Excursions

[Shelly]

My family and I are going on the Oasis of the Seas in July 2016.  This will a first cruise for most of us.  Our ports are Nassau, St. Thomas & St Kitts.   We keep being told you don't need to book excursions that we can venture out on our own.  Is this true and if so how easy is it?  We don't want stress of what to do, we just want to relax and have things planned.  My thoughts are an excursion would be the way to go.  Any opinions will be appreciated.  We know for sure we want a beach day on one of these islands.  Which one would you recommend for the beaches?  Thanks!!

[DocLC]

Just venturing out doesn't work in my opinion unless all you want to do is shop or hit up a local bar or you have done a lot of additional research. While this is a possibility in Nassau, you still need to know what you want to do.

 

If beaches are all that you want, then grabbing a taxi to one of them is easy. I personally wouldn't book a ship excursion for that. In St. Thomas, Magen's Bay is a good choice. You could also try resortsforaday.com for your ports, too.

 

I've heard going over to Nevis in St. Kitts is fabulous; if that interests you, then an excursion is the way to go.

[bcarney]

I've heard going over to Nevis in St. Kitts is fabulous; if that interests you, then an excursion is the way to go.

 

I'll be doing that in November!  Plan thus far is to take a catamaran over and explore a bit.

[Todd]

These islands are very easy port stops, while if has been many years since I was in this part of the World things have not change much. If you google these ports you will be able to have really good information for each port. Remember the goals of RCI when they put together excursions and your goals are really not the same. They do tours that can handle large numbers of people and have a good profit return to RCI. If you do things on your own you can tailor to exactly what you want, make changes based upon how things are doing and really do much more.

 

I would not be afraid of doing the excursions without any help or payment from the ship. Also another thing I have done many times is to meet up with someone else on the cruise that has local knowledge and join forces. I did this last summer for a Taipei stop, we meet another couple and the wife was a translator by trade. She knew the history got us a great deal and we did double the number of  sites as the official RCI Tour. Private taxi van vs a big bus with 50 people. 

 

The only thing I would do in a new port is leave one extra hour in your return time. If the ship says return at 4:00 I plan for 3:00 and use the extra time for last minute shopping near the ship. Have a great trip.

[Shelly]

Thank you all for your replies.  We have decided to go with the excursion route.  We just don't want the stress.  Stress free vacation for us :)

I was trying to book one of the excursions and it said the port time and ship time may be different so keep that in mind when booking.  How do I found this out? 

[FloatMe]

Thank you all for your replies.  We have decided to go with the excursion route.  We just don't want the stress.  Stress free vacation for us :)

I was trying to book one of the excursions and it said the port time and ship time may be different so keep that in mind when booking.  How do I found this out?

 

I think your choice is wise, particularly for relatively new cruisers. Most of the time I will gladly pay an extra %25 for the comfort of knowing the ship won't leave me behind. Also, almost all of the Caribbean is on EST and ship time should be the same as port time. There is usually a line in the cruise compass if it will different than that.