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Coco Cay Water Park


karl_nj

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In April, I will be sailing on Anthem of the Seas.  We arrive at Coco cay at 9:30am, so I figured the earliest I can get off the ship will be 10am.  From what I've read, "rope dropping" the Coco Cay water park is a great strategy.  Unfortunatley, according to Cruise TT, that day Navigator will also be in Coco Cay.  They leave at the same time (5pm), but they arrive earlier, at 7am.

Even if I'm the first person off the ship, I figure everyone that buys Water Park admission on Navigator will already be on line for all the water slides.  Should I just skip paying $79/person for the water park, since the lines for the water slides may already be crazy at that point?

Do you think the rest of Coco Cay is also going to be crazy with 8015 people there?  Is it going to be a pain to find a chair near the pool?

Just trying to set my expectations.  Not sure I want to pay $1k for a cabana.

 

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I was at Cococay on Symphony a couple of weeks back, the Water Park got really busy after about an hour and for us the wait times were too long (90 minutes for some slides), we went away and came back later but again the queues were too long. I don't feel we got value for money and would not do it again.

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@karl_nj  We just did Coco Cay in July, but on Adventure, and the only ship docked.  Here is what they told us regarding 2 ships in port the same day.  They have limited # of space occupancy/availability for all of their offerings...i.e Cabanas, para sailing and yes, Thrill Island.  When you book it on your planner it basically goes through RCL HQ, and once they hit that number, it is considered sold out.  They know that number,  and it does not matter that Navigator will dock earlier, what matters is the occupancy level.  If Thrill can only hold 3K people than that is all of the tickets they will sell, regardless if 8K people are at Coco Cay.

For me,  if I was going to do Thrill, I would really splurge and get the cabana.  Here are my reasons why

  1.  The cost of admission is included in the price of the cabana.  How many are you in your party?  Let's say 5, that is 400 for admission,  thus the cabana really isn't 1K, but 600, still a yikes, just not as bad of a yikes compared to 1K
  2.  Cabana attendant that will bring your beverages and food.  Although with the Perfect Day they have an amazing Grill aka the islands version of the WJ, I cannot fathom what the lines there will be like when 8K hit the island.    The attendant will bring you the lunch menu to you and than deliver it.  You can do off the menu, such as the chicken parm sandwich. You can order every single item on the menu, no questions asked.  Not joking, my BIL ordered a Portobello sandwich, grilled chicken, greek salad plus mozzarella sticks and funnel cake just for himself.  We had the Chill cabana, and at 10 or so they brought us a fruit platter.  10:30 she brought the menu, and asked what time we would like our lunch delivered.  @ 3:00 they brought to us fruit kebabs.  
  3.  Cabana's are great, granted expensive, but to me if it came down to it, I would skip a different excursion and get the cabana. Unfortunately, unlike Chill and Oasis, Thrill does not offer bungalows.  Bungalows are just as amazing, except they can only hold 6 people vs 8 for the cabana.  It is not only due to the higher level of service that makes this amazing, but also the amount of room and shade you get.  Yes, there are a ton of umbrellas for loungers, but if you are like my SIL, very fair (burns, never tans), she needed an area where she would be 100% shaded.  We loved how we could just unload our tote bags and made it a home.  IE the coffee table was immediately filled with sunscreens, sunglasses, kindles/books/magazines.  The phones, and the wallets went right into the safe.  Brought a blue tooth speaker with us and hooked it up.  Again, we had an amazing attendant, while we were in the water she would come by to see if our towels were wet and if so she would go to the towel stand and swap them out.  I have been told that the towel station is only to swap out towels, not to get new ones if you are not in a cabana or bungalow.

FYI, the way it works now for cabanas and bungalows in case you go that route is RCL HQ assigns them.  It is done by 1st come.  It use to be that you could select your cabana/bungalow once on the ship.  Now since there are days that 2 ships are in port they assign it.  It is not tied to when you booked the cruise, but when you purchased the cabana.  If you purchase a cabana and the price goes down, so you cancel and rebook at the new price, your cabana number will also move because now the booking is later than the original.

