My wife, teenage daughter and I were on the Carnival Victory from Sunday, July 24 to Sunday, August 1st. This made our fifth Carnival cruise in six years, but the first where we traveled outside the U.S. to begin our trip. We had a great time and visited four ports that we had never been to. I also surprised my wife and daughter with a beautiful suite with a balcony.

The Carnival booking agent suggested staying at the Sheraton Old San Juan which is just about a block from the Carnival pier. Accordingly, we went down on Saturday afternoon before the cruise. We drove to the Orlando airport from Jacksonville in order to catch a direct AirTran flight and in order to save money. We arrived at the San Juan airport about 6 P.M., retrieved our bags and caught a taxi. We had seven bags so we were delighted to get in a mini-van that had plenty of room for us and our luggage. Once checked in at the hotel we took a walk along the waterfront down to a festival like park where there were numerous street vendors and musicians entertaining the crowd. We had been warned that San Juan has a rampant crime problem and not to leave the hotel after dark. We did NOT get that impression at all and felt very safe, especially along the main streets. The hotel was very convenient to the ship, but was quite a bit pricey and was not up to the standards of a U.S. hotel that you would pay $250/night for. Check out time on Sunday was 11 AM and they would not even discuss a late checkout since they have a crush of disembarking passengers on Sunday that want to check in. The hotel will hold your bags and provides a meeting room for waiting passengers to relax and grab some refreshments. We decided to walk down to the ship to get the lay of the land and were delighted that they invited to enter the terminal to register and obtain our key cards with the understanding that we could not get on-board until around 1:30 PM. If you are a light packer it is easy to simply roll your suitcase(s) from the hotel to the ship at boarding time. Unfortunately we had 5 large bags so we took a one block, $20 cab ride! When we boarded at 1:30 PM, the rooms were not ready and the fire doors to the stateroom hallways were closed. We decided to go up to the casual dining room on the Lido deck for lunch. Given that we have cruised with Carnival numerous times we always feel at home because the ships are so similar in terms of layout.

The suite I booked turned out to be spectacular. I had originally booked a regular balcony room, something we had never had. Several weeks later a Carnival rep called to offer a very affordable upgrade. I'm glad we got the larger cabin. There was a large bathroom with jacuzzi tub and glass shower door, two closets, mini-bar, dressing room and a larger living area and balcony. Read more