Excursion Questions for St Thomas, Tortola & Castaway

[TheYell0wDart]

Last night I tried booking our excursions at midnight of the day our booking window opened (this is our first time with DCL so we had to wait longer to book) for our Eastern Carribean Disney Fantasy cruise at the end of May. I had 3 things that we wanted to do, and sadly I wasn't able to book any of them, which is frustrating. I was hoping to book the Baths on Tortola, and 2 slots in the sting ray encounter and a standup paddle board at Castaway. I can't say I'm shocked at the Baths being booked, as it seems like the most popular activity for Tortola, but I wasn't expecting so many things to sell out on Castaway Cay.

Some questions for people with experience:

1. Should I bother checking back frequently to see if there have been cancellations, or does that not really happen much?

2. Does anyone have experience using the ferries from Tortola to Virgin Gorda to get to the Baths without an excursion? Are they reliable? Worth the extra effort of waiting for the ferry and finding a taxi at Spanish town? And I already checked with 3 private charter companies, like Aristocat, and all were booked up for our day at Tortola.

3. The only thing I was able to book was "Castaway Catamaran to Shipwreck Cove" on St Thomas, because it was one of the few things of interest left to book. Anyone have experience/reviews of this excursion? With our original plans, we were going to take a Taxi to Magens Bay and swim/snorkel off the beach, which seems like a pretty cool place (We have 2 kids, 7 & 9, nice calm water and a beach seemed ideal). Is this excursion better than that, or are we missing more than we are getting by taking this excursion?

Edit to add question 4. If we can't get to the Baths, what beach should we go to on Tortola for swimming and snorkeling?

 

[allashore]

Last night I tried booking our excursions at midnight of the day our booking window opened (this is our first time with DCL so we had to wait longer to book) for our Eastern Carribean Disney Fantasy cruise at the end of May. I had 3 things that we wanted to do, and sadly I wasn't able to book any of them, which is frustrating. I was hoping to book the Baths on Tortola, and 2 slots in the sting ray encounter and a standup paddle board at Castaway. I can't say I'm shocked at the Baths being booked, as it seems like the most popular activity for Tortola, but I wasn't expecting so many things to sell out on Castaway Cay.

Some questions for people with experience:

1. Should I bother checking back frequently to see if there have been cancellations, or does that not really happen much?

2. Does anyone have experience using the ferries from Tortola to Virgin Gorda to get to the Baths without an excursion? Are they reliable? Worth the extra effort of waiting for the ferry and finding a taxi at Spanish town? And I already checked with 3 private charter companies, like Aristocat, and all were booked up for our day at Tortola.

3. The only thing I was able to book was "Castaway Catamaran to Shipwreck Cove" on St Thomas, because it was one of the few things of interest left to book. Anyone have experience/reviews of this excursion? With our original plans, we were going to take a Taxi to Magens Bay and swim/snorkel off the beach, which seems like a pretty cool place (We have 2 kids, 7 & 9, nice calm water and a beach seemed ideal). Is this excursion better than that, or are we missing more than we are getting by taking this excursion?

Edit to add question 4. If we can't get to the Baths, what beach should we go to on Tortola for swimming and snorkeling?

we were just on the Fantasy Eastern March 5th-12th, booked cruise 2 weeks before
1) yes continue checking, especially as it gets closer to your cruise, say the week to the 3days before that you can see activities, we were able to get Tortola to Baths with lunch, the other does not have lunch TT04 & TT23 we only need 2 people, initially sold out but I checked often
you may find some other openings too, such as tastings, spa etc also check on ship with guest services & on the ships app,

3) we did this excursion and it was excellent, crew was fantastic, however the water was very rough, we wound up going to a different spot to snorkel turtles & lots of fish (all people on this excursion had to agree to go to a different location, or they would have to go to original one that we signed up for) It was just myself and 22yr old son there were plenty of families with younger kids.

 

[lklgoodman]

Several years ago booked the stingrays at CC the day before we went there. They had openings for every time slot. Definitely keep checking from now until your cruise. If nothing opens up by then, check on the ship. Good luck

 

[RedHead0186]

I agree with the others, definitely keep checking back!

 

[rlkindle]

I don't have any advice but wanted to echo everything you typed above. I researched, asked input from this board, the DCL blog the Facebook pages, my TA, put it all in a spreadsheet to discuss with my family what to do and everything they wanted was booked. I contacted Aristocat a few wks ago when they had vacancies. By the time I started seeing in the FB group for this specific cruise that all the excursions were for the most part already gone I went back to book with them and their site said unavailable. I found another company on Tortola called Adventure Sailing on Trip Advisor with great reviews and put a reservation in with them. On St Thomas I booked the Coral World but it is the lame one, it doesn't have dolphin or sea trek just a ride there and back pretty much. Castaway Cay I got float tubes lest they disappear as well. Also was disappointed no brunch at Palo which I really wanted. When I read your post I was like wait... Did I post that?? lol

 

[Rob1872]

I'm on the same cruise; the Baths with lunch was already full when the Silver reservation window opened (we grabbed the non-lunch version) and all of the sports simulators were booked for sea days. (Managed to grab a spot for my son right before we have our USVI port excursion) You can always keep trying; people may cancel.

Normally I would never recommend taking the ferry on your own to another island due to the risk of missing the ship; however, at least in this case you would be confident that if you missed the ship you'd be able to get over to St. Thomas before the ship left on the next day.