Excursions on our own fear.

[taggie4]

St. Thomas is part of the United States of America and Tortola is part of the United Kingdom. These are not poor countries. Otherwise, I agree with your point that taxis in St. Thomas and Tortola are plentiful. At Magen's Beach in St. Thomas, taxis are lined up in the parking lot waiting to take people back to the ships.

The people selling their goods and services on both islands appeared to be poor. It was a new experience for my kids.

 

[cmwade77]

In many ports you can hire a cab for the entire day for a very reasonable flat rate. We did this in one of the ports in Canada for $200 Canadian, which at the time worked out to around $125 with the exchange rate. Just know the rate is usually negotiable as well.

Just a note that they will usually want cash in local currency for this though. But it worked out great, we got an amazing tour of the area for a fraction of what Disney wanted and we got to see areas that Disney didn't go to or at least didn't go to on the same tour together, making it very well customized to what we wanted to see.

 

[MUN]

The people selling their goods and services on both islands appeared to be poor. It was a new experience for my kids.

They may have been poor, but their countries, the United States and the United Kingdom are not poor countries.

 

[taggie4]

They may have been poor, but their countries, the United States and the United Kingdom are not poor countries.

Alrighty, countries with decent size populations of poor people. Hope that works.

 

[bbel]

They may have been poor, but their countries, the United States and the United Kingdom are not poor countries.

Ok. But at least with the BVI, they are British territory, they share the sovereignty, but are pretty much their own country: they have their own government, laws and currency (for BVI it's actually USD)....

 

[moremouse]

We usually set up our own tours. I really like to check out TripAdvisor though. They'll be lots of help to you.

Most of the time when we book this way we end up along side other DCL cruisers anyway. We ALL want to get back in time.

The vendors are pretty aware of the port schedule as well.

 

[vegs1]

We have always done our own tours also. That being said, if for any reason you do your own and are not back on time, the ship will not wait and you will have to get to the next port. The ship will wait for a Disney shore excursion.

For taxi excursions to a nearby beach, we usually tell them we will pay at the end of the day when they return to pick us up and have never had any not show up. Lucky perhaps.

I do know of a couple that booked a private tour and were in a car accident early in the day. The police had them go to the station for statements and they missed the ship. Not being Debbie downer but just know that things sometimes happen. As I said, we do our own and have never had an issue.

 

[hanscarlet]

we mostly do excursions on our own and my biggest tips would be like others have already mentioned, leave yourself A LOT of cushion on the return and research the taxi availability in the spots you're going

We used taxis on our own in St Thomas and Tortola. Truth is these are poor countries and the taxis were asking when they could return to pick us up. I would not worry about getting back to the ship on your own.

We had a similar experience with both, we had the same guy in Tortola drive us around all day, he kept complaining about the Crown's greed and all the island's "development"

 

[KashasMom]

I can't think of one port that doesn't have plenty of taxis waiting to take passengers to a beach or sightseeing just as I have never been to a beach that didn't have taxis waiting to take passengers back. In most ports you can make arrangements for a specific pick up time if you're more comfortable with that.