Unexpected Adventure to San Juan September 20 2014

Got up this morning to head to the Orlando Airport for the short trip to San Juan (or so I thought) to board the Disney Magic.

Olaf and I were ready to go at 5:15 a.m. This is Olaf’s second trip to explore the world.  He completed his first trip in July after spending a month in Europe. I blogged about that trip earlier.

We headed out the door at 5:24 a.m. when Ken and Shari arrived to pick us up.  They are awesome friends, always being there for me and providing me transportation when needed.  It was raining, and rained all the way to the airport.  Got to the airport at 6 a.m.  Today the flight will be with Jet Blue.  Haven’t flown them before, but the price was great $117 to San Juan.  We are scheduled to leave at 7:30 a.m. and arrive in San Juan at 10:15 a.m.

It is still raining in Orlando, but we leave on schedule.  The flight is uneventful and we are descending into San Juan.  A little bumpy at times, but nothing that I haven’t experienced before.  We are 2-3 minutes from actually landing on the runway and are at 3,000 feet in altitude.  I am watching on the individual television screen the flight path and tracking our progress.  It is about that time that the plane starts gong to the right and then to the left and then starts climbing in altitude to 6,000 feet. 

At that point the two people sitting next to me and I start talking trying to figure out what is going on.  We head out to the ocean.  Finally after about 10 minutes, the Captain comes on and tells us that right when we were going to land a larger than expected storm hit the airport and at the last minute the captain said they were told that we could not land.

Of course, by that time he had to make some adjustments quickly to avoid the storm and abandon landing the plane, thus the sharp turns and climb.  He then tells us that they do not have enough fuel to wait to land in San Juan so we are now diverting to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.  Aguadilla is about 100 land miles from San Juan we were told.

We landed in Aguadilla at 10:45 a.m. (30 minutes after our scheduled landing in San Juan) and then headed to some random area with a pull up ramp to stop the plane and refuel.  The only thing I saw at the airport were Federal Express planes, so figured it must be an airport for cargo coming in and out.

We ended up spending an hour and a half in Aguadilla, and unfortunately, Michael was waiting for Pete, Faith and me to arrive, so called him and told him we had landed but we were 100 miles away. LOL.  He said no problem he had just dropped our friends Scott and Lynn off at the cruise terminal and it was really crazy there, so it was probably good that we were coming in late.

Jet Blue gave us drinks and more snacks and had the air conditioning turned on really high since the airplane door was open, so we were able to stay cool and get fed!

We ended up staying in Aguadilla for 1 ½ hours and then took off and 25 minutes later we landed in San Juan.  It kinda reminded me of island hopping in Hawaii.  Got our luggage pretty fast and Michael was at the curb waiting for us so off to the port we went. 

Driving was pretty crazy in San Juan, but Michael only got us lost once with the GPS but he quickly corrected our path and we made it to the ship.  It was crazy at the port.  Hundreds of cars and taxis and a few buses and not a lot of space.  There were hundreds of people waiting in line to get in the terminal.

By the way, there is no way that the ship could have docked in Old San Juan.  The only place they can dock is the Pan American Terminal.  If the ship was only making a stop for the day in San Juan they could go to the Old San Juan Dock.  However, there is no place on the dock for a terminal building for check in and not only that, there is no place on that dock where the ship could be restocked with supplies for the next cruise and to get everyone’s luggage on, so that is why the ship is at the Pan American Terminal.  

First you had to get in one line to turn in your luggage to the porter, then you had to get in a second line which was really long to even get into the terminal.  We immediately ran into Captain John who started apologizing for the mess and he was even handing out water to everyone in line and talking on the phone at one time.  

