I see a bunch of good Itineraries that start out of San Juan, and I'm always hesitant about it because of my comfort level of traveling and starting in and out of PR. I've been to San Juan on my first cruises, so I'm vaguely familiar with it, but would love some more feedback with anyone that has ported out of San Juan. Flights, hotels, etc etc. The reviews don't tend to tell much about the embark/disembark process.
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Porting out of San Juan
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We have had no problem with San Juan, Puerto Rico. On our second cruise ever we embarked from there and stayed a couple of days extra in a resort prior to the cruise. Enjoyed it very much.
Since then, we have been on at least two cruises which ported there for a day. On the last one I took the tour of their local national forest/park and was greatly surprised at how nice it was.
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We cruises out of PR a number of times in the past. We enjoy the local culture and people a lot.
That said, there has been a tremendous economic downturn in PR over the past few years. It was caused by elimination of tax breaks causing many large corporations to pull their operations out. I'm not sure the decision about tax breaks was particularly well thought out and do not believe that local government believed business would leave the PR as they did.
If an itinerary was interesting enough, we would depart from PR but we will probably not spend more than one extra day there on the front end.
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Originally posted by:
WeCruiseToo
We love sailing out of San Juan! Living in central Florida we’ve found it’s far easier, and sometimes less expensive, to fly to San Juan than drive to Miami. We usually fly in/out day-of but we went a day early back when we lived in Las Vegas and stayed in a nice hotel in Old San Juan. Different cruise lines use different ports, so you may want to know where the ship will be prior to picking a hotel, but nothing’s that far away and taxi service is easy to find and reasonably priced. The ports and itineraries tend to be fantastic out of Puerto Rico and it’s just like using any other US port. We highly recommend sailing out of San Juan!
The Itineraries are fantastic and that is why I am trying to look into it further. That is nice it is cheaper to fly to PR than to drive to a FL port. I'm east coast (MD) So I don't anticipate a long flight.
I started a cruise out of San Juan PR a couple years ago. Flying in from CA it was a long flight with a lay over so we did not land until 2 AM local time. We had a hotel in the Mira Mar district for a few days before the cruise. San Juan was a great place to visit, nice people, great food, easy to get around by bus or taxi. We took the bus into old town for dinner and hitting the bars and then took taxi back to hotel as the bus stops running at midnight.
We explored the city, went to see the fort and did some shopping.
Over all I felt very safe in San Juan and Id be happy to spend a few days or a week there again if I book a cruise out of that port. I'd even consider doing a land vacation in PR if in the mood for a island vacation.
We love sailing out of San Juan! Living in central Florida we’ve found it’s far easier, and sometimes less expensive, to fly to San Juan than drive to Miami. We usually fly in/out day-of but we went a day early back when we lived in Las Vegas and stayed in a nice hotel in Old San Juan. Different cruise lines use different ports, so you may want to know where the ship will be prior to picking a hotel, but nothing’s that far away and taxi service is easy to find and reasonably priced. The ports and itineraries tend to be fantastic out of Puerto Rico and it’s just like using any other US port. We highly recommend sailing out of San Juan!