Orient Bay excursion on St. Maarten - done it?

[coleland]

Has anyone taken this DCL excursion? I'm wondering how far it is from the ship, and if it's worth it to pay that much money to be shuttled there or should we just try and take a taxi and lounge on the beach ourselves? I'm a little leery of these high priced excursions to beaches that I'm reading about, what is the benefit of them vs. going on our own?

 

[magic cruiser]

We are going to Orient Beach on our own. There are plenty of taxis at the dock and plenty waiting at Orient Beach to take you back. We will be asking the driver to drop us off at Coco Beach...lots of food ,beverages, water sports ( jet skis,parasailing,water tramboline ). It's not that far, maybe 30 min. I'm sure you'll save a bunch !!

 

[mmouse37]

Do it on your own...it is about a 20 min taxi ride and the chairs/umbrellas are not that expensive....much, much cheaper than the DCL excursion.

We did the DCL excursion the first time and then have done Orient Beach on our about 4 times.

We told our taxi driver to drop us off at Bikini Beach Club on Orient Beach.

Here are some pics...

http://community.webshots.com/photo/74573094/74575574GsuaLr

http://community.webshots.com/photo/74573094/74575552SjursN

http://community.webshots.com/photo/74573094/74741855jcFWVm

http://community.webshots.com/photo/118553635/118564319xWLaBC

This beach club is only a few steps away from the beach club that DCL takes you to.

Be careful...you might run into these guys...LOL....!!!!

http://community.webshots.com/photo/76180824/76181073dhJIzy

http://community.webshots.com/photo/76180824/76181062QVbKrd

They came to the beach in regular bathing suits but apparently were dared by their spouses to go in thongs....a few minutes after they were settled on the beach they dropped their regular suits and their families went wild with laughter!!! Then they posed for pictures!! It was very funny!!!

MJ

 

[SueEllen]

We opted to rent a car for $45 and drive around the island ourselves. The island is quite small and you can see all of it in only a short time. By lunchtime we had seen the entire island, with stops at several beaches. In fact we stopped at almost every beach listed on the map and stil were done in plenty of time to shop for a while.

 

[jrabbit]

We did it on our own. It's not hard. And you save a lot of $$$$ over DCL's price. What you don't get is the lunch that comes with the DCL excursion (and what a lunch it must be for that price )

 

[princessdaisy]

Where did you rent your car from? was it hard to get to the car rental place? Do you think its safe to drive with a toddler? sorry for all the questions! thanks for your help

 

[SueEllen]

The car rental booths are at the end of the pier and there are 4 different ones. All of them were $50 but I managed to get the one next to Budget to come down to $45 (I think it was Discount rentals or something--I can't remember.)

I would think you would be okay with a toddler. They don't have car seat laws, and if someone sat in the back with him/her buckled in you should be fine. The island was VERY small and easily navigated. They drive on the right side of the road so it's not like St. Thomas where you could easily get confused.

Sue Ellen

 

[ClarabelleCow]

pictures of Orient Bay in front of Bikini Beach, taken in April, 2004

hope this comes out!

 

[jrabbit]

ClarabelleCow - they came out and that is EXACTLY what Orient Beach looks like - a small slice of paradise!

 

[TheWog]

the only positive it seems is, if the excursion is late coming back, they hold the ship for you.

 

[hydster]

We did Orient Beach on our own on the May 1 sailing and except for getting a taxi back easily to the port it was simple. We are a family of 5. We walked to the taxi stand at the end of the pier (very well designated) and told the lady where we wanted to go. She told us which stand to go to to wait. They have the fares posted on the wall (harder to get ripped off that way) and while we were sitting there a few more people came and so we "shared" the taxi with them (it was a huge 12 passenger van) and for our family of 5 it was $30.00 each way. Orient is BEAUTIFUL! They wanted $20.00 for 2 beach chairs with an umbrella on the "Front" row and $16.00 for 2 beach chairs and an umbrella on the "back" row so we just opted to sit on towels in the sand. We had a blast and it was beautiful. When we got out of the taxi the driver asked when we all wanted to go back but we didn't realize that he meant that there would be NO taxi there waiting for us until that time. We finally found a guy who was about 30 min early for his "pickup time" and he agreed to take a bunch of us (again people we didn't know grabbed a hold with us to go back) and it was another $30.00 back to the ship. Some friends we met online just walked off the ship and went to the beach at the end of the pier where they also rented chairs and they saved the $60.00 in taxi fare but we thought Orient was absolutely wonderful and were glad we went! They had a few little restaurants, parasailing, a water tramp and a few other things you could rent at Orient if you wanted to. Beware of the hair braiders though! If you have a dd with anything but a buzz they will come after you! We had a terrible experience with that but other than that it was a blast! And there wasn't much nudity (except for a few short, fat, naked men) and our kids never seemed to notice it either.

HTH
Heidi