Eastern Caribbean excursions

[mimmiepnp]

We wi have to start thinking about excursions soon for our upcoming eastern Caribbean cruise. Looking for ideas and recommendations for excursions on Tortola and St. Thomas/St John.

Thank you

 

[magrudersmakes3]

We have this itinerary next year and from what I've been researching, here are the more popular excursions.

Tortola
Baths (with and without lunch based on preference)
Jost Van Dyke Beach Day

St.Thomas/St.John
Magens Bay Beach Break
Skyride to Paradise Point
Tree Limin' Extreme Zipline Adventure

 

[GeneralTso]

We just dit Magens Beach an I can't recommend it enough! It is paradise. Very close to a Castaway Cay day.
Our kids did the eco-hike with kayaking and swimming and did not like it. They only had about 30 minutes in the water. The hike was blazing saddles hot (as expected). They wished they were on the beach with us.

If you have a stop in St Kitts-take my advice and do not book Carabula Beach. It was a mess. An active construction zone, kinda messy and not up to Disney standards at all.

There's a lot of local hustle at St Kitts and St Thomas. Felt like being on the beach in Mexico. They don't "secure" the area at all. You are approached a lot. Granted, I did purchase the fresh coconut! Also, different folks at the beaches were renting beach umbrellas for different prices. Some for $15/day, others for $10. It made for some upset people who were suckered into paying too much.

 

[dvcgirl1]

Depends on your travelling group (kids, older parents?) and their ages, how active they want to be, etc. We have done a Baths trip (with 2 older sons) on our own, and it was great. It is, however, a decent amt of walking, and you need to be moderately physically fit, so my mom would not have been able to do it with us. She would have had a hard time with the walk down to the water area for starters, and then would have trouble with the trip through the caves/rocks. For St John, we have gone to Megans Bay for a beach day(super easy to get there, inexpensive, low activity level), and twice we have gone on the Disney excursion 1/2 -day catamaran sail and snorkel. We all loved the excursion, as it fit the boxes of what we were looking for that day. As long as the weather is good for you, I dont think you can go wrong with whatever you choose!

 

[lklgoodman]

We did the Secret Sands excursion with DCL at St. Thomas. Very nice beach with clean restrooms. There's no restaurants or bars there, but the beach host sells some drinks and snacks. They only allow one ship excursion to use the beach at a time, there were less than 75 people when we were there earlier this year.

 

[VTNuke]

We did the Baths and as people have said, it's great, but there is a trail you have to go down to get to the area. There are youtube videos of the trail and of the path from one side to the other, which are really cool. Our trip in April 2019 was the first to return to Gorda since a hurricane Irene had hit them. The place still had a lot of damage and the guides showed us some cool views and talked about the experience. They were very happy to see us since it had been over a year since Irene. Since it was at a different island, we did the tour through DCL so there wouldn't be any "missing the boat" issues.

At St. Thomas, we took a cab to Meagan's Bay. It was about a 20 minute ride. It was not through DCL, but there were no issues getting there and back in time. We had plenty of time at the beach and would recommend it. I think we saved about $30 per person by not doing a tour.

 

[daisyx3]

I'm on this one at the end of next May. It's just the two of us. On our last one DH was reminded how much he loves to snorkle, so I think I will try for the catamaran sail/snorkel in St.Thomas. In Tortola I really want to do Jost Van Dyke beach day.
I have also seen beautiful pictures of Meagan's Bay (from a friend who visited on Carnival). So that will be a backup plan.