Gumbalimba Park

I'm thinking I'd like to visit Gumbalimba Park, but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. I'm a first time cruiser (so is my mother, who will be with me), so I'd like to just book with the cruise line. My concern is this: When we get there, do we have to stay with the big group or can we explore the park on our own? Also, the Carnival web sight says we'll get a minimum of 2.5 hours at the park. But it also says that the 2.5 hours scheduled for the trip includes drive time. Which should I trust? Any advice? (Also, if anyone has been to the park, how up close and personal can we get with the monkeys? :) )

I did the Gumbalimba Park tour through Princess in November 2009, where we walked through the whole park as a group. It was raining that day, so when we were in the monkey area, none of the monkeys would come out of the trees. So they only had 1 baby monkey for us to play with. We probably only got about 30 seconds each to play with the monkey.

If monkeys are what you are looking for, I wouldn't really get your hopes up with this tour as you don't get much interaction time. We had a better time with monkeys in Cozumel, where we paid $5 to play with squirrel monkeys for as long as we wanted, as there was a monkey rescue organization in the cruise port.