Finally, more things to think about

  1.  Although they are saying you will dock at 9:30, they will probably be docked by 8:30 and you will get off the ship at 9:30.  We had an arrival time of 9.  We were docked by 7:30.  For an hr we just watched staff get off the ship.  Your cocktail waiter in Schooners the night prior will be walking around taking drinks orders on the island the next day.    We were let loose at 8:45.  I would suggest that 30 mins prior to dock time go and get your pool towels, water bottles,  etc from the pool deck and bars.  They will have them by the exit areas, but it just slows you down due to the length of the line, especially on a large ship like Anthem
  2.  We were suppose to depart at 5, but they changed it to 6 pm the night prior.  RCL has already stated that they will be extending hrs,  up to 8 pm.  It could be that Navigator will still leave at 5, but maybe Anthem will leave at 7.  This way Navigator gets the 1st few hrs without Anthem, and then by having Anthem leave at 7, they get that time without Navigator passengers.   
  3. OBTW, You state both are to leave at 5, although the pier is large, they just can't have 2 ships leave at the same time.  It is like any other port, they need time to get 1 ship out to open waters before they let the next one go.  Hence, why I would think that Anthem being the last to dock would probably have a 6 pm all aboard call.  If that turns out to be the case, you will see by 3:30 Many of the Navigators working their way back to the ship, giving you about 2 hrs of Anthem only if they change it to a 6 pm all aboard.
  4.  The last phase of Perfect Day including the over water cabanas is expected to be completed in Dec.  That means even with more people, they are going to have more areas for the passengers
  5.  What is your itinerary?  Are you going to Bahamas?  If so, why not do Atlantis?  Than at Coco Cay do the Oasis pool, rent some snorkel gear and enjoy the day.

 

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7 hours ago, andy said:

I was at Cococay on Symphony a couple of weeks back, the Water Park got really busy after about an hour and for us the wait times were too long (90 minutes for some slides), we went away and came back later but again the queues were too long. I don't feel we got value for money and would not do it again.

Thanks for the info -- yeah, that is what I was worried about.  I figured that if I could get an early start... what the disney folks would call a "rope drop", then we would be able to hit a bunch of slides at first, then do the wave pool, and eventually abandon the water park area completely.  But if it's already a mob scene when I get there, then i'm not sure that would work.

 

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6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:

@karl_nj  We just did Coco Cay in July, but on Adventure, and the only ship docked.  Here is what they told us regarding 2 ships in port the same day.  They have limited # of space occupancy/availability for all of their offerings...i.e Cabanas, para sailing and yes, Thrill Island.  When you book it on your planner it basically goes through RCL HQ, and once they hit that number, it is considered sold out.  They know that number,  and it does not matter that Navigator will dock earlier, what matters is the occupancy level.  If Thrill can only hold 3K people than that is all of the tickets they will sell, regardless if 8K people are at Coco Cay.

Yes, but from what I've read, even with the limited number of passes, as the day goes on the lines for the slides get worse.  So however many passes they sell, it still might be "too many".  That's my concern, at least.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:

For me,  if I was going to do Thrill, I would really splurge and get the cabana.  Here are my reasons why

  1.  The cost of admission is included in the price of the cabana.  How many are you in your party?  Let's say 5, that is 400 for admission,  thus the cabana really isn't 1K, but 600, still a yikes, just not as bad of a yikes compared to 1K

For this sailing, only 4 of us.  And they just updated the price for the water park again, right now its down to $75.  So $300 for 4, so the net price of the cabana would be $700.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:
  1.  Cabana attendant that will bring your beverages and food.  Although with the Perfect Day they have an amazing Grill aka the islands version of the WJ, I cannot fathom what the lines there will be like when 8K hit the island.    The attendant will bring you the lunch menu to you and than deliver it.  You can do off the menu, such as the chicken parm sandwich. You can order every single item on the menu, no questions asked.  Not joking, my BIL ordered a Portobello sandwich, grilled chicken, greek salad plus mozzarella sticks and funnel cake just for himself.  We had the Chill cabana, and at 10 or so they brought us a fruit platter.  10:30 she brought the menu, and asked what time we would like our lunch delivered.  @ 3:00 they brought to us fruit kebabs.  
  2.  Cabana's are great, granted expensive, but to me if it came down to it, I would skip a different excursion and get the cabana. Unfortunately, unlike Chill and Oasis, Thrill does not offer bungalows.  Bungalows are just as amazing, except they can only hold 6 people vs 8 for the cabana.  It is not only due to the higher level of service that makes this amazing, but also the amount of room and shade you get.  Yes, there are a ton of umbrellas for loungers, but if you are like my SIL, very fair (burns, never tans), she needed an area where she would be 100% shaded.  We loved how we could just unload our tote bags and made it a home.  IE the coffee table was immediately filled with sunscreens, sunglasses, kindles/books/magazines.  The phones, and the wallets went right into the safe.  Brought a blue tooth speaker with us and hooked it up.  Again, we had an amazing attendant, while we were in the water she would come by to see if our towels were wet and if so she would go to the towel stand and swap them out.  I have been told that the towel station is only to swap out towels, not to get new ones if you are not in a cabana or bungalow.

