Last minute booking on the Fantasy, looking for excursion reviews.

[tbholc81]

We were able to book a last minute trip on the Fantasy Western Caribbean cruise on July 20. It will be 2 adult and 2 kids (ages 3 and 7), and we realize many shore excursions are probably filled up by now but we had a couple specific ones we were thinking about trying and thought we'd see what people here thought of them.

Also if there is a port not really worth visiting which one would it be? Right now we aren't to thrilled with any of the choices in Cozumel, and most things look like they are on the main land which is a 45 minute ferry ride away.

For specific excursions what do people think about:
- The Saltwater Forest or Rum Point Beach in Grand Cayman?
- The Good Hope Great House in Jamaica?

Thanks for a the feedback!

 

[fredandkell]

https://www.carnival.com/shore-excursions/
Carnival allows reviews for excursions and often has the same ones DCL does.

 

[KashasMom]

Cozumel is one of our favorite ports. We love Chankanaab Beach Cozumel. We've been there twice. It's easy to book on your own. Grab a cab and go - plenty of cabs to get you back to the ship as well. First time we did the Royal Dolphin Swim and loved it. Second time we did a swim with a sea lion. Chankanaab is a great place to spend the day. After your encounter (and included with the entrance fee) is a sea lion show, a pool, great beach with chairs/huts/hammocks, and snorkeling. A casual lunch or a buffet lunch is available. You don't have to do any of the dolphin/sea lion encounters. You can just go to the beach and still use all the amenities mentioned above and see the sea lion show. It's really a great place to spend a full day. We've been twice and still haven't explored it all. https://www.dolphindiscovery.com/cozumel/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=mybusiness

We've also gone to Paradise Beach twice. LOVE their pool. Great beach and food. Not very crowded. Again we just took a taxi there and back.

One of favorite excursions ever was the Sea turtle release. It was an amazing day. At the time we booked through Royal Carib but it looks like you can now book directly. I highly recommend it. (May only be offered certain times of year.)

In Falmouth we did the Heritage Walking tour and then had amazing jerk chicken in town. 　 We've also gone tubing down the Rio Bueno twice which was a blast but I don't think DCL offers Rio Bueno.

Western itinerary is our favorite - best excursions - but it's just as easy to walk around the port or grab a taxi to the beach. Lots of shopping in Cozumel and inside the gated port area in Falmouth. In Falmouth they have a trolley tour that lets you see a bit of the island. It's at the end of (inside) the gated area. You don't have to book - you can just get a ticket that day. But if you've never been I'd consider Dunn's River Falls.

 

[tbholc81]

Cozumel is one of our favorite ports. We love Chankanaab Beach Cozumel. We've been there twice. It's easy to book on your own. Grab a cab and go - plenty of cabs to get you back to the ship as well. First time we did the Royal Dolphin Swim and loved it. Second time we did a swim with a sea lion. Chankanaab is a great place to spend the day. After your encounter (and included with the entrance fee) is a sea lion show, a pool, great beach with chairs/huts/hammocks, and snorkeling. A casual lunch or a buffet lunch is available. You don't have to do any of the dolphin/sea lion encounters. You can just go to the beach and still use all the amenities mentioned above and see the sea lion show. It's really a great place to spend a full day. We've been twice and still haven't explored it all. https://www.dolphindiscovery.com/cozumel/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=mybusiness

We've also gone to Paradise Beach twice. LOVE their pool. Great beach and food. Not very crowded. Again we just took a taxi there and back.

One of favorite excursions ever was the Sea turtle release. It was an amazing day. At the time we booked through Royal Carib but it looks like you can now book directly. I highly recommend it. (May only be offered certain times of year.)

In Falmouth we did the Heritage Walking tour and then had amazing jerk chicken in town. 　 We've also gone tubing down the Rio Bueno twice which was a blast but I don't think DCL offers Rio Bueno.

Western itinerary is our favorite - best excursions - but it's just as easy to walk around the port or grab a taxi to the beach. Lots of shopping in Cozumel and inside the gated port area in Falmouth. In Falmouth they have a trolley tour that lets you see a bit of the island. It's at the end of (inside) the gated area. You don't have to book - you can just get a ticket that day. But if you've never been I'd consider Dunn's River Falls.

Thanks that's a ton of great information!

 

[hnthomps]

We stayed on the ship at Falmouth and didn't feel like we were missing anything. But on a previous cruise we skipped Cozumel because our excursion was cancelled, and that was also awesome. I do not want anything to do with supporting former plantations, and a lot of the Jamaica excursions felt ... fraught/complicated to me, which made for an easy choice for us. But obviously your mileage will vary on this one!

