Island Marketing Excursions

Has anybody had experience booking an excursion through Island Marketing in St Maarten? We used them to book an excursion on our last cruise in Cozumel (dune buggy tour) and it was great to be in a smaller group. We are looking at the Rhino Rider tour in particular, but I noticed that transportation is not included in the price. By the time you add transportation in there is only a $10 savings per person vs booking directly through Carnival, but we would still like to do the Island Marketing tour if it is a more intimate experience.

Thanks

Subscribed. I was just looking at this same excursion tonight as well for our day in St Maarten in a week. :eek: It definitely looks like a lot of fun although I'm not seeing anything that mentions the transportation, whether provided or not. Also where do you go to catch these things at? Simpson Bay? :confused:

Sorry I should have followed up after on cruise on this, hope it gets to you in time before you go. It was a great tour and a lot of fun. The snorkeling wasn't the best I have ever done but it wasn't bad. We elected not to use the transportation they offered which was $14 a person round trip. We thought we may go to Maho after so we decided to just use a taxi so we wouldn't be locked in to going right back to the ship. We only had 45 minutes from the time we docked until we had to be at Pineapple Pete's (on Simpson Bay) for our tour. I emailed the operator and they said that was plenty of time and they would wait for us if needed. Turns out they had to. We were off the ship as soon as we could and told the taxi operator where we needed to go, we were put in a van with about 15 others, most of which were going to Maho. When we popped over the hill by Simpson Bay I realized the driver took a turn up the opposite side of the bay we needed to be on. I questioned him and he said he was going to Maho first. I told him we had to be at Pineapple Pete's in 20 minutes, he said that traffic was bad he was going the quickest way. We went all the way around the airport, got to Maho and dropped everyone off except one other couple. I was telling the driver we were five minutes late at this point already and the other couple said to please take us on first, he didn't. We went to there stop first which was a good five minutes each way off the main road, he said he was in a hurry to get back to the port and couldn't backtrack. By the time we made out entire trip around the bay we were 25 minutes late and the tour was almost done with the safety briefing. The operators were great, got us caught up and we were literally on the water 5 minutes after getting there. For the way back they told us to just catch the bus with "Phillipsburg" in the window which we did (elected not to go to Maho after our short stop there already). The bus ride back only cost $2 a person, but we had to walk about a 1/4 mile from the last stop to the pier.

Long story short if you do a taxi clarify that you need to be dropped off 1st, or just use their transportation. Overall a fun tour that I would reccommend.

Thanks for following up. It sounds like it was a pain in the arse getting there. After reading several reviews on this place, it seems like these people need a course in customer service with many comments saying they were rude or just not attentive. I have also read comments saying that these things are worse than riding jet skis (as far as throwing you around and up and down) and that the tour guides are going full blast and hard to keep up. We will have a 7 year old with us, so that won't work. We own jet skis, so she's use to them, but still only likes to go a certain speed (which is not over 30). I'm thinking maybe we'll wait on this and stick to our original plans of just hanging out at the beach. Maybe next time. :cool: