Even though I’m sure I’ll blog about them as we do them, I figured it might be worthwhile to blog about them before we do it since SOMEBODY might find something interesting in what I say as they plan their trip.
To be clear, Suzanne-the-travel-overlord has made all of these arrangements. It’s been a little bit more of a challenge since we are going with other people, but, that actually turned out easier than we thought because
a) the one family did not like the idea of booking shore excursions from outside vendors. They wanted the security of the guarantee that the ship won’t leave without them, and, we think, by our research, they will pay double for their shore excursions and do less than we will. And…
b) the other family has basically said “Suzanne, we are more than happy to do whatever you have chosen and are overjoyed that you are making all the plans. We wouldn’t be making the plans until we were on board!”
So, four ports. Two we’ve been to before. Presented in no particular order; clicking on any of the pictures takes you to the website of the operator.
Roatan – We were supposed to be here last time, but, the Dream couldn’t park it’s fat butt at the dock during high winds. So……we will be doing what we wanted to do last time. Zip lining and some capuchin monkeys with Victor Bodden tours.
I’m sure there will be some beach time here as well with snorkeling. At least I hope so.
Belize – The last time was a big-time excursion, hop on a plane over to San Pedro for two stops for snorkeling at some of the best places to see turtles and sharks and stingrays in the Caribbean. This time is much less ambitious, just going to do some cave tubing and Suzanne picked the one company that provided tubes with head rests (others make you link up and you are new people’s feet…what fun is that?)
A search through this blog for the word ‘Belize’ will certainly find you the post from the last time we went…..
Cozumel: The second of the repeat stops. We will have a similar kind of day; get off the ship and go to a beach club before doing some shopping it and calling it a day. But it has become more difficult than it sounds.
a) We arrive at 8 am ship time, which is EDT. We think, and are trying to confirm, that that will be 2 hours ahead of local Cozumel time. If that is true, we are docking at 6 am(!), and we won’t be doing our usual first-off-the-boat deal. That will affect what we do here.
Last time we went to Mr. Sancho’s. It was fun, it was not overly expensive, but one of the big takeaways we remember from the trip was that the inflatables, while a lot of fun, were a pain in the butt for the boys to access…very hard to climb up and Dad spent an inordinate amount of time helping them up.
So, we are looking at two different beach clubs this time.
Playa Mia
Playa Mia has what we think are better inflatables BUT they also require you to pay more; Suzanne, who won’t be doing any of this, will still have to pay full freight to get into the park even though she won’t do anything. If we were spending more time there, this might not be so much of an issue. If, because of the time change, we will spend less time than we think, we may not go this route. Instead, we may end up going to….
Paradise Beach
The inflatables look to have some of the same issues as Mr. Sancho’s, but, you only have to pay for them if you are going to do them. I think this beach club has a nicer pool too….
Of course both places have snorkeling (it’s not as good here in Cozumel as it is at our other stops) and I’m sure there will be parasailing or something similar like that as well.
Grand Cayman: Went round and round with the tour operator here about what time it would be when we arrive and if we would be able to make the tour we want to go on because of that. We dock at 9; the tour we want leaves at 9:50….I think we will make it their in plenty o’ time, especially since we always are one of the first off the ship (and we’ve puchased a pass this go round to make sure we are one of the first off the ship….and first on when we board too!)
(ugh.)
This is what we are trying to avoid….the first tour of the day that Capt. Marvin’s runs gets you out here to Stingray City before the other boats. We are big fans of doing what we can to getting places first before the other tours (especially the hordes who book through the ship!) show up. The other bonus of this tour is you get three stops, not two, for not much more in cost. Assuming we can make it there on time.
