This was our 2nd cruise, and the 2nd with Royal Caribbean. As in the past, travelling by air, especially in the summer warrants an extra day to make sure there are no airline delays in arriving on time at your embarkation port. My wife, younger son 22 and his fiance, and older son 29 who had a close friend join him travelled together. We left Philadelphia at 8:15am on Saturday 8/11 the day before the cruise. We flew AA this time and in fact must've had a tail wind because we arrived 1/2 hour earlier than expected at 11:30am.
The flight was interesting as my son asked the stewardess at 11am what time we would arrive while she was passing out a second round of refreshments, and she responded with 12 noon as expected. Ten minutes later, the pilot came on and said we were 48 miles from San Juan and would be landing in about 10 minutes. Rush, Rush, Rush by the cabin crew to retrieve the unused refreshments as apparently there was no communication from the cockpit that we were arriving that much sooner. Upon landing we went to the baggage claim area and retrieved all of our luggage. Since we were 6 people with luggage and were travelling to Old San Juan to stay at the Sheraton, I thought it would be more practical to arrange for a limo service to take us all together. I contacted Fairway Travel by e-mail in San Juan, who was recommended by our cruise agent, and as promised, they were there at 12 noon waiting for us in the baggage claim area; loaded all of our luggage and ourselves and took us directly to the Hotel. In addition, I had arranged to have us picked up the next day at 11 am to transport us to the Pan American Pier where our ship was leaving from. The drivers were great, and it eliminated any anxieties of getting where we had to be, when we had to be there.
The Sheraton Old San Juan was great. We had reserved 2 double bed rooms and when we arrived, since only one was available, they upgraded one of the rooms to a suite at no additional cost that had a balcony and overlooked the pier and ships. Our kids urged us to have dinner, etc at Senor Frogs, which was located next door to the Sheraton and we had a ball, including free entertainment.