Visiting St. John

I know of three options for visiting St. John during myupcoming cruise and I'm not happy with any of them.

1. Official shore excursion - For $59 we get a ferry ride over and back two hours on our own in St. John. I'm OK with the cost (lots of OBC), but two hours seems absurd given that we'll be in port all day (7:00 - 17:00). I'd also be OK if there was a shore excursion option with a guide in St. John, but there isn't.
   
   
2. Ferry from Charlotte Amalie - Return ferries are at 11:15 (30 minutes after I would arrive) and 3:45, which would get me back at 4:30. I'm guessing all aboard will be at 4:30. Way too tight if we're docked at Havensight, and worse if we're at Crown Bay.
   
   
3. Ferry from Red Hook - I see there are intentions to resuming half hourly service, but it doesn't look like this has happened yet. I have friends who were on a Med cruise and had a ferry back to the dock cancelled. They were stranded overnight. If the ferries were half hourly I'd be fine, but as is I'm leaning toward Option 1.
   

What would you do?

Thanks.

I’m in the same situation. We are in port from 8-5. Assume all aboard is 4:30. We want to taxi to red hook as soon as we can get off ship. Hopefully get the 9AM ferry across to St. John. Ideally that would get us to trunk bay at least by 10. Hoping to stay 3-3.5 hours and catch the 2pm ferry back and taxi back to ship. If anything happens to the 2pm ferry, we have the 3pm as a backup although it would be pushing it to get back with traffic.

I also think the 2 hour Royal excursion is crazy. If it was 3 hours, I might consider it. The ferry ride from Royal is also considerably longer and I’ve heard it can be rough waters.

We are undecided like you. I like the safety of knowing I won’t get left but I don’t want to spend almost 2 hours traveling to only get 2 hours on beach.

Hopefully others can share their experiences to help out!

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I’m in the same situation. We are in port from 8-5. Assume all aboard is 4:30. We want to taxi to red hook as soon as we can get off ship. Hopefully get the 9AM ferry across to St. John. Ideally that would get us to trunk bay at least by 10. Hoping to stay 3-3.5 hours and catch the 2pm ferry back and taxi back to ship. If anything happens to the 2pm ferry, we have the 3pm as a backup although it would be pushing it to get back with traffic.

 

 

Hopefully others can share their experiences to help out!

 

 

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Amanda - that is a good plan, we have done it exactly that way many times. You might even want to plan to be back in Cruz Bay by 2, have a nice rum drink at one of the places along the beach in the town, then get the 3 p.m. ferry. Plenty of beach time plus a chance to soak up a bit of the vibe of Cruz Bay, which is wonderful!

Amanda - that is a good plan, we have done it exactly that way many times. You might even want to plan to be back in Cruz Bay by 2, have a nice rum drink at one of the places along the beach in the town, then get the 3 p.m. ferry. Plenty of beach time plus a chance to soak up a bit of the vibe of Cruz Bay, which is wonderful!

How long is the ferry ride back plus the taxi to the ship? If we took the 3pm ferry, what’s the best guess on when we would get back to the ship? We are on a Royal Caribbean ship if that matters. Not sure if there are different places where ships dock in St. Thomas. I don’t want to miss the ship!!

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57eric: You can remove number 2 as the town ferries are not running. The Red Hook ferries don't get cancelled; they are pretty reliable. They also run on the hour only.:)

Amanda - ferry from Cruz Bay to Red Hook is approx. 30 - 40 minutes. Buy round trip tickets at the terminal in Red Hook before you go over to save a couple dollars but also to avoid having to wait in line at the terminal in Cruz Bay. You probably will be docking at Havensight rather than Crown Bay (RCI usually goes to Havensight) but if you're on a roll call for your cruise you may want to ask that question. Some web sites like VINow list ship schedules and where they dock in St. Thomas.

The taxi ride may be as short as a half hour back to Havensight but could be as long as an hour depending upon traffic. So assuming you have back-on-board by 5:30 you should be just fine taking the 3 p.m. ferry from Cruz Bay. The taxi drivers are well aware of sail away times and will do their best to get you back in plenty of time so no worries and there are always plenty of taxis (vans, jitneys with open backs) waiting at the ferry terminal in Cruz Bay. It is something of a hassle to get over to St. John considering multiple taxis, the ferry, expense, etc. but it's SO worth it. St. John is spectacular!

