The Palm Trees are Really Cool: Onboard the Carnival Valor’s Southern Route (Part One)featured

If you know the song this review’s title is from, I’m golf clapping you from my living room.

HI FRIENDS!

I’ve only been home for four days and I’ve got all 2000 pictures uploaded and I’m ready to review! That’s some personal progress! I’m going on a friends trip to California (San Fran and LA) in six weeks and I need to find a new apartment and move within eight. It’ll be a busy summer but I’m so excited to write this that I’m hoping to get it done in some kind of a timely manner.

So we’re back. Three days in Puerto Rico. Seven days on the Valor. It was a trip that felt really long in the beginning and then somehow disappeared. We lost all track of time. I don’t think I need to post the long intro that I post on Cruise Critic here. You guys know me, right? So lets skip ahead and talk about the Valor.

Why the Valor?

So, funny thing. We weren’t intending to sail on Carnival this spring. We had so much fun on Royal Caribbean last spring that we wanted to do another Allure (or an Oasis) cruise. One day, Stephanie was playing around on the Carnival site pricing out cruises (because our minds are never really made up until we’re booked) and when she was pricing out this cruise for funsies, she noticed it was really low. Like, unbelievably low. Like…first two cruisers were free. We didn’t know that the free cruise promotion was happening at the time so we thought it was a site glitch. After a quick discussion about whether or not we wanted such a port heavy trip, the fact that we’d get to go to so many awesome ports and be in St. Lucia on Mom’s birthday sealed it. We booked thinking it was a site glitch and maybe once they found out, they’d honor it.

And then Stephanie got a letter in the mail a couple days later saying she had a free cruise. We don’t know how she was selected. It seems the promo was incredibly random. So our rate wasn’t a glitch – two of us were free. We had to pay the third person rate and the upgrade to a balcony (and the obligatory taxes and fees), but other than that? Free! Free! Free!

Oh, the Valor! I remember you!

We’ve sailed on the Valor before. We did a Western Caribbean on her back in 2011. It was our Platinum cruise. And I ended up in the hospital a day after we got home. Good times. Okay, the hospital part not so much but we had a ton of fun on the Valor (see dumb throwback picture below). And while the Valor hasn’t had the Funship 2.0 upgrades yet (RIP breakfast arepas from the Blue Iguana Cantina!), it did have something that fixed something that left a bad taste in my mouth on the last cruise – full on production shows with sets, not animatronic screens, a full dance troupe instead of a few dancers who can also sing and a live band instead of a prerecorded track. Yeah, we could do with a visit back to our old friend, the Valor.

And Puerto Rico! I think I remember you, too!

This wouldn’t be our first visit to Puerto Rico. In the infamous (amongst our family) Tropical Storm Barry Family Cruise of 2007, we made a stop in San Juan on the Liberty. Mom didn’t get off the ship. Stephanie and I went to Senor Frogs for yardas (we were in college – it was a recurring theme in all cruises we took between 2004 and 2008). Another throwback photo below.

I was also shooting with a point and shoot then, so I was taking really awesome pictures like this:

Stephanie and I are a little older now. I like to think we’re a little more cultured. A little more interested in visits to historic landmarks than to…Senor Frogs. Maybe. San Juan was a new place to really explore. Something out of our comfort zone since Florida is nearly now (and for much of our childhood was) our second home, but there was no part of San Juan that was familiar to us, and I think there’s something exciting in that.

St. Thomas, St. Maarten, good to see you again

In 16 cruises, I think we’ve been to St. Thomas at least six or seven times. We must have visited St. Maarten at least five or six times. So with a lack of sea days and no late arrivals into port, St. Thomas and St. Maarten served as our rest days. We planned to make no plans. Gratuitous St. Thomas photo below.

New Ports? Well, hello!

We’ve never visited St. Lucia or Barbados before, and we’ve only been to St. Kitts once. So while this itinerary wouldn’t give us much sea time, it would give us the opportunity to visit some exotic new locales. I dug it.

I think that’s all the background this intro requires. Part one coming your way tonight or tomorrow!