Island Roundabout by 4WD

[Pittfan763]

Hello to all. New to the board. Planning our first cruise coming up on May 23rd. This is my first cruise, her 2nd. This is also for our Honeymoon (May 15). 4 days away!

 

In any event, we were talking about trying to save money by booking our excursions independently from Carnival. Has anyone had luck with this? Or, is there a website out there that specializes in this?

 

I have been searching the boards, but it has been somewhat of a daunting task to search among all the posts. I scanned for 3 hours yesterday, and I am still looking at a blank page next to all of the port of calls. :)

 

We are leaving out of San Juan. And then moving on to different Ports, and are looking to do the following excursion:

 

St. Maarten - Island Roundabout by 4WD

 

So, we kind of game planned that we would like to do an excursion at each port. But we would like to save some money by not booking through Carnival. We are also considering the option of booking half of our excursions through Carnival and then the others just get off of the ship, and see what people have to offer to us.

 

Any ideas would be appreciated. Not too sure what I am getting myself in to:)

 

Thanks!

Jason

[pcbeck]

I've taken five cruises and have never booked through the cruise line. We always do our research, see whom the trustworthy people are to book by reading the various boards/forums, then book directly with the person. So far, we've never been disappointed or had an issue. In most cases the excursions will be smaller in scope and more personalized.

[Karysa]

If you are leaving from San Juan I would guess that you have 6 ports or more in 7 days. Believe it or not I find that I used to get tired when cruising because I like to be off of the ship early and make it back just before it leaves for the next port. By the time you get ready for dinner, which takes nearly 2 hours to complete, it is time for evening entertainment and a few drinks. So we would normally head to bed sometime after midnight and often we are back up at 7 or 8 to enjoy the next port and do it all over again. My suggestion to you would to include a couple of low key days. St. Martin is a great beach island and if you add that with a little stop in town for shopping you will have an enjoyable day. Recently some of my most memorable excursions were only a few hours in length. I would recommend taking a ship sponsored excursion if you have a short port day or on an island that you may feel more comfortable and secure knowing that the ship will wait for you if you are delayed.

Congratulations and have a wonderful honeymoon.

[klepton]

I too deduced that you are sailing on the Victory, 6 ports in a row. We just did this cruise a few months ago. We booked through Carnival for one island, booked our own tours in advance on 4 islands, and decided to just wing it in St. Maarten. We had no problem booking privately, the reputable operators are very focused on getting you back to the ship in plenty of time. We figured we'd be exhausted by the time we got to St. Maarten, and we were, so the plan was to take a cab to Orient beach. When we got to port though it was raining all morning so we just walked over to the town and beach from the pier. Didn't spend any time, just walked along the boardwalk on the beach to the end, and walked back through town looking at the shops. Got back to the ship, had lunch, then DW sunned on the ship and I went back out for a run.

 

Karysa isn't joking... this is an exhaustive itinerary. We did the same thing, got off the ship as early as possible, back on shortly before sail-away. We did late dining so we had some time to chill after getting on the boat. Then dinner, the show, a little time at the piano bar, and bed around 2:00 AM. Up at 7:00 the next morning and did it all over again. Absolute blast, but tiring...