amyinva

Labadee (Cruise Line Private Island)

Awesome! Perfect weather. Love Labadee. We headed to Columbus Beach, the farthest, it has really nice soft sand and is close to a food & bar station. The BBQ lunch was good - amazing the RC staff brings everything from the ship to feed everyone. Labadoozies were great - very tasty frozen drinks! Staff set up lounge chairs for us (remember to tip!) and we brought our own inflatable floaties and spent a lot of time floating around in the water & relaxing. A ship photographer was wading out waist deep to take pics - we got some great shots of us in the water with our ship in the background! Loved those & fantastic photographer! My husband rented a kayak $30 for an hour, and paddled around on his own. He was restricted to a certain area, but that was understandable. He enjoyed it. We did not stop at the local artisan vendors to shop - they are fairly aggressive about selling and hounding people. I wish they weren't so aggressive, I would like to buy some souvenirs and help them out but I don't like being hounded that way. We bought a few things at the RC shop at the end of the market area.

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas

Awesome!! Seemed very safe and easy to walk around. Our ship docked at the Crown Bay side of bay not Havensight, which I think has more shopping and some attractions I had researched. We did the RC FastCat catamaran snorkel and beach excursion. Had a GREAT time!!! Perfect weather, great crew, saw turtles & fish snorkeling, and the beach part was great too. Lots of rum punch for the beach part :-)

Nassau, Bahamas

Ship docks, easy to get off and on ship. We booked the RC Balmoral Island Beach Break. Walked to a ferry stop and took the ferry to Balmoral Island (where Sandal's is also located.) Weather was a little cool, and then it rained - so it wasn't a great beach day, but would have been great if the weather cooperated. Nice beach & two pools at Balmoral. We took ferry back in the rain and headed straight to the ship so we didn't see or do anything in Nassau, but it seemed like it would have been good to walk around near port if Mother Nature had cooperated.

Harmony of the Seas

We had sailed on Allure a couple years ago, which helped tremendously on Harmony since the basic layout is the same and it was much easier to find our way around at first. If this is your first time on an Oasis class ship, I would recommend you get familiar with the deck layouts in advance, and also watch some of the You Tube videos people have done giving tours of the ship to get familiar in advance. Harmony is Huge!

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Ship docks in Old San Juan. We did our own thing, walked to San Cristobal fort and paid $7 each to tour the fort. It's huge, and has lots of different interesting areas and things to see. We spent a long time there and really enjoyed it. Our entrance fee would have gotten us into El Morro fort as well, but a short rain shower happened so we headed into town area and shopped. We saw the "umbrella" street - really neat! Did some souvenir shopping, and stopped at a cafe for some drinks and chips/queso. Had a great day and wished we had more time there. Easy to do on your own & easy walking.

Ft. Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida

We flew in the night before our cruise, but we just stayed in a hotel and didn't do anything. The Ft Lauderdale airport is good, location is close to the cruise port, and it's easy to get a shuttle to port.

Philipsburg, St. Maarten

Awesome! Great weather and nice port area - seemed very safe and easy walk to shops & restaurants outside the port area. My husband & boys did the RC Loterie Farm Zipline excursion. They really enjoyed it, it was very active & involved climbing / ropes course along with ziplines. Lots of fun! It was on the French side, so a little longer travel time to get to it. My daughter and I did the RC Horseback Riding excursion to Lucky Stables - also GREAT!! Horses were well kept and healthy, guides were great. Our group was broken down into smaller groups to ride, and our guide told us lots of interesting info while riding trails. She even stopped to take pics of us on horses with our own phones for us :-) Then we rode horses into the ocean, which we all really enjoyed! I highly recommend!