 

[pixiedustedme]

I personally would skip Jamaica as it's currently the most crime-ridden port, by far.

 

[Jess_S]

I disagree with those who say that you should stay on the ship in Jamaica. We found it to be a beautiful island full of friendly people and really enjoyed our day there. We also found that security in the port area was excellent. They do a good job of making sure people who are not on ship tours are able to connect with their tour provider.

When I was researching for our trip, I found that Good Hope Estate had mixed reviews among DISers, so we opted to book a private tour using Courtney Taylor. Another option would be to use resort for a day to go to a nearby beach resort.

Another thing to note is that our table mates on our cruise did not preplan any of their days in port and they were able to book what they wanted through the port excursion desk the night before each port. Other than cabanas on Castaway Cay, I do not think that late booking is going to limit your options in port.

 

[tbholc81]

When I was researching for our trip, I found that Good Hope Estate had mixed reviews among DISers, so we opted to book a private tour using Courtney Taylor. Another option would be to use resort for a day to go to a nearby beach resort.

Thanks, would we have to call the resort or book that day ahead of time, or can we just show up there? Are there any resort that you have experienced or would suggest?

 

[Jess_S]

I use resortforaday.com to prebook resort day passes for cruising. There were a couple of interesting options in Jamaica, but we opted to book a tour instead, so I cannot comment on particular resorts. Hopefully someone who has done a resort day pass in Jamaica can chime in.

 

[BHCruise]

I'm actually on that same cruise. We looked into resorts on Jamaica quite a bit but ultimately decided that we were better off doing our beach days on Cozumel, Cayman and Castaway so we went with Dunn's River Falls & Bobsled for Jamaica. The resorts on Jamaica seemed overpriced for the amount of time that you actually get to spend there.

That said I had it narrowed down to 3 options for resort days on Jamaica with kids. Hilton Rose Hall, Royalton White Sands, and Jewel Runaway Bay. You can book all three with transportation included that leaves from inside the protected port area.

Hilton Rose Hall is 30 minutes away and you can book it through resortforaday.com. Royalton White Sands was the closest to Falmouth, I think its a 10 minute trip and you can book that through jaital.com. Then there is the Disney excursion that goes to Jewel Runaway Bay, which looks awesome, but is also a solid hour each way and leaves not much time at the actual resort.

I also looked at the rum point excursion in Cayman but decided not to risk the long Catamaran ride with our 7 year old. We opted to go to royal palms on 7 mile beach.

I've been locking our stuff down in the last week or two, but haven't seen anything that was sold out. I think you still have time, since our ports are not crowded while we are there.

Goodluck!

 

[dad of 3 addicted to DCL]

We did the Good Hope Estate tour and do not recommend it at all. The bus ride was long (with the escort lady singing to us very bad Bob Marley), the wait at the bottom of the mountain was a good 45+ minutes - at the gift shop (surprise!), the wait at the top of the mountain was another 30+ minutes, the house was not well preserved, the food was very late (after 2PM) and then the long drive back with more bad Bob Marley.

My wife has a much stronger opinion than I but words cannot convey how much we do not recommend this excursion

 

[tbholc81]

I'm actually on that same cruise. We looked into resorts on Jamaica quite a bit but ultimately decided that we were better off doing our beach days on Cozumel, Cayman and Castaway so we went with Dunn's River Falls & Bobsled for Jamaica. The resorts on Jamaica seemed overpriced for the amount of time that you actually get to spend there.

That said I had it narrowed down to 3 options for resort days on Jamaica with kids. Hilton Rose Hall, Royalton White Sands, and Jewel Runaway Bay. You can book all three with transportation included that leaves from inside the protected port area.

Hilton Rose Hall is 30 minutes away and you can book it through resortforaday.com. Royalton White Sands was the closest to Falmouth, I think its a 10 minute trip and you can book that through jaital.com. Then there is the Disney excursion that goes to Jewel Runaway Bay, which looks awesome, but is also a solid hour each way and leaves not much time at the actual resort.

I also looked at the rum point excursion in Cayman but decided not to risk the long Catamaran ride with our 7 year old. We opted to go to royal palms on 7 mile beach.

I've been locking our stuff down in the last week or two, but haven't seen anything that was sold out. I think you still have time, since our ports are not crowded while we are there.

Goodluck!

Thanks a ton! I am not sold on the Rum Point excursion with only 2.5 hours at the beach. I think we'll look into 7 Mile Beach as well.

How can we tell if there are other ships at port with us or if the port is busy that day?

