Allowed bring own snorkeling gear for Castaway Cay?

[andrews_dad]

Is that allowed and is there a free area to snorkel that is interesting?

 

[wilkeliza]

Yes you can bring your own gear. If you do not have a safety vest you can borrow one from Disney for free. You are free to snorkel anywhere including the snorkeling cover that has all the sunken treasures and lots of fish.

 

[Anchors Away 2016]

You can bring your own gear. There is some debate on whether you can bring just a mask and rent fins or if you have to rent all or none. My own experience was that you had to rent the whole set, but others say they had a different experience.

As for the snorkeling area, I'd say it depends on your expectations and experiences. Disney has a nice area set aside for snorkeling. It starts at the beach and goes out fairly far in a horseshoe configuration. There are several lifeguard towers out in the water spaced out, and there are a number of yellow and orange marker buoys to mark things that Disney has sunken there. They are fun. Yes, when we were there, there were lots of fish too, but not like TONS of super rare fish. So it depends on your expectations. My teenage boys and I found it fun. It took us about an hour.

The vests that you have to wear (or bring your own) are useful if you aren't familiar with such things. Not only are they bright yellow to make you easy to spot, but they have a manual inflation tube so you can have it inflated a bit to keep you horizontal as you swim so you can look down, and then it can be deflated easily so you can dive down look at things, and then blow it back up when you resurface.

 

[andrews_dad]

Yes you can bring your own gear. If you do not have a safety vest you can borrow one from Disney for free. You are free to snorkel anywhere including the snorkeling cover that has all the sunken treasures and lots of fish.

AWESOME! Thanks for the information. These boards are filled with the best folks!

 

[andrews_dad]

Oh, that will be good with my kids (ages 6 and 8). We snorkel at Atlantis in the Bahamas.

 

[GPaLarry]

We bring our own snorkel gear every time and use the Disney vests. Lots to see out there...take a camera.

 

[cheermom2four]

We brought our own gear on our sept cruise. We did however, need to wear the provided life vest as its a requirement when snorkeling.

 

[ratt1345]

We just were on the Fantasy 2 weeks ago and we had our own gear. We got a vest and went snorkeling.