If you plan to go into a field of study that requires any type of higher math (liberal arts are really the only thing that don't, I think), I think you'd be crazy to not take Calculus while in high school, even if it's not AP. My school didn't offer any AP courses, but I still took Calculus. I had to take it again when I got to college, but I've gotten As in both Calc 1 and 2 and I got a 100% on my first Calculus 3 exam. Now, I can't attribute all of that to taking it in high school, but it certainly helped.
I also didn't much like math until I took it. I wasn't one of those people that walked around saying I hated math and I did reasonably well in all of the courses (As and Bs), but once I got to Calculus, it was like a new world opened up for me. It could have been because the teacher was phenomenal, but after that, I just really started to like maths.
So yeah, in short, if you're not already planning to, I definitely recommend that you take Calc in high school.