Hi KroozNut, Regarding Playa dorado beach break, I am pasting in my comments from the ports of call boards below. My group was very unhappy with this tour, but we also met others later in the trip who were very unhappy as well. The major disappointment was the waste of our time in a new port, more than the waste of money. I wish I had taken pictures. I think regular timed excursions to the beach would be better since they did clean seaweed and trash up about 11am, but our excursion arrived at 9am. You may have less rough water when you go and lifeguards would let you in, but I heard it is usually rough water in general 🙁. That experience and a couple of not great entertainment (in my opinion) were VERY minor disappointments, but overall great cruise, ship, food, staff and itinerary!
“Just got off explorer. I would strongly suggest not doing. Couldn’t go in water per lifeguards day we were there. Incredibly rough. We asked staff if it was always rough and they said yes. Beach had trash mixed in with lots of seaweed. This was an early excursion and did start cleaning up seaweed 3 hours after we were there. It is NOT the Caribbean beach you would expect. So happy to share this with you. Wish I had asked before we went.”