Cave Tubing - .bz or .com

Hi. We have chosen to do cave tubing in belize. We've narrowed it down to cavetubing . bz and cave-tubing . com. Do you have any recomendations and why? Thanks.

We did cavetubing.bz and had a bad experience. That said, they get lots of positive reviews, so it can't be all bad. I got the impression from their website, though, that unless you book as a large group that wants to stay together, you will be in a group with at most a few other people in one of their vans.

Didn't turn out that way. They filled up a bus with 50-some people, and in fact, had it overfull, and asked if there was a party of three on board. We should have kept our mouths shut, but we were a party of three, and ended up being asked to get off the bus, but were assured we'd be right behind them in one of the vans.

I thought that might be a good thing, as we wouldn't then be tied to the big group, but it was worse. We ended up in a van with people from a different ship, doing a different excursion, and we were still considered part of the big bus group, but not traveling directly with them. It was chaos, and my wife ended up not even doing the tubing, because she was afraid to leave our belongings behind, not knowing for sure what vehicle we'd be on for the trip back.

But, like I said, they get lots of good reviews, so you may be perfectly happy with them. Definitely don't count on being in a small group, though. You might be, if it's not a busy cruise ship day, but more likely to be on a big bus.

My wife and I also did cave tubing.bz on 4/14/16. Our experience was mostly a good one with some vey questionable moments.

From the very beginning it seemed to be a big waiting game. When we arrived in port we waited for a certain amount of people to gather in the shops area. We waited for about 40 minutes before we were moved outside to where the vans were. We waited here an additional 30 minutes before a bus arrived.

We then proceeded on our drive to the caves which was about an hour like they had said. Once we got to the park we had a few people decide not to participate in the cave tubing but wanted to float in the river instead which left us down a guide. It was described to us that each guide can only be responsible for a certain amount of people. We ended up having to wait for another guide to show up before we were allowed to leave for our hike.

The hike in all actuality wasn't bad but was definitely longer than the 20 minutes they claim it to be. My biggest issue with the hike is that it is not designed for the water shoes they recommend and make you wear. At one point we stopped where the tubes were located. Having read the website I assumed we were at the cave site. Nope. We were told to grab a tube and continue hiking. Their claim that they cary the tubes for you to the cave site for this particular trip simply wasn't true.

From there we finally get to the cave site and the guides set up the tubes and we go on our way through the caves and the "refreshing" waters.

Once we left the cave site we headed to their office location for lunch which I thought was quite good. Used their free wifi to call home for a few minutes and the proceeded back on the bus. At that time most of us were boarding and we sat for a while waiting on the remainder 6 or so people to join us. At this time it was 3:20 ship time. (Last tender for our ship was 4:30). We made it back to port at 4:27. Yes we were "on time" but this was way to close for comfort.

Come to find out this bus is a recent addition to their fleet of transport vehicles. It seems to me they haven't quite figured out how to coral everyone together and transport them efficiently yet. Given time I'm sure this will get better but for or trip it certainly was a major concern.

We used bz a couple of years ago and I won't use them again. One of the only bad reviews I've ever written on Trip Advisor...review is below.

Was really excited based on reviews. Departed ship and met team outside terminal 2. They were easy to find. They found us on the list but since we were the first couple to arrive we waited for about half an hour to depart. We drove extremely slow and another van eventually caught up to us, both vehicles stopped and they transferred one additional person to our van. After about an hour we arrived at the office to pay. No problems yet. There were eight of us in the van and only my wife and I were NOT doing the zip line; just the tubing. Our driver proceeded to the zip line area to drop those folks off. He told them they could leave their bags in the van because he'd be right back after he dropped off. We headed a few minutes up the road to the tubing area. The driver told us to leave our bags in the van, that no one would mess with our bags, and that we'd meet up with the folks we drove out with later. So we got off and walked to the river. We met up with a completely different group of 12, with a completely different guide. The tubing itself was great, although it was completely rushed due to half of the group having to get back for an earlier ship departure. After we got done tubing no one knew what to go with us. The group we tubed with all got in the van and we were left standing in the parking lot. No idea where the original driver was. We asked the workers and were able to get a key to the van out stuff was in. Upon opening the van we looked in the back for our bags. Much to our surprise there were several other bags occupying the space where our bags were left. After frantically searching the rest of the van we found our bags stuffed in the floor of the front seat. After a 45 minute wait our original driver showed up with the folks we drove with, along with several others. Long story a little shorter, we were made to collect our bags and cram into another van with a completely new group of people. Although several of the employees agreed that this was poor customer service and that they would notify the management, we never received so much as a sorry from anyone. If we find ourselves here again, I would definitely hire another company. Of note, the Butts Up company has much larger, much nicer coach style busses. We thought it was odd, but our guide bashed on that company every chance he could. Very unprofessional.

Definitely do the river tubing if you go to Belize. But based on my personal experience, I can't recommend this company.

How many stars did you give them on trip advisor and did they ever respond back to you?

I gave them two stars and they never replied.

Kind of surprised, based on the above, that they end up as highly rated as they do. Without the logistical problems we had, it wouldn't have been a bad excursion, but it wouldn't have been 5-star, either.

But, I guess part of it is just different people's expectations. Some people just book independent of the ship to save a few bucks. My main goal is to have a more personal tour, rather than being herded in a large group. I thought, based on claims on their website, that cavetubing.bz would provide that, but not so.

