mollygreen

Hi mollygreen. Yes, there is a way to do both--snorkel and do a short helicopter ride all in one excursion. The way to do it is to book a snorkel excursion that takes you to one of the large floating pontoons anchored out on the Great Barrier Reef. These pontoons serves as a platform to offer snorkeling, scuba diving, submersible rides, underwater observatory viewing, and helicopter rides. The scuba and helicopter rides cost extra and are not included in the price of the excursion. The helicopter rides are short enough that there is plenty of time leftover to do snorkeling. The helicopter rides are sold on board the boat that takes you from the cruise ship to the pontoon.

 

Celebrity offers excursions that involve a pontoon (and hence you can buy a helicopter ride) at Airlie Beach (IE05 Great Barrier Reef Snorkeling). We took that excursion and saw the helicopters taking off from the floating heli-pads located a small distance away from the pontoon (see photo). That excursion is run by Cruisewhitsundays and I imagine they will be handling this shore excursion again in October.

 

At Cairns, Celebrity offers a snorkel tour that uses a pontoon--CN01 Great Barrier Reef (see page 25 in this linked document). We did not take this tour as we took CN30 (Exploring the Great Barrier Reef) which did not involve a pontoon. Our tour (CN30) was run by Reef Magic Cruises. I am fairly certain that Reef Magic Cruises also ran CN01 using their large Marine World pontoon. Here is a description of Marine World and if you look under "Optional Activities and Services", you will see helicopter rides being offered.

 

My helicopter ride was done during our Port Douglas day. Celebrity did not offer a snorkeling tour at this port so we booked independently with Quicksilver. However your sailing does not visit Port Douglas.

 

If this is the answer you were looking for, it might be a good idea to verify things by calling the shore excursion company directly. Except for the shore excursion desk aboard Solstice, I would not expect Celebrity to know anything about the helicopter options as part of the snorkeling excursion since it is not even mentioned in the excursion description.

 

Here is a photo of the two floating helipads that we saw during our Celebrity snorkeling excursion at Airlie Beach. The photo was taken from the Heart Pontoon run by Cruisewhitsundays. The pontoon is located at Hardy Reef.

Awesome and thanks so much for your detailed reply. I had thought I picked up on the helicopter part of Airlie Beach excursion - but couldn't find anything on celebrity. But clear now. Again - thanks so much for your detailed review of your cruise earlier this year. You saved me so much research and gave me a great head start on the planning!

Great reviews and not only super helpful but got me inspired to get in gear for my excursions and also very excited for our B2B cruise of Australia and New Zealand this Oct/Nov. I do have one question - after reviewing the different material and on line info - do you know if there is any excursion where you can do the GBR snorkeling AND a helicopter ride as well? The helicopter ride looks amazing - but you miss out on all the wonderful snorkeling. Only having two opportunities to see the GBR - I hate to give one of them up. Thanks