Post your Eastern Caribbean Excursions here!!!

Has anyone experienced the Caribbean Sea Safari, Snorkeling & Beach Tour? Would love to hear any feedback about this excursion.

I'm wondering about this one too. It seems to contain the same stops as the full day one; buck island (turtle cove) and honeymoon beach.
 
Yes, we will be in St. Thomas on July 4th. Wondering about this tour, since the full day sail and snorkeling tour is showing 'sold out' :sad:

BTW, does anyone know if an excursion 53 days out is sold out could open up again or if there is a waiting list for excursions???
 
We were on the 5/5 Fantasy and booked directly with Bernard's on St. Maarten and the Full day sail and snorkel to Turtle Cove and Honeymoon Beach on St. Thomas/St. John.

Bernards: Easy to book, very quick at responding and very easy to find at the port. First time to St. Maarten for us and we felt like it gave a good overview of the island and for $40/pp it was a reasonable option. The highlight for us was the stop at Maho Beach, although we also enjoyed Marigot but it was a French holiday so a lot was closed the day we were there. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and friendly and forewarned us of anything that people might not enjoy or find offensive. As a group we agreed to shorten the time at Orient Beach and have 30 mins longer at Maho. The first stop is to see iguanas at a "residence" that they could probably drop from the tour and nobody would care. We were warned that the location was run down ahead of time, but it just felt like a waste of time to us. Orient Beach was just OK to us - interesting to say that we did it - but wouldn't go back. The entrance we took (I assume everyone does? :confused3) was directly between the clothing optional beach and the regular public beach - if you LOOKED right as you drove in, then the "Adam & Eve" people, as they tour guide put it, were right there, nothing blocking anything. :rolleyes1
Overall: OK - glad we got to see a good overview of the island and it definitely gave us a good feeling for what we would/would not want to see if we were to ever go back. I probably wouldn't do this with kids - just IMO.

St. Thomas/St. John - Full Day Sail & Snorkle to Turtle Cove & Honeymoon Beach. Everything provided for the day, great crew, great service and a lot of fun. The excursion got split into 2 groups, one on the pirate schooner and the other on the catamaran. You sail out to snorkel for about an hour, a guide helps find sea turtles and shows you were to find coral etc. You either climbed down a ladder or jumped into the water, which proved tricky for some of those with smaller children - just an FYI - but everyone seemed to manage in the end. :) After snorkeling they served rum punch, soda and water plus chips and salsa while we sailed to Honeymoon Beach. We were on the schooner and either had to swim or wait to ride the dingy to the beach (we elected to swim), although the catamaran got pretty close, looked like those people really only had to wade a short distance. One of us should have been savvy enough to figure out how to carry sunscreen while swimming to the beach though. :headache: Lunch was a decent BBQ, nothing out of this world but we were pretty hungry so it tasted pretty good! :thumbsup2 We were there about 2 hours. Lunch, beer, soft drinks and bottled water were all provided.
Overall: We really enjoyed this, although the rum punch definitely loosened up the crowd and everyone was having a GREAT time by the time we got to Honeymoon Beach. :woohoo: I would be remiss if I were to not mention (for the benefit of my fellow females) that each crew had one member who could be a body double for Matthew McConnaughey, and in my book it added to the overall ambiance. :upsidedow :rotfl: Seriously though - I don't think that there was anyone on our boat that didn't have a fantastic time.
 


I would be remiss if I were to not mention (for the benefit of my fellow females) that each crew had one member who could be a body double for Matthew McConnaughey, and in my book it added to the overall ambiance. :upsidedow :rotfl:

Ok, I'm sold! :rolleyes1
No, seriously, thank you for the great review! We were looking at this excursion and now we will book it for sure! Sounds fun!
 
The full day is sold out on my cruise but I think we will do the Caribbean sea safari one. It's run by the same company, has the same stops just for a shorter time and no lunch.
 
We were on the 5/5 Fantasy and booked directly with Bernard's on St. Maarten and the Full day sail and snorkel to Turtle Cove and Honeymoon Beach on St. Thomas/St. John.