Yeah, i've only done bungalows so far.  We did one at Coco Cay (pre perfect day) and we just did one at Labadee.  Quite nice, and a more reasonable price  I think that is part of my hesitation around going with a cabana at perfect day.  Sounds great though, even better than the service at DCL's Castaway Cay Cabanas.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:

FYI, the way it works now for cabanas and bungalows in case you go that route is RCL HQ assigns them.  It is done by 1st come.  It use to be that you could select your cabana/bungalow once on the ship.  Now since there are days that 2 ships are in port they assign it.  It is not tied to when you booked the cruise, but when you purchased the cabana.  If you purchase a cabana and the price goes down, so you cancel and rebook at the new price, your cabana number will also move because now the booking is later than the original.

Interesting.  I guess that makes sense, where you might have 2 ships that day.  At Labadee for the bungalows, they just let me pick whatever I wanted.  We were the first ones there, so they were all available.  I picked the one at the end.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:

Finally, more things to think about

  1.  Although they are saying you will dock at 9:30, they will probably be docked by 8:30 and you will get off the ship at 9:30.  We had an arrival time of 9.  We were docked by 7:30.  For an hr we just watched staff get off the ship.  Your cocktail waiter in Schooners the night prior will be walking around taking drinks orders on the island the next day.    We were let loose at 8:45.  I would suggest that 30 mins prior to dock time go and get your pool towels, water bottles,  etc from the pool deck and bars.  They will have them by the exit areas, but it just slows you down due to the length of the line, especially on a large ship like Anthem

Yeah, I figured I'd get my towels the night before and have our bag packed and be sunscreen and ready go as soon as the captain gives the go ahead. 

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:
  1.  We were suppose to depart at 5, but they changed it to 6 pm the night prior.  RCL has already stated that they will be extending hrs,  up to 8 pm.  It could be that Navigator will still leave at 5, but maybe Anthem will leave at 7.  This way Navigator gets the 1st few hrs without Anthem, and then by having Anthem leave at 7, they get that time without Navigator passengers.   
  2. OBTW, You state both are to leave at 5, although the pier is large, they just can't have 2 ships leave at the same time.  It is like any other port, they need time to get 1 ship out to open waters before they let the next one go.  Hence, why I would think that Anthem being the last to dock would probably have a 6 pm all aboard call.  If that turns out to be the case, you will see by 3:30 Many of the Navigators working their way back to the ship, giving you about 2 hrs of Anthem only if they change it to a 6 pm all aboard.

So this was a really good point you brought up. I was getting the arrival/departure times from that cruisett website.  I figured I should go to the source and look at the Royal Carribean website, and see what the times looked like there.  So I did, and I am feeling *way* better about the situation.  Matt recently posted about how Navigator (and some other ship) are doing Coco Cay "double dips" where they stop at the island twice.  Guess what -- now, according to the Royal Carribean website, that sailing Navigator is not arriving at Coco Cay on Wed April 8, but on Tues the 7th and Thu the 9th.  cruisett must be out of date.  So now i'm not sure if any other ship will be at Coco Cay that day.  It might just be Anthem.  Not sure the best way to know for sure though, other then looking at every possible sailing in April.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:
  1.  The last phase of Perfect Day including the over water cabanas is expected to be completed in Dec.  That means even with more people, they are going to have more areas for the passengers

Good point, that should spread out people a bit more too.

6 hours ago, Pima1988 said:
  1.  What is your itinerary?  Are you going to Bahamas?  If so, why not do Atlantis?  Than at Coco Cay do the Oasis pool, rent some snorkel gear and enjoy the day.

 

Yup, it's the old standard NY/NJ 7 night to Cape Canaveral, Nassau, Private Island that all the cruise lines have been doing forever.  I'm sure there will be some NCL ship that will be doing the same itinerary, the same week.

I do want to check out Atlantis one of these days, but I figure that Atlantis might also be a zoo since it's the week before Easter.  So if there is truly only one ship at Coco Cay, that might turn out to be my best bet.

Thanks for your detailed response, it's been very helpful.  Gives me some more things to ponder.

  

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Keep watching for a sale on the Thrill Park Cabanas, we got one for $399 and there are 5 of us so it was worth it.  With two ships in port the costs for cabanas will be up.  We like the cabanas for the soft place to rest and the extra attention from the attendants. 

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