connecting flights going through Florida to other connection points. Hurricane Jeanne was pounding central Florida that morning and all the major airports in Florida were closed. It was lucky for us that this cruise left from San Juan rather than South Florida. The flights Carnival booked for us had us arrive in San Juan around 4PM. If I did this same cruise again, I would go a day ahead of time just to avoid the rush and be able to board the vessel much earlier.

The meet and greet staff at San Juan airport did nothing but hold up a Carnival sign in the baggage claim area. They did not check a list of names of expected arrivals or anything else. Once we had our bags we waited in a line until enough people were there for a bus to take us to the port. Our luggage was put onto a separate truck and taken straight to the ship. We boarded buses and were taken to the departure area. Once through security we entered the FunPass line, which was longer than the regular line. It ended up taking almost the same amount of time to get through the line as if we had gone into the non-FunPass line, as they had more gate agents working the non-FunPass line than the line for those with the completed FunPass. Once we reached the head of the line, obtaining our Sail-and-Sign cards and completing check-in took less than 2 minutes. Read more