Overwhelmed by excusrion choices!

[dishsoap]

Hi there,
My family of 4 are going on our FIRST Disney cruise! I'm trying to sort out our excursions (and if we are going to book any at all even) but there are so many! How to I pick? Are they worth the money?

We have 2 girls, aged 5 and 7 and have stops at Tortola, St Thomas and Castaway Cay. They love animals, adventure and playing on the beach. They hate shopping.

I would really appreciate some feedback. What excursions did you love?

Thank you!

 

[professorandmom]

Deciding on excursions can be challenging - balancing the cost, desire to visit new places, and the joy of a quieter ship when you stay onboards...searching the boards can be helpful...
I am on the same itinerary so here are a few threads I have looked at
http://www.disboards.com/threads/st-thomas-st-john-excursions.3136127/
http://www.disboards.com/threads/st...-or-st-john-champagne-catamaran-sail.3380711/
http://www.disboards.com/threads/excursions-in-st-maarten-and-st-thomas.3235160/

You'll find less on Tortola because Disney has just started going there again...lots of threads active in the first pages of the DIS boards but only a few reviews.

Good luck!

 

[stacecakes]

I have two girls, who will be 5 and 8 when we travel the same itinerary on APril 9. This is our plan, take from it what you will, and feel free to ask any other questions you may have- tis will be our third DCL trip and our second on the Fantasy.
Tortola: DH and I had done a rent-a-moped, do it yourself tour when we were here pre-children. It's a neat island with some cool stuff to see in terms of hiking and exploring, but nothing that really grabbed us as super appealing for our girls. Our 5 yo can swim, but wouldn't be a serious snorkeler, so a boat based snorkel trip wouldn't do a lot for her either. We have opted to sign on for the "trip to the baths"- you take a ferry from Tortola over to virgin gorda,then get to explore the baths- a beach area where a collection of HUGE boulders form a sort of cave system you can explore and a nice beach area with swimming and some decent snorkeling around the rocks that tumbled down into the ocean. We did this on a pre-kids cruise as well and really enjoyed it. Our girls are pretty sure footed and are enthusiastic about the clambering on rocks and splashing through the little pools of water on the way to the beach. If you and yours are reasonably agile, they might like it too. (working with your "adventure" and "beach") Worth doing some searches to find out more. The DCL excursion seems a little pricey for what you get- I'm researching an option through Speedy's ferry, an outside vendor, which is about half the cost. Not sure what your comfort level is for that.

St. Thomas: here we plan to visit Coral world and Coki beach. We have done this before, with the girls, and enjoyed it so much we will do it again. There are a few different DCL excursions that offer a vist- you can look to see if any combinations of what they offer appeal to you. For this one we are planning to just take a cab so we have a little more time to spend both at coral world, so we can see all the demos etc., and time to actually enjoy the beach. While neither coral world or the beach are particularly large, some of the excursions seem to only allow a couple hours to do both- we don't need to hurry back to port for shopping or a second excursion so we's prefer to stretch things out here. Coral world also has different animal encounters and snuba and stuff as an add-on experience if you're looking for something like that. Also inexpensive upgrades like food to feed the lorikeets, etc. With regular admission there are touch tanks and demonstrations etc. so if they like animals this might tick that box. there is a cafeteria here if you want to buy lunch. After exploring, it's a quick walk to coki beach next door where you can rent a beach chair, umbrella if you need it. there are roaming vendors offering food and drink from small restaurant shacks Also option to rent scuba gear tough we just brought our own snorkels. decent things to see in the water- people regularly feed the fish here so they're plentiful and an"easy get" for the kids if they want to try it out. When done, it's not hard to find a cab back to the port either right at the beach or by walking back to coral world. I don't remember whether this was one of the places where we had set a return time with our initial driver or whether there was just a couple cabs waiting around (it's a fairly common destination for cruisers and other tourists).

Castaway: we've never bothered actually booking anything here. I like to run the castaway 5k so I sign up for it at guest services, (it's been free though I worry that will change). The rest of the family gets off the ship at their own pace and sets up by the beach not too far from the waterslides. They come to cheer me at the finish and then we just play it by ear. We've rented a couple bikes to ride around and explore, done some snorkeling, the waterslides, and just relaxed and hung out. there is a kids club on CC called scuttles cove so if the kids like group activities you could have them check that out and explore the adult side of the island- this is on my agenda, we haven't yet tried it. But by the end oft he week you may not have a lot of "go, go, go" left. Maybe someone else would have more to say.

So that's my plans/ experience. Take it for what it's worth.

 

[jubjubrsx]

I did the zip lining last time I was in st. thomas enjoyed that, had some great views. kind of something different thing that you cant do in the us here. makes me think I need to encode the videos, i made with the go pro

 

[Ofinn]

All I know is if you book your cruises on your own you'll pay about half what DCL charges.

 

[dishsoap]

Thanks for your replies. It is helping!
I am looking into doing the excursions on our own as yes, it is WAY cheaper!