Bernards: Easy to book, very quick at responding and very easy to find at the port. First time to St. Maarten for us and we felt like it gave a good overview of the island and for $40/pp it was a reasonable option. The highlight for us was the stop at Maho Beach, although we also enjoyed Marigot but it was a French holiday so a lot was closed the day we were there. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and friendly and forewarned us of anything that people might not enjoy or find offensive. As a group we agreed to shorten the time at Orient Beach and have 30 mins longer at Maho. The first stop is to see iguanas at a "residence" that they could probably drop from the tour and nobody would care. We were warned that the location was run down ahead of time, but it just felt like a waste of time to us. Orient Beach was just OK to us - interesting to say that we did it - but wouldn't go back. The entrance we took (I assume everyone does? :confused3) was directly between the clothing optional beach and the regular public beach - if you LOOKED right as you drove in, then the "Adam & Eve" people, as they tour guide put it, were right there, nothing blocking anything. :rolleyes1
Overall: OK - glad we got to see a good overview of the island and it definitely gave us a good feeling for what we would/would not want to see if we were to ever go back. I probably wouldn't do this with kids - just IMO.

St. Thomas/St. John - Full Day Sail & Snorkle to Turtle Cove & Honeymoon Beach. Everything provided for the day, great crew, great service and a lot of fun. The excursion got split into 2 groups, one on the pirate schooner and the other on the catamaran. You sail out to snorkel for about an hour, a guide helps find sea turtles and shows you were to find coral etc. You either climbed down a ladder or jumped into the water, which proved tricky for some of those with smaller children - just an FYI - but everyone seemed to manage in the end. :) After snorkeling they served rum punch, soda and water plus chips and salsa while we sailed to Honeymoon Beach. We were on the schooner and either had to swim or wait to ride the dingy to the beach (we elected to swim), although the catamaran got pretty close, looked like those people really only had to wade a short distance. One of us should have been savvy enough to figure out how to carry sunscreen while swimming to the beach though. :headache: Lunch was a decent BBQ, nothing out of this world but we were pretty hungry so it tasted pretty good! :thumbsup2 We were there about 2 hours. Lunch, beer, soft drinks and bottled water were all provided.
Overall: We really enjoyed this, although the rum punch definitely loosened up the crowd and everyone was having a GREAT time by the time we got to Honeymoon Beach. :woohoo: I would be remiss if I were to not mention (for the benefit of my fellow females) that each crew had one member who could be a body double for Matthew McConnaughey, and in my book it added to the overall ambiance. :upsidedow :rotfl: Seriously though - I don't think that there was anyone on our boat that didn't have a fantastic time.

Sounds fun! Your St. Thomas/St. Johns excursion was booked directly through DCL? Thanks for the info! :)
 


Seems like with two ships the all day turtle cove and honeymoon shouldn't sell out as long as I book right away, but have lowly silvers had issues getting this one at 75 days? I really want to do it! :thumbsup2
 
Seems like with two ships the all day turtle cove and honeymoon shouldn't sell out as long as I book right away, but have lowly silvers had issues getting this one at 75 days? I really want to do it! :thumbsup2

Sorry, missed this, we are Silver and we got it with no problems. :thumbsup2
 
Hi, we have just booked the EC for 19th Oct 2013 - can someone tell me how we go about booking excursions please. We are new to this cruising malarky!!
 
We did an Eastern Caribbean on the Magic last year, and here's some info from our trip report (saw some people asking about Trunk Bay, so here's our two cents...)

On St. Maarten, we did "our own thing" and after some research on a good beach, decided to go check out Dawn Beach.

The trip from the port to the beach was fairly quick - once there, we were greeted by "The Guy", who quickly mentioned he would be happy to rent us lounge chairs and an umbrella - but we politely said "thanks, but no thanks" and headed a bit further down the beach and found a nice spot to throw down our towels. The water was, just as you see in some pictures/postcards, crystal clear blue - and very warm (St. Maarten had the warmest water out of all three of our Port days). We all spent a lot of time swimming, playing on the beach, and snorkeling - I think we were there at Dawn Beach until about 2 in the afternoon. Saw lots of fish and coral right off the beach - it was definitely a great spot for snorkeling. There were some other folks on the beach, but it never felt "crowded" and we had plenty of space to ourselves. Once everyone felt like they had had enough sun (being our first day off the ship, we knew we didn't want to start off the trip with any sunburns), we grabbed a taxi back to the port.