 

[tbholc81]

We did the Good Hope Estate tour and do not recommend it at all. The bus ride was long (with the escort lady singing to us very bad Bob Marley), the wait at the bottom of the mountain was a good 45+ minutes - at the gift shop (surprise!), the wait at the top of the mountain was another 30+ minutes, the house was not well preserved, the food was very late (after 2PM) and then the long drive back with more bad Bob Marley.

My wife has a much stronger opinion than I but words cannot convey how much we do not recommend this excursion

Good to know thanks! We'll take that off the list.

 

[BHCruise]

Thanks a ton! I am not sold on the Rum Point excursion with only 2.5 hours at the beach. I think we'll look into 7 Mile Beach as well.

How can we tell if there are other ships at port with us or if the port is busy that day?

I used Cruise TT to track the port load, and last time I checked I thought we were the only ships in dock. Now it looks like there will be another ship in port with us each day outside of Castaway.

It has the Fantasy going to Falmouth England so we don't show up in the port listings on the 24th, but you can still see the other ships that will be there.

 

[Docmum]

Good to know thanks! We'll take that off the list.

We did Jewel Runaway Beach with our kids (7 and 11) and liked it a lot! The bus ride with our guide was nice and interesting, we were able to see quite a bit. The resort was beautiful, quite a lot to do for the kids and us, food was delicious.... we would go again in a heartbeat. Hope this helps. Enjoy your cruise!

 

[LeiaOfAlderaan]

We did Rum Point last December and really enjoyed it. The catamaran trip was a highlight, very beautiful and relaxing. I enjoyed lounging on the beach and thought the included buffet was pretty good. I didn’t get in the water but it didn’t look like the best beach to swim in. It’s possible it was better in other parts of the beach but we didn’t stray much from our loungers.

 

[brentm77]

We were able to book a last minute trip on the Fantasy Western Caribbean cruise on July 20. It will be 2 adult and 2 kids (ages 3 and 7), and we realize many shore excursions are probably filled up by now but we had a couple specific ones we were thinking about trying and thought we'd see what people here thought of them.

Also if there is a port not really worth visiting which one would it be? Right now we aren't to thrilled with any of the choices in Cozumel, and most things look like they are on the main land which is a 45 minute ferry ride away.

For specific excursions what do people think about:
- The Saltwater Forest or Rum Point Beach in Grand Cayman?
- The Good Hope Great House in Jamaica?

Thanks for a the feedback!

We did Rum Point in April. We really liked it and would do it again.

Pros: Lovely little area, with space reserved for the excursion group. Lunch included. Pretty good beach (much better than some of the reviews indicated - water was clean, sand was clean). There was a good amount of shade under the palm trees on the beach. There was a bar, gift shop, and additional food available for purchase. It was a safe and friendly environment. The ride over on the boat was nice with great scenery. Crew on the boat was friendly and professional. There was ok snorkeling - we didn't have/rent gear, but other seem to enjoy it. We saw a baby stingray swimming around.

Cons: Much of your day is spent traveling: You wait on the ship to leave with the group, once on land you wait again for the bus, then the bus drives you to the boat, there is a short wait for the boat to leave, and then the real excursion begins. This took an hour or more to be on the moving boat. It didn't leave much beach time (2-3 hours if I remember right). My daughter was stung by some grass in the water. It wasn't serious, but another kid had it too, meaning it is might be common.

Overall, I would recommend it.

 

[susan4875]

Please skip Rum Point. We went last month and it was awful. The beach was dirty and very small. The water was murky and the food was horrendous. They had a buffet set up for Disney guests. Nothing was warm, so it felt unsafe to eat. The “kid-friendly” option was macaroni and cheese with cut up hot dog chunks. The whole excursion was a total bust.

We did the Great House in Jamaica and enjoyed it. The kids got kind of bored though.

 

[kerry1379]

We did the Salt Water Forest excursion in Grand Cayman back in early 2017. We chose it, because at the time, it was the only ship excursion that could accommodate my son's collapsible wheelchair (no idea if that is still the case or not). We enjoyed the bus tour around the island and everyone was very friendly. But I must admit that it also felt just like a school field trip. It was very educational and not so much fun. But it was a nice way to get off the ship and see the island.

 

[Tasmen]

When we sailed to Falmouth, we went to the Rose Hall Hilton with a day pass. It was lovely. We were able to get a cabana on the beach once we got there. The service was also amazing. We booked through resort for a day. They provided transportation and we never felt unsafe. We are returning to Falmouth in a year and will book at the Hilton again.