glittaknitta

I stayed at Emerald Beach Resort in December for five days. It's a beautiful beach, very clean. Loved it! Convenient bar and restaurant, nice spot to swim but not great snorkeling. Very easy and quick to make it there and back via taxi. Chairs were nice, either $5 or $7, can't remember, but there weren't a ton of them - something to keep in mind if there is more than one ship in port and getting a chair is important to you.

 

glittaknitta - There are 2 Honeymoon Beaches accessible from St. Thomas and many visitors confuse the two. Honeymoon Beach, Water Island is not the same place as Honeymoon Beach, St. John. You have given an accurate description of Honeymoon Beach, St. John and the ferry to St. John is much, much larger than the ferry to Water Island.

Right. I'm familiar with both beaches. Sorry, I should have included the post I was replying to in my answer. I was replying to this:

"Wow, I am so thankful for the response. So definitely we will not be going to Honeymoon Beach, Water Island. I'm actually considering taking the cruiseship tour to get us over to ST John instead. Maybe go to Trunk or Cinnamon beach or even Honeymoon Beach over there. Thank you for saving us from a disappointing day in St Thomas. Cheers"

I was in St. Thomas for a week in December for a photography workshop and we visited a LOT of the beaches on both St. Thomas and St. John. Honeymoon beach in St. John was by far my favorite, as far as being uncrowded and very picturesque. Caneel Bay resort is a very short walk from the beach and the food (and drinks!) were excellent and refreshing after a long day in the sun there.

That being said, the ferry to and from St. Thomas does get very crowded - make sure you allow plenty of time to get back to the ferry so you can be towards the front of the line and get a spot.

Wow, these are so helpful. I feel like I've read just about everything imaginable while planning our Epic cruise over the last year, but seeing the dailies has really given me extra insight. The BAGS program sounds perfect for us.

And your photos of St. Maarten are BEAUTIFUL! You're either a professional photographer or you take your hobby very seriously. :) Thank you so much for sharing!

Update - the seller cancelled the listing for this cruise certificate. It seems they were genuinely mistaken about what it could be used for. I'm SO thankful for the cruisecritic forums. Being completely new to cruising, if I hadn't seen mention of these certificates on here, I would have never suspected the description to have been wrong and likely would have won, paid for the certificate, and only THEN figured out the problem when I tried to use it, causing a much more complex problem.

Thank you to all who responded!

Thank you all very much for your information. I'm working on retracting the bid now since the description is obviously completely inaccurate. I appreciate the information!

I'm sorry, feeling like a bit of a moron here...

I'm about to go on my first cruise ever (!!) on January 25th (on the Epic) for eight nights. I booked a Haven 2 Bedroom Family Villa, paid it in full last fall and now I've come across someone selling one of these $250 Cruise Rewards Certificates that must be used by the end of February (on ebay).

Their claim is that I can buy it for $150 and use the $250 credit onboard for "Shore Excursions, Drinks or anything you might do on-board the ship". But after a bit more research here on the cruisecritic boards, it appears as though I can only use it for actually booking the cruise (that ship has already sailed - pun intended)? I now wonder if I'm getting the shaft on this deal?

I'll call Norwegian tomorrow to clarify, but am wondering if someone here can clear this up for me? I've searched and read the actual rules pertaining to these certificates but being a noob to the cruise world, I'm not sure that I'm reading the terms correctly. If the seller has outright lied in their listing, I can get my bid retracted.

Thanks for any help.

Jodie

Wow, it's wonderful to see such in-depth information! Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to post all of this here. I'm sailing out on the Epic in three weeks and seeing all of this is just fantastic!

Perfect, that's exactly what I was wondering. Thank you so much for clarifying that for me!

I'm cruising with three girlfriends soon. We're going to be in a Haven 2-bedroom suite on the Epic. I purchased a $100 spa gift card for each of us as a gift so that we could enjoy a spa treatment together. I'm now wondering if we need to buy a day spa pass in addition just to get the spa treatment and if I should purchase additional $50 gift cards to cover that?

Are you able to get a spa treatment without buying a spa pass and using the sauna/hot tubs, etc?

Thanks for any help clarifying this for me.

Perfect, thank you so much!

Thanks for that link to the trolley map and info! This is exactly what I was looking for when I logged on here. We definitely want to stock up on bottled water.

Does anyone know about buying wine near the port? Is that something in Florida that you can get at a regular grocery store or do you need to find a liquor store? Here in Montana you can buy wine anywhere. I'd like to pick up some cheap bubbly for morning mimosas, as the cheapest sparkling white (not white zin) I see on the ncl wine list is $46+ after you include gratuity.

I was in St. Thomas the first week of January and I was concerned about this before I left. The night before I traveled, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Verizon trying to get an answer (spent most of the time on hold and had to talk to four different people). I still wasn't sure what was going to happen when I got down there.

Upon arrival in St. Thomas, I sent and received texts, no problem. My phone received phone calls just like as if I were at home, no additional fees. But I could NOT call out the entire five days I was there. I'd get a message saying that service was not available. I had to text people to ask them to call me. :/

I stayed at Emerald Beach resort earlier this month for five days. It was $6 per person for a cab back and forth from the downtown area near the docks. Lovely beach and a great beach bar. Enjoy!

I have been trying to get my husband to cruise for years. Possibly the picture of the bacon and sausage might push him over the edge. :)