At St. Thomas, we booked the Trunk Bay excursion...

This was perhaps the only disappointing thing about our whole cruise - even though we were prepared and knew about it in advance, we hadn't appreciated the travel time to and from Trunk Bay, and the amount of our "ashore" time it was going to eat up. It took just about an hour (each way) for the boat to get us from St. Thomas to St. John, and then some waiting around to get on the buses, and then another ~15 minutes to reach the bay. So we only had just over an hour and a half to actually snorkel. The water, while just as clear and beautiful as St. Maarten, was a bit colder, and Gillian toughed it out as long as she could, but eventually needed to take a break from being in the water. So while she and Kayleigh played on the beach, Ginger and I got some more snorkeling in. One of the things we had heard about in Trunk Bay was the "snorkel trail", which really wasn't all it was made out to be - some underwater plaques that talked about the various fish in the area, but I'd have a hard time calling it a "trail". But we still did enjoy our (brief) amount of swimming/snorkeling - it was just over too quickly, and we were rushed back on the buses to get back on the boat to St. Thomas.

For the second day in a row, it did rain a bit - although much heavier than the day before in St. Maarten. Luckily it waited until we were done swimming, but we had to wait to board our boat due to them unloading another set of travellers - so while some people were able to take shelter under the covered portions of the line, there were a lot of other folks standing in the rain getting soaked. Luckily, once on board, just about everyone was able to seek shelter in the portions of the boat that weren't open to the rain.

We got back to St. Thomas in time to spend a few minutes walking through the various tourist trap stores, but pretty soon we had to go get in line so we weren't left behind!


So I think in the future, we would for sure hit Dawn Beach again, but we'll find something else to do in St. Thomas...
 
Hi, we have just booked the EC for 19th Oct 2013 - can someone tell me how we go about booking excursions please. We are new to this cruising malarky!!

Congrats on your first cruise!! :cool1: Once you hit your 75 day mark and you're paid in full (PIF), you can do your online check in and book excursions, spa reservations and dinner/brunch reservations.
Keep reading the DIS boards and you'll learn just about everything you'll need to know before your cruise! :goodvibes
 
Congrats on your first cruise!! :cool1: Once you hit your 75 day mark and you're paid in full (PIF), you can do your online check in and book excursions, spa reservations and dinner/brunch reservations.
Keep reading the DIS boards and you'll learn just about everything you'll need to know before your cruise! :goodvibes

Lovely, thanks for letting me know. 75 days.... I think I have to be more patient!! I am sure the time will pass quick enough.
 
An excursion I haven't seen mentioned yet is the America's Cup Challenge on St. Maarten. We are signed up for it in September and will give a review afterwards.
 
I'm having trouble deciding between
St. Maartens
See and Sea Island Tour
and
Under Two Flags Island Tour
any input?
:confused3
 
We are interested in the St. John Island Tour, mostly for photographs. I have read through the itinerary for this tour, and am just wondering if there is time to take photos along the way. If any if you have done this excursion, and can provide more detailed info, it would be MOST appreciated. We want beautiful photography opportunities, and trying to find an excursion that will fit our needs.
On St. Maarten, any advice for tours that would also show us the island, and allow for photo ops? Maybe a Bernard's Tour? Or a personalized Bernard's Tour?
 
We are interested in the St. John Island Tour, mostly for photographs. I have read through the itinerary for this tour, and am just wondering if there is time to take photos along the way. If any if you have done this excursion, and can provide more detailed info, it would be MOST appreciated. We want beautiful photography opportunities, and trying to find an excursion that will fit our needs.
On St. Maarten, any advice for tours that would also show us the island, and allow for photo ops? Maybe a Bernard's Tour? Or a personalized Bernard's Tour?

You will have amazing photo opportunities on the St. John Island Tour. They stop and let you get out of the van at all the locations.
 

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