horseback riding

[ReneeK]

hi, this is my first time asking a question on the boards. i'm very excited. please let me know if anyone has gone on a horseback riding excursion during the cruise. Did you have a good experience and do you recommend it. I'm going on the 7 day cruise on November 2, 2002. Thanks Renee

 

[Dave_from_Marietta]

The only horseback riding available on the 7-day is at St Maarten. You'd have to book this yourself... it's not available as a Disney excursion. This is the Bayside Riding Club.

www.cluborient.com/bayside.htm

This page provides info only. To book you'll have to call +590-87-36-64. (If you're calling from the United States, you need to precede that number with 011.)

Be aware that there have been mixed reviews on this board about the Bayside Riding Club.

 

[callahanjulie10]

We loved this excursion! I booked it for my DD- 9 and myself last September and it was the highlight of our trip! It was my first "real" horse ride- my DD is experiencd! We both loved it!

 

[howardk613]

did you book the riding excursion thru disney or on you own.?renee

 

[callahanjulie10]

I booked it myself by calling Bayside Stables- they have a number on their website. It is long distance. The taxi ride over was a tad expensive IMO- $20 each way for 2 adults and 1 child. We did the private 1hour ride and it was awesome! We got to ride in the water down the beach- really great! We have booked a horseback excursion for Cozumel already for May.

 

[RobinsonFamily]

Our family had a terrible experience horseback riding with Bayside. My daughter (11) was thrown from her horse when hers and 2 others bolted. My son (7) also fell off. The third child (from another family) managed to hang on until she arrived back at the stables. My son fell on the road, far out of my sight and suffered severe road rash. My daughter broke both bones in her left arm very badly. In preparation for our ride, the kids both took horseback riding lessons at home, but were definitely beginners.

Long story short. We had to fly home half-way through our vacation. It was an extremely frightening experience for us all.

We will not ever go horseback riding outside North America again. Others on this board with vast experience have subsequently warned readers about how inherently dangerous horseback riding is and on top of it there seems to be problems with this stable in particular, and I was not confident in the medical facilities. Kind of a bad mix with lots of potential to end up even worse than it did for us. I think there is a good reason Disney does not offer this as an excursion.

I'm pretty sure you can do a search on horseback riding and find the threads and decide for yourself.

Whatever you do decide, I hope you have a wonderful, safe cruise.

 

[ILovMickey]

I would not go horseback riding with this place. You might end up not being able to go at all. When my family and I went on the Disney cruise in July we made a reservation on the web site and after we paid all that money for the taxi we got there and they didn't have a reservation for us. Even though we had a confirmation. They told us to go to hotel called Club Orient. They didn't even call a cab for us so we had to WALK 2 mi. to get there. This was at Orient beach which is nude. They said they gave all the reservations to the horsebackriding place. We we're really mad especially me beacause that was the only thing that I really wanted to do. They then called us a cab and luckly after we told the cab driver what had happened he knew a place that we could go and you didn't need reservations if they had an oppening. He was very nice and helped us alot. Since they had an opening about an hour and a half away the cab driver took us to do some shopping and waited for us and then drove us to the place. It was alot of fun even though we didn't get to ride directly on the beach it was still a perfect view. We ended up having a great time but it was very aggervating to have to go through all that. My advice to you is only book excersions through Disney it is a lot less trouble and you are garanteed to have it. The stables was Lucky Stables and it was a very good ride. Hope this helps!!

 

[Cruiser Newbie]

Wow sounds awesome! I did read somewhere about riding the horses down to the water...We will be sailing for our very first time on May 11th. Since Disney doesn't have any info on the excursions as of yet I was wondering if anyone out there had info on riding in Cozumel? I saw your post callahanjulie10 and was wondering if you could get me a little more info on this subject? I'd surely appreciate it

 

[callahanjulie10]

I used shoretrips.com and emailed Jean when they only had a 9 am available on the website. She emailed me back and added 2 more times- 11 and 1. They have American speaking guides- we will ride approx 2 hours total and the other hour will be spent at the ruins. They will pick us up at the dock and off we go!