How the story goes is that the ship came in at the designated time.  However, I heard that San Juan only had 6 port agents instead of the 12 Disney had asked for.  And of the 6 port agents that showed up, only 4 computer terminals were working that the port agents could use.  Since the Magic had been in Europe all summer and this was the first American port, the ship had to be completely cleared by customs.  The last passengers did not get off the ship until 12:30 pm.  Then the whole crew had to go through customs. (From one of the back to back guests that we are sailing with, the port agents were unaware that they had to clear 3,000 people through customs and so it ended up that 4 people cleared all the passengers and crew.  Very poor planning on the part of the port authority, not Disney!)   

Therefore, all the guests who started arriving at the port at 10 a.m. or so had to wait outside until 11 a.m. to even go into the port terminal.  

Then guests had to wait until 1 pm to even start boarding the ship.  Our friends Scott and Lynn were at the terminal early since Michael had dropped them off before our original scheduled landing of 10:15 and they said there was no air conditioning inside the terminal, just ceiling fans.  They said it was so hot inside, that everyone would have been better off outside.

By the time we got to the port at about 1:15 pm Captain John and the crew were outside the port handing out water because some people had been outside for over 2 hours waiting to check in.  Captain John and his staff did a phenominal job taking care of the guests by getting water to everyone and he was very apologetic, but obviously not Disney’s fault.

Vacations can be an adventure or an ordeal…….we choose to make it an adventure.

We got into the terminal about 30 minutes after arriving.  There were very long lines for the first time cruisers and the silver and gold cruisers.  But since we were all platinum, we walked right up to the Platinum check in and did not wait at all to get checked in.

We were on the ship just a little after 2 p.m.  We headed straight to our room to drop off our carry on luggage, then stopped at Guest Services to pick up our Tickets for Anna and Elsa for the Meet and Greet tomorrow.  We got a time of 9:15 a.m.  They were also handing out tickets for the Princess Gathering tomorrow that starts at 9 a.m., but we just wanted to go see Anna and Elsa.  After that we stopped at Palo to confirm with Francesco our reservation and then headed to Carioca’s for lunch.  Carioca’s was pretty quiet.  Most of the crew was gone because they were down going through customs!  One of the crew said if you were American it went pretty fast, but since most of the dining staff are from other countries, it took quite a long time.

Ran into Tony and Anders from DCL Shoreside who are on making sure food and beverage is going well for the day.  They flew down for the day and will fly back to Orlando this evening.

After lunch, we headed it was time for the 3:30 lifeboat drill. The ship is actually doing 2 lifeboat drills today for those that are out exploring in San Juan.

We aren’t actually departing until 10:30 p.m. tonight, but the Adventures Away party is at 4:30 just like a normal cruise.  However, right after lifeboat drill, cruise director, Natalie, comes on to say the Adventures Away party has been moved to the atrium because another storm is hitting the area right now.  It is pouring outside.  We make the best of the situation and head to deck 4 to watch Adventures Away.

Frankie joins our group for a picture

Scott and Lynn

Pete, Carolyn, Faith, Linda and Alex

Olaf 

Olaf decided to check out a lounge chair on deck 4 after the Adventures Away party

Mickey came out in his Puerto Rico outfit and then I stopped by to say hi to Minnie in hers

We went to the Welcome Aboard Show.  It was great seeing the performers again after spending a month with them on the ship this summer!  We also saw the Magic of David Williamson.  He did a small portion of his magic show and it was really good.  He pulled some kids from the audience and did card tricks with them.  It was pretty funny.

Dinner was in Lumiere’s.  Michael had our table all decorated for the occasion:

After dinner we headed upstairs for the official sailaway.  They had the duo “The Dreamers” singing on the Goofy Stage, deck 9.  They were on the ship this summer.  I really enjoy listening to them sing.  It was just really relaxful and peaceful up on deck.  We were on deck 10 and waited until we actually pulled away from the dock at 10:45 to officially begin our cruise.

Faith and Dale

Linda, Faith, Bob and Pete

Dale, Michael and Scott

Our sailaway batons and streamers

Most of our group

Beautiful San Juan

By then it was after midnight and since I had been up since 4:30 a.m., decided to call it a night. Goodnight from the Disney Magic!