Royal Caribbean ships dock at Crown Bay which is farther away from Red Hook and traffic often crawls when going through town.

If on Royal Caribbean ship I would take the 2 ferry.

All aboard is 4:30. Not 5:30. Still ok to take 2pm ferry??

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Yes, the 2 will give you 2 hours to get back to the ship. It should take less than an hour but that's only if traffic flows. You can relax and enjoy the ride back without stressing if delayed.

Ok. Perfect

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BTW, there is no discount for round trip ticket. People buy round trip so they only have to stand in line once.

The ferry ride is about 20 minutes plus a few minutes to board and disembark on both sides.

It's been a couple of years since we did this but the St. John's on your own was a 6 hour excursion. So we used the RC ferry to Cruz bay and then took a taxi to Cinnamon Bay and we had plenty of time on the Island. Is the St. John's on your own now only 4 hours? I have a cruise to St. Thomas coming up and that's what I was planning but if now only 4 hours not worth it to me to go with RC.

Yes. It says 4 hours total with only 2 hours to explore.

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Thanks, I just checked myself (should have done that first before I posted) and sure enough it's only 4 hours. That's a deal breaker for me.

Thanks, I just checked myself (should have done that first before I posted) and sure enough it's only 4 hours. That's a deal breaker for me.

I thought it was a deal breaker for me, too, until I began researching the other options. No way would I gamble on leaving Cruz Bay later than 2:00. So far I haven't seen anything to persuade me that the shore excursion mentioned in my original post isn't my best choice, however unattractive it may be.

Hmmm, we’ve decided on doing St. John this feb, and I’m so torn on how to get there.  I’m risk adverse, so maybe we’ll just take the ship’s “on you own” tour

We were just in St. Thomas last week and finally got the opportunity to take an excursion to St. John.

On the Summit, we docked in Crown Bay and took the ship's excursion which was the ferry over and then a guided open-air taxi tour.  There were two other groups with us - one doing Trunk Bay and the other doing 'St. John's On Your Own'.

We took the Island Girl ferry which picked us up right at the Crown Bay pier.  It was about a 40 minute trip to St. John's and very pleasant, with lots of commentary by the crew on what we were seeing.

One point they repeated multiple times for the benefit of those going to Trunk Bay - there are NO services there.  The hurricanes last year inflicted significant damage and they have not yet been able to rebuild/repair.  They were selling water/soda/beer, chips and hot dogs on the ferry and encouraging people to get refreshments on board as there would be nothing at the beach available.

During our taxi tour we drove to an overlook of Trunk Bay and while indeed a beautiful beach we could see the devasatation.  Buildings that were once completely hidden by trees were exposed and significantly damaged.

We returned to Cruz Bay and drove around back to the ferry pier and again could see a lot of the damage the hurricane caused.  The main school is heavily damaged; they have trailers on their field to use as temporary buildings for the students.  Many homes and business still destroyed.  Our guide said over 1000 of the residents (about 5500 before the hurricane) have left the island and don't know if they'll ever return.

We did return to the St. John dock with about 45 minutes before the ferry was to return to Crown Bay so we walked a bit up the street to a small shopping area that was operational.  Beautiful spot and we did buy a few trinkets.

Bottom line, I was glad we took a guided tour.  Not sure I would have been happy if I'd been on my own trying to figure out how to get around and what was open/operational.

We are having the same dilemma. Will be there on a Carnival ship in June. However, we are only in port from 7-3. We love St. John and really wanted to visit again. However, with the short port time, I was seriously considering doing the ship excursion for piece of mind (we did it on our own years ago when we first visited). Says no minimum age on the Carnival excursion site, but when I went to book it, it said I could not add my 3 year old:( I will have to follow up to see if means she can't go or if there's no charge. This is one of the 2 islands that we planned to do a big excursion, so I am really hoping that I can figure out a way for her to come with us.

We’re now thinking of just wandering around st Thomas, or maybe doing emerald beach...