Excursion help?

[frank2271]

Hello,

I'm taking my family on a 7 day Eastern Carribean cruise in November. Can you guys help my in making my excursion plans? Should I book outside of Disney? What are the best trips? Please give my all the inside dirt you can. No advice will go un-appreciated. I just want to make all the right choices, I don't want to miss anything. This is our first cruise. My wife and I are 34 and our son is 8. We all like snorkeling. My wife wants to do a cooking class onboard ship. Has anyone heard of this?

Once again, any help at all will be great.

Thank again,

Frank & family.

P.S. I read about the magnetic signs, that's great. Is there anything cool like that I need to know about?

P.S.S. If you guys can tell me what excursions have the best BANG for the buck it would be great!!!

 

[Jsme]

There are a few cooking things to attend. You also have a beer tasting and wine tasting. You have dance classes you can go to and tour you can atttend. All of which are onboard.

What you might want to do is look at the excursion you can do at each port. Pick out the ones that interest your family and then do another thread to find out about those excursion. Our snorkeling was cancelled due to the weather in Cozmel. We did a sub type excursion in Grand Cayman and also visited the turtle farm. In Jamica we did a rainforest tour that led us to the waterfall and we climbed it. Those are all of the ports I have been to for a Western Cruise.

 

[frank2271]

Bump

 

[kplatt]

Our favorite stop on the eastern is Sapphire Beach on St. Thomas. You can catch a taxi from the pier and get there before any of the excursions. It has a great sandy beach, watersports, reefs and rocks very close to shore for snorkeling, a pool and poolside cafe. It's not far from Coral World, which is our second favorite place.

We took one excursion on the Leyland Sneed (sp?) to St. John. It was OK. A great boat, but it took a long time to get there from the pier, which ate into our snorkeling time.

Hope this helps...

Karen
Wonder 11/01
Magic 3/02
Magic 11/02
Carnival Destiny (don't ask) 12/03
Magic Eastbound Panama Canal 8/05

 

[frank2271]

Thank you Karen, I would appreciate any other suggestions.

Frank

 

[mickey minder]

We did the Butterfly farm on St. Maarten - kinda boring. St. Thomas was wonderful. We chartered a helicopter for a private tour of the island through shoretrips.com. The cost was really no more than the dolphin encounter we did in Cozumel. After the helicopter, we did Coral World on our own. That was really cool since we had just seen it from the air. The "encounter" activities are really a lot of fun. We also did the submarine in Grand Cayman. It was awesome. We did a glass bottom boat tour - not very exciting, but good if you have young ones or someone of limited physical endurance. Sorry, we are not really into the beach/snorkeling thing. When we were in the sub at Grand Cayman, I saw a rather large shark, I'm pretty sure that's what it was, and that kind of sent me back to the pool on the ship. Good luck. You will enjoy your time no matter if you fill it with excusions or just sit back and relax.

 

[Jsme]

Frank2271 here is a pic of my kids at Sapphire Beach. We loved it there. I ditto the suggestion about taking a taxi.

You see it is a beautiful area. We had a blast there! I want to go back for a week and lay in a hammock with a nice tropical drink in my hand!