 

[dishsoap]

Thank you Stacecakes, your info was great! I had originally ruled out the Coral World because it sounded like we weren't given much time to explore and I'd to like avoid being overly "handled". I'd like things to be relaxed and not on a schedule of events, sort of thing. The idea to do it on our own is a good one!

 

[thegales]

Since your first cruise, just be sure you understand the risk of booking excursions on your own. If you are late getting back to the ship, the ship will leave without you. We booked our own at St. Maarten on our first cruise, and made sure we left plenty of time to get back to the ship.

By the way, when are you cruising? We are on this itinerary June 4, 2016.

 

[Sir William]

Since your first cruise, just be sure you understand the risk of booking excursions on your own. If you are late getting back to the ship, the ship will leave without you. We booked our own at St. Maarten on our first cruise, and made sure we left plenty of time to get back to the ship.

Excellent advice. We often do a mix of both DCL and on our own. However, if any excursion looks like it might be cutting it close on getting back to the ship on time we usually take the ship's offered excursion. We've been the last bus back once or twice, but we've never been left standing on the pier as the ship sails away.

 

[MUN]

I did the zip lining last time I was in st. thomas enjoyed that, had some great views. kind of something different thing that you cant do in the us

St. Thomas is part of the US Virgin Islands. It is part of the United States. However, I agree that the views would be stunning in St. Thomas.

MUN

 

[2prettygirl]

We have 2 young girls as well and found that venturing out on our own is much cheaper and you can do it at your own pace, just allow yourself plenty of time to get back on the ship. In St. Thomas, the first time we took a ship excursion to Magens Bay beach and it was wonderful.....but for the price, I highly suggest catching a taxi at port and doing it on your own, half the cost and you can come and go as you please and trust me when I say there will not be a shortage in taxis. Magens Bay is stunning! The second time we visited St. Thomas we just got off the ship and shopped a little, considered the sky ride but for the cost of that ride and the little there was to do and see from above, we decided to venture back to the ship and enjoy it while there was little crowd. Castaway Cay is just amazing as is, no excursions needed! We just enjoy the beach, walked around the island and just took it all in. It was an amazing day to just relax and enjoy the last day of vacation. :-(

 

[hoffman1]

Be sure you research Coral World before you go. We did the DCL excursion that included the boat ride. We thought it was just ok. There just did not seem to be much to see or do. We had plenty of time to explore the whole place with time to spare but not really enough time for the beach (which we expected going in to it). Maybe our expectations were too high. We have been to other larger aquariums around the U.S. (Chicago, Newport, etc) and this place paled in comparison. We thought it was really small and not many varieties of animals/fish.

 

[Stratus22]

We are doing Jost Van Dyke excursion though Disney. It's one of the few excursions you can bring kids under 5 too. We look forward to going there and hope its fun for my kids. I also hope they use a tour company that brings the boat right up to the beach so we don't have to swim to get to the shore. I read some people have had too. We return Jan 23rd so I'll try to jump back on and give a review.

 

[Hundredacre]

In some places you might want to just wander around on your own if it is your first time there.

 

[stacecakes]

Be sure you research Coral World before you go. We did the DCL excursion that included the boat ride. We thought it was just ok. There just did not seem to be much to see or do. We had plenty of time to explore the whole place with time to spare but not really enough time for the beach (which we expected going in to it). Maybe our expectations were too high. We have been to other larger aquariums around the U.S. (Chicago, Newport, etc) and this place paled in comparison. We thought it was really small and not many varieties of animals/fish.

Coral world is not very big, true. But in some ways that was part of the appeal. We did this independently, using cabs and setting our own schedule. There was enough to do that our kids got to have a hands-on experience, especially if we timed it right to hit the naturalist discussions. we fed lorikeets and rays, saw the sea lion demo, explored everything there was to see and still managed to be done by lunchtime, having arrived at about 9. this left us a couple hours to spend at Coki beach next door before catching a cab back to the ship. I don't think you could effectively do both on the DCL excursion timeline, so your experience makes sense. But if you know what you're getting into I think it's a totally worthwhile day!

 

[Stratus22]

We just got back from cruising on the Fantasy. We left for Jost Van Dyke Island at 7:45am. We met at the Walt Disney Theater and walked out onto the pier together as a group and headed over to the ferry which was a very short walk. The ferry was a 40 minute ride which took us to the Island. Here we met a bunch of 12 passenger taxi's. There was nothing to see at the drop off point...seemed pretty plain. Then the taxi's took us over to The beach behind the Soggy Dollar. That ride was about 10 minutes. We all got out of the taxi's and walked over to the reserved part of the beach for guests on Disney. PS: make sure you grab chairs in front of the restaurant at the end of the beach. The people there are pretty verbal and mean about where you sit. If you weren't eating at their restaurant they threw your stuff on the beach. It happened to us. I also didn't appreciate the fact that the locals swear all of the time and in front of the kids. I made sure I kept the kids away from the other establishments on the beach. The beach itself is beautiful. So my 2 cents: it was worth the trip/experience but I won't go back to Tortola.