I agree 100%. We booked this for both reasons. To save money and to have a more personal tour. While we did save money, we had 62 people in our group.

I honestly believe had we been split up into the vans (that were parked right in front of our meeting location) that the experience and time issues would have been much less. Our 5 hour tour ended up being a 7 hour tour.

Also had I read these reviews I wouldn't have booked with them at all.

We were just there april 20th and we used cave tubing dot com AKA butts up. They were AWESOME. We were the only ship in port that day so buses didnt come out. they used the vans. our guide said when there are several ships in port they break out the buses other wise they use the vans. vans are faster and once they fill a van off you go. they dont waist time. If you book cave tubing dot com ask for Speedy and Jimmy for your guides. They were a riot!!! they had us laughing and having a good time the entire time from getting on the van to being dropped back off at the port. I even helped them load hard hats and life vests into the van and Speedy said I earned a beer. We stopped at their office by the park and he went inside and came out with a beer for me. he was very knowledged in the rain forest trees and plants and taught us a lot during the hike to the river.

I absolutely have to post a reply to this thread.

After reading all these posts I was skeptical about going to cavetubing.bz

I was in email contact with the owner Vitalino. I even sent him this thread.

He said that the reason some of the people carried the tubes was they went higher than they normally go in the caves. He also gave information on the vans and everything. He could have easily ignored my inquires and blew me off, but he didn't. So I booked with them.

Let me tell you. On May 4th we zip lined and went cave tubing with them. It was such an amazing time. The staff was great, the vans are great, the people are great. Even Vitalino came and met us himself to make sure everything was fine and we had a great time. Lunch and punch was great.

They are genuinely concerned about the people. Not just about making money. I recommend going and taking the zip line, the cave tubing..and from our other passengers said, they enjoyed the ATV.

We just got back from a cruise and booked with cavetubing.bz. The excursion was pretty good but I wouldn't say it was 5 star.

I emailed the company a few months before we left and got a good response with answers to my questions and we booked the cave tubing and zipline excursion. My wife and I had done cave tubing 12 years ago (I don't remember who it was with) and had a great time with a small group. We were expecting something similar.

When we got there on one of the first tenders off the ship it was already a madhouse. There were tons of people milling around inside the terminal and it took us a while to figure out where to go and who to check in with. Once we checked in we had to wait in a line for 15 minutes or so until they started the march outside and down the road to another waiting area. There they gave us a free water for each of us and had us wait there in the sun (it was already really hot) until the buses showed up. They separated us into those just doing cave tubing and those also doing something else. We got on the second bus with people doing "extra" and started off. The bus had about 60 people on it. Luckily the air conditioning was working great and we were able to cool off from waiting in the sun. Our tour guide's name was Sitka and she did a good job making the 1 hour ride fairly entertaining. The bus had about half people from a Carnival ship and half from our NCL ship.

We got to the office and paid our money and got back on the bus. We drove to the zipline area and spent quite a while getting everyone (all 60 people) geared up and then hiked up to the zipline start. The zipline itself was a blast but since there were 60 people in line it took a while to get everyone through. The workers there were really good about getting all the safety stuff taken care of but they were trying to get people through the lines as quickly as possible so they often sent the next person before the previous person was completely off the line, so the worker had to unclip and send the line out before the next person arrived. It made me a little nervous but the workers there were really fast and I don't think there was much danger. Several of the lines went high over jungle and river and there was a cool rope bridge between two platforms. Overall it probably only took 30 minutes to do all the ziplines but we spent another 30-60 minutes getting gear on and getting it off.

Then we got back on the bus and drove to the cave tubing area. They split us up into groups of around 8. Our family had 7 people so they had one guide for us and then had us follow a group of 9 people. I guess they just have to "average" 8 people? Our guide for the cave tubing was Barry and he was great. Very good with our kids and very knowledgeable about the jungle and things we saw on the walk. We didn't have to carry any tubes but just grabbed them right before we went in the river. They have guys that carry up hundreds of tubes and blow them up when they get there. The tubes were good quality and Barry put them in the water and tied them together. No need to grab each other's feet or anything.

Barry alternately swam and walked us down the river. Lots of cool things to see. He pulled us over to a waterfall in one of the caves and let us each stick our hands/heads in there. He let the kids get out and float by the tubes for the last bit and they really appreciated that since it was hot once we got out of the caves. He did a great job and I'm sure it is hard work dragging 8 people around through the river. He carried the tube back for my youngest daughter and the rest of us carried our own tubes back to the starting place.

We got back on the bus and they told us that we were running late and weren't sure we would be able to stop for lunch. I think we had some time but the people on the bus from the Carnival ship had to be back earlier. They made the decision to just give us a "sack lunch" and eat it on the bus on the way back. So they took 15 minutes or so to bring out a bunch of styrofoam containers of food and water bottles. The food was good (rice, chicken, coleslaw) but it wasn't as relaxing to eat on the bus and we were looking forward to some soda instead of water but that wasn't a big deal. We got back with enough time to do some quick shipping and hopefully everyone on the Carnival ship made it back on time.

Overall the activities were tons of fun and the guides were great. I think the only thing that made it less than 5 stars in my opinion was the size of the groups that they had going together and the fact that it didn't seem super organized at the beginning. It could be just that we had more ships than usual in port. I'd probably go with them again but I just wish the groups were smaller.