JennyB

hoping for lots of pics and details...doing this cruise on Nov on Harmony...all these blogs are getting me through the brutal winter I am dealing with this year!

Today marks 25 day until we set sail! Traveling with my wife and daughters (10 & 14), my mom & dad, my wife's mom & dad, and my bother & sister in laws with their son (21). We are driving in from Indianapolis. We are leaving here on Friday March 15th. We plan to be in Ft Lauderdale early enough to watch the ships leaving port on Saturday from the beach. We did this on our last cruise and it was a lot of fun. The rest of our family are flying in later Saturday night.
Some highlights of our plans;
We have booked the Guacamole class at Sabor for day 2. We have my father in law booked to take the behind the scenes ship tour on day 3. We also have booked Escape The Rubicon for day 6. We have also booked the Bottomless Brunch and Galley Tour on day 7.We have also made reservations for all our onboard entertainment.
In St. Maarten we have booked the famous Leo Brown as our driver for the day. We have a couple places we know we want to see like Maho to watch the planes land but, for the most part we want Leo to show us the must sees! San Juan we have booked Old San Juan Food Tour. By Flavors of San Juan. We are very much looking forward to this. On our last cruise we did a culinary tour in Falmouth that was amazing so we are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. Everything I have read about this tour makes me think we are in for a treat (or 5 or 6). Our plan for Labadee is to get off the ship early, enjoy a few Labadoozys, a little shopping and then get back on the ship for lunch and to enjoy the ship with fewer people on board.
 

Absolutely.  We have a secret nod so we can distinguish ourselves from the @BrandonOwen type people.

Day 3 - Labadee
Navigator is like a new ship so have to use all the regular spots to photograph her "first" visit to Labadee.

Terrific shots!

I was wondering what that space was for.  I think it makes sense, since guests doing it themselves always results in a huge mess around the machine.

I wonder how long those life guards are on station? Talk about BORING! I was a lifeguard many many years ago. We, at least, had elevated chairs to sit in. And it was BORING and the pay was so-so. But, the fringe benefit of meeting young ladies offset the boredom factor. I've always been a "glass is half full" kind of person, just don't ask my wife to verify that.  

HASHTAG GOALS...YES, I spelled out hashtag LOL

Here is a closer look at the resort style pools
 

There is a coin slot on the side of it but the balls are sitting on the side of the table in a slot and there is nothing stopping you from dropping a ball into the game and playing it.  I couldn't see the coin slot becoming operational since nothing on board accepts cash (or coin) so at the moment it appears to be free.

Yes, you have to have at a minimum the Soda Package which includes a souvenir cup.

The arcade style video games have a $1 charge.  The other games like pool, shuffle board and Jenga are free.

Top Tier event for Crown and Anchor last night.
C&A ambassador stated there are over 13 million C&A members worldwide.
2,039 C&A members on board 
Gold 878
Platinum 426
Emerald 254
Diamond 334
Diamond Plus 142
Pinnacle 5
Top cruisers have 711, 729 and 875 points in the C&A program (all the Pinnacles).

That and $9 ($12 CAD) will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.  
What am I saying?   Flash that Star Class card and you have few worries ?

Interesting (and nice looking) Starbucks.  Had to look up the deck plans to see where it's located.  Looks like deck 4 near casino.

I'd also advise skipping the Bacardi Factor tour. It's not insightful and largely just a glorified commercial. There are far better things to do in San Juan.

I did it!!! LOL

I saw many other threads recommending Bernard's Tours (https://www.bernardstours.com/) for a day trip around St. Maarten, and thought I'd chime in that I highly recommend them.  Below are some details about our experience, which I haven't seen posted elsewhere and hopefully well help answer other people's questions similar to the ones I had prior to visiting.
 
I was with a family group of 8 people in total, ranging from my son (8 years old) to my father-in-law (80 years old).  Everyone is generally mobile and doesn't require anything like a stroller or walker, although I could see the tour easily accommodating those if we had needed them. We were on Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas with a port call in St. Maarten on Thursday Jan 3rd, 2019.  There were 2 other ships in port that day as well.  We were there from 7AM until 5PM. I made the reservation via their website about 45 days in advance.  We decided to do the private customized tour for 8 people, total cost $495, with a deposit of $100 required in advance.  I paid the remaining $395 onsite as we were starting the tour via a credit card. We had decided not to rush off the boat, so asked for a 10AM - 4PM tour time.  This worked well as it allowed us to eat breakfast and walk off the ship at a leisurely pace.  I got a phone call directly from Bernard at about 9:30AM on my cell phone just to confirm we were still planning on coming. It was a little hard to find the tour lot.  You have to walk past all the small vendor kiosks, through a chain link fence gate, and there are some white tent canopies setup in a gravel parking lot.  It's to the left of the main taxi parking lot, just past the big sign that says welcome to St. Maarten. We asked a random vendor on the pier which way to go and they easily pointed it out to us.  There isn't any clear signage at the tent that it's Bernard's Tours, but all the drivers had shirts with the logo on it. After paying, we were assigned a driver, David, and a 10-12 person passenger van (3-4 rows of seats in it).  The van was very clean and modern and Brian had a small step stool to help my inlaws step into an out of the van.  In between the front seats was a cooler with bottle of water, coke, diet coke, beer, and a bottle of rum.  Brian regularly encouraged us to take whatever we wanted from the coolor over the course of the day.  David had a headset microphone he wore the whole time that was hooked up to the speakers in the van.  Whenever he spoke it was broadcast over the speakers and made it easy for anyone in the van to hear him without blasting us out in the front row. The first thing he asked us was what we wanted to do / see.  We had some general desires, such as some beach time, the french-dutch border, and the airplanes at maho beach.  He then provided us with some maps of the island and suggested we do a route around the whole island with certain specific stops detailed below.  He suggested NOT going to Orient Beach due to us having kids and it being clothing optional.  We readily agreed to his suggestions. We then set of, and were pleasantly surprised to find that he was able to narrate the whole time all about the island, the various major buildings, sites, history, and in particular the impact of the recent hurricanes.  He quickly learned all our names and was quick to address us by them and try to gauge what each of us were interested in. The some of the stops we didn't get out of the van, and were for things like the oldest building on the island, the East Dutch/French border monument, and the big new flagpole on the mountainside. Other tops we generally got out for a while and included: An overlook of Oyster Bay, which gave a view of all the boats still sunk in the harbor due to the hurricane Rotary Lookout Point, an elevated platform with an amazing view of some undeveloped beaches and islands.  Normally there is a guy there that brings in sea urchins for tourists to see, but he wasn't there that day.  We were able to find one or two to pick up close to the shore. The Iguana 'farm', which is just a small roadside stall with 2 ladies near some iguana nesting sites.  The ladies threw out some lettuce and gave the kids sticks with lettuce on them to attract the iguanas and feed them, which was pretty cool to see Lunch at Rainbow Cafe Beach bar (http://rainbowcafe.fr/) on Grand Case Beach.  That area was hit hard by the hurricanes and there are only a few beach establishments open still.  We had about 75 minutes here and it was exactly like something out of the movies, with a perfect beach and water (85 degree weather that day!).  It cost $15 for 2 beach chairs with an umbrella and waiter service, only a few feet from the water.  Altogether we spent about $120 for 8 people to have chairs, some drinks and food and just bask in the environment. A stop in 'downtown' at Marigot Market, to visit a bakery and various street market stalls for some shopping.  We had about 30 minutes to walk around and see the sights and wares available. A stop at the West Dutch/French board monument while crossing over the border to find a geocache for my daughter (David mentioned that he once had somebody hire him to just drive around the island looking for geocaches) A stop at Maho Beach at the airport to see the planes land and take off.  We had about 30 minutes here, and were there at the perfect time to see lots of big jets both coming in for a landing and taking off.  
Altogether, all 8 of us were extremely impressed and happy with the experience, ranging from the myrid of things David told us while driving around about the island and it's people, to the wide range of stops we made and time available to enjoy them.  I'd highly recommend Bernard's tours to anyone going to Sint Maarten / Saint Martin

Hi JGuirduli, our first cruise as well, HOTS in June. The little bit of research I have done(trip advisor)it seems that this port  Puerto Costa Maya Mexico  is a very large cruise port where the main issue is the “maze” to to find an exit, to get out to meet an excursion or just leave the port area. I found an excellent map that shows the pier/exits/beach/restrooms/showers at www.cruisemapper.com/ports/costa-maya-port . Sorry I am not very good with computers & can’t hotlink

If you decide to go to Mahaual, you can get an hour massage on the beach for $20.  If you decide you want to try that, do NOT allow anyone else to "arrange" the massage for you; they will double the price and keep $20 for themselves !  Just walk up to one of the massage tables and negotiate your own price. They will tell you that the price is $40 or more; just tell them that you will only pay $20 and they will either accept it or you can pay what they are demanding.  At almost any price, it is worth it.  We ALWAYS get a massage on the beach in Costa Maya.  I always give them a good tip, especially if it only costs me $20 for the massage !

I did it!!! LOL

Oh yes. He has a van that can easily accommodate 4 adults.

OHMYGOSH is it REALLY that easy?!!!!  LOL...don't tell anyone I am the "techie"/social media person at my job ?  bahahahahaha!!!

OHMYGOSH is it REALLY that easy?!!!!  LOL...don't tell anyone I am the "techie"/social media person at my job ?  bahahahahaha!!!

Apart from what @twangster noted, the basics are anything you pre-book via the Cruise Planner site can be cancelled at no penalty.
If you wait until onboard the ship, you can still cancel but money will come back as onboard credit (instead of back to your credit card). Moreover, you can only cancel shore excursions 48 hours prior to the tour.