want2gomore

55 minutes ago, Aplmac said:

LOL -- How do I un-think or un-see that now?

Haha.  I was just wondering what was covering what😄

Guess Annie had an off day with us...our day was awful.

We were just at Victor Bodden's Monkey Business 2 weeks ago and several ships were in port and to me it just seemed like unorganized chaos. If your main reason for going are the sloths...they were all sleeping and they were only allowing you to stand next to them to get a photo. If you are there before noon it may be better as they were on siesta. When you are in with the monkeys they tell you to let them come to you and not to touch. One did jump down on you for picture taking opportunities but the other Monkey ran around the cage quite upset that people were in its enclosure. In my opinion Bananarama was overly crowded, it was my fault when choosing my excursion and not taking into account the number of ships in port for the day.

I chose this company based on TA reviews as well as Cruise Critic and was quite excited to go. That all changed rather quickly. My husband and I have been on 19 cruises and use independent companies almost exclusively. It seems ours was an unusual experience and there are always good and bad stories...but we are So disappointed that we chose this company. We had already had a wonderful day on the island a few years prior with another independent, but we had family joining us on this cruise and decided to change it up and use Bodden. I originally had hand drafted a two page review ranting review😝 but will shorten it and say we were fortunate to make the ship and if we hadn't pushed our guide to get with it we probably would have. We left about 11 and rolled into port at approximately 5:15. Ship boarding time was 5:30. I shouldn't have to hound the guide to get things moving, get people rounded up...etc, etc. We spent the beginning of the tour for 2 hours on the bus with only a stop at a gas station, a brief stop at a lookout and to shop vendors, a half hour at the monkeys. The sloths were sleeping and a monkey fighting with a dog - this was actually a little comic relief😄 Headed to the beach and it was so crowded and no "promised" beach chairs were available. We were hungry but there wasn't time to order and eat. The vendors were constantly hounding. We pushed our guide to leave at 4 from Bananarama instead of 4:30. We went to the meet zone and our bus wasn't even there to pick us up until 4:15. At the beginning of the day we would have 3 hours at the beach and we would be back to the port at 4:00. I don't really see how this could ever happen. When we were all waiting to leave... Anne our guide was on the phone calling the driver to come get us...SMH. A massive traffic jamb, road grading, multiple ships in port, inconsiderate guide... resulted in a very stressful day! Just keep these things in mind when booking with Bodden. We wish we would have cut our losses and taken a cab back to port from Monkey business because the tour to this point felt wrong and unorganized. It did look like the private tours had a much better time. We even tried to get a ride back with one of Bodden's other vans but Anne said that our bus was waiting to pick us up...that was an outright lie. Sorry for the rant, but this is a heads up. Never in all these years felt we

Would actually be missing the ship - if it feels wrong catch a cab!