This would be our 15th cruise and our 1st cruise out of San Juan.

 

We really spent a lot of time trying to find an AI for our summer vacation. I feel like maybe Sakari is getting a little burned out with cruising (even though it's all she talks about). She's in it for the beaches...and well, I figured maybe we should just fly to Cancun (which we've never been), and stay for a week. That way she could go to the beach every day to get her "fix". We checked pricing, we found a place, we were ready to book...then I started reading things I didn't like. Now normally I don't influence too easily, but I just felt uneasy for some reason.

 

On to the next thought...we'd head to Orlando and rent a house and hit up all the theme parks. Sakari has never been. Then all the bad news just started rolling in about the shootings in Orlando, the gator sightings in weird places, then the poor child that was snatched up at the beach at the Disney Resort. I know, Florida has gators, I know there's bad all over the world these days. But something just didn't feel right to me.

 

Obviously I always turn back to cruising just to take a peak at something that might be worth checking into....

 

BOOM!!!!! There it was. A Carnival cruise coming out of San Juan Puerto Rico doing a Southern itinerary. I have ALWAYS wanted to do a southern cruise but never really knew about flying all the way to PR to leave. The more I checked into this, the more appealing it sounded. THEN, there was the price of this cruise=:eek: Like one of the cheapest cruises I have seen in several years cheap. I couldn't believe it.

 

I immediately headed out to our local grocery store to buy some gift cards (for the free gas), hit up Verizon to use some points to buy some more gift cards at a reduced cost, then got in touch with my TA. Within the week all 3 of us were booked and I was getting SUPER excited.

 

This is a VERY PORT INTENSIVE itinerary!!! It only had 1 sea day. I didn't know much about the Fascination, nor did I care with that price or the ports.

 

PORTS:

 

St Thomas

sea day

Barbados

St Lucia

St Kitts

St Maarten

 

Woo hoo! Two new ports for me and one that I had only been to for the first time a few months ago (and really wanted a do-over since the last time was not the best experience).

 

BOOK ME! Off to research in between my assignments in class and I ended up with some awesome advice and suggestions from the wonderful people over there at cc.

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So here is where you'll find my complete review...