bookbabe

Every 15-20 min maybe? Bus schedules are just a suggestion, really, not a set thing. “Soon come” as the locals say…things tend to run on Island Time.

See what ships are in port that day, and try posting on the roll calls.

You might have to piece together two tours, one for the water portion and one for the land portion. I’d contact your preferred Stingray City operator and ask them if they have any suggestions. You could also charter a taxi for the land portion and DIY. Hell is an easy 5 min stop and the turtle farm is open to the public, you don’t need an excursion. Same with the rum cake stores and shopping. You really just need transportation, not a tour for the land attractions. Editing to add that that’s a lot to fit into one short day in port, however. If you want to cram all that in, you might be better off with the cruise excursion where they’ve got the logistics streamlined and will wait for you if you’re running late.

Thanks for spelling out the combos. We’re booked on a B2B in March 2024, Istanbul to Barcelona, followed by Barcelona to Bergen. It’s reassuring to know which days are the changeover ones for the first portion so I don’t worry about advance planning the excursions those days. I’ll wait and see what we get offered once on board. Thanks to everyone for all the info on this thread. Very helpful.

The only actual beach club of that sort still open is Coral Beach. https://coralbeach.ky You can also DIY at Public Beach.

Anyone have recent experience with using platinum free meal vouchers on Pride of America? With not all the specialty restaurants open, where are the vouchers good for? Thanks!

The board is still active regularly. Post or two a day on average. Tons of up-to-date threads with beach info, some excursion stuff. The only actual beach club left is Coral Beach - https://coralbeach.ky - or there are lots of vendors at Public Beach now (where Calico Jacks used to be) including chair rentals and such.

@Dreamer68 The stingrays are what I always recommend to first time visitors. Even if you stay on the tour boat, seeing them is pretty awesome. Those excursions usually include some snorkeling, and the crew are generally good at helping beginners get sorted out if you ask. Even a cruise ship run excursion to see the stingrays would be higher on my list than a beach day. No matter how many times we go, we never regret a few hours out at Stingray City.

The Kimpton is right next to Public Beach.

We tried to book the connecting (next door, anyway) club balcony for my elderly mom when we had a May 2022 Alaskan cruise in a Sun owners suite booked, and the onshore concierge was adamant from minute one that she wouldn’t get any suite perks because she wasn’t in a suite, and that she needed to couch surf in our suite instead of having her own cabin if we wanted her to board with us, etc. Yeah, like that was going to happen. So we switched to a Haven 2 bedroom on the Encore instead, for less than 2/3 of what we had been planning to spend on the Sun cruise. Ah, well… They are generally pretty strict about non-suite guests accessing any suite perks. The times when extra family has been allowed to tag along with the suite-staying members of the travel group are the rare exceptions to the rule, as far as I can tell.

We booked a November 2023 PoA cruise yesterday, and my PCC mentioned (and applied) this when he called to finalize the booking. Deposit ended up being $560 CAD for a suite, so DH is pretty happy, and it means we’ve only got two CN certs left to use by the end of 2024.

This. We’ve got two CT reservations for our February cruise, and depending on the menu we will likely cancel. There’s only a few menus we are really interested in, so if it’s one of not those we won’t go. (Fish allergy, and while I know people say that they will make substitutions, we aren’t really fans of “foam and swirls” dining, so we’d likely enjoy the regular venues more anyway.)

You’d be more likely to find a snorkeling tour that goes elsewhere, a couple of reefs maybe. Starfish Point is a usual stop on the Stingray City tours due to the proximity. Also, Starfish Point isn’t guaranteed to have starfish, they do move around so other than that it’s just a mediocre beach area. However, you aren’t required to get off the boat at Stingray City, and your boys might enjoy seeing all the stingrays even if they don’t go in the water with them. The operators will usually bring or lure some close to the boat so the people who don’t get in the water can get a closer look. I always call the stingrays “water cats” since that’s how they generally behave. Just like cats, they’ll come around and bump up against your legs, sniffing for treats, and once they find out you haven’t got any they will pretty much ignore you. Stingray City is very cool, and if you haven’t been it’s worth seeing at least once.

Weird how people’s experiences can be so different. The problems previous posters outlined mirror our experiences on Air Canada, we’ve had nothing but stellar service and stellar flights on WestJet. A few cancellations and delays over the years, but nothing out of the ordinary that I wouldn’t have had to deal with on any other airline. However, we made the mistake of booking an Orlando to San Juan Spirit flight to get to a February 2023 cruise. It’s been changing about every other week, and I have no confidence that it’s not going to keep changing right up until the flight date. And even with the flex fare we booked, the best we can get if we cancel is a voucher with really lousy conditions, so we’re kind of stuck. First and last Spirit flight. The US low-cost airlines make AC and WJ look like luxury private jets. OP, it sucks that your family had flight issues, but assuming they were bumped, and solely because they were traveling on points, is just that, an assumption. Unless that’s what the WJ agent told them? Thousands of people had to deal with delayed, canceled, missed flights over the last few days. And needing connections makes it harder to reschedule. Adding the points into the mix triples the issue, since as I understand it, not all seats and flights are available to third party booking agencies. Our WJ flight on Thursday was delayed a couple hours due to ice issues, but we eventually got where we needed to be. Part of traveling in Canada in winter during the busiest travel time of the year. Not really anything new or different.

Nope, not a public beach, it’s Public Beach. 😉 When people talk about Public Beach, they are generally referring to the public beach at the far end of Seven Mile Beach from the port, beside the Kimpton Seafire. Other public beaches pretty much all have either a different name entirely, ie Smith Cove Barcadere, or they are referred to with the name of the town or district, ie Cayman Kai Public Beach. And the only beach club left is Coral Beach. None of the others are planning to reopen at all, let alone any time soon, at least as far as articles in the newspapers state. https://coralbeach.ky

For our recent cruise, we had booked an Ocean villa prior to the name change. Then the names changed on the website to Beach and Ocean, and our booking still listed Ocean, as did our ticket once we boarded. I confirmed with the shore excursions desk that it was still a villa on the side closest to the main beach, and we got 102 so it was on the former “ocean” side which is now called Beach. So, the new Beach Villas are the old Ocean villas, and the new Ocean villas are the old Lagoon villas.

Book ahead. WAY ahead. Reservations book up months in advance. But it’s SO worth the wait.

However, as you can see in the Captain’s pictures, that area is deep. You cannot easily stop and take a break like you can at most cruise line private islands, so the vest is essential, and many people find themselves further from shore than they’d planned much more quickly than they’d expected. DH has had to tow overtired cruise ship visitors back to shore a couple of times when snorkeling there.

That may be the case, but it really does look like the restaurant thought they had non-Haven guests with them, because that’s how it’s appeared on our bill in the past when we dined with non-Haven guests.

Was everyone who dined with you staying in your same Haven cabin? Those look like the charges for bringing a non-Haven guest to the Haven restaurant…

I saw an article in one of the papers saying that the owner was hoping to use it as an inter-island ferry. https://www.caymancompass.com/2022/11/24/defunct-water-sports-business-markets-boat-for-inter-island-ferry/

There has been no real change since the other threads were active. Coral and Public are your two options with facilities on SMB. No new beach clubs have been opened.

As long as you are tendering into the main port, you are let off right in the heart of downtown. Lots to see/do/buy/eat within walking distance. (On rough weather days, there’s an alternate port at Spotts just outside of town. Shuttle buses will run from there to the usual port area downtown if a ship has had to use Spotts.)

Further to my comments on your other thread about this, here’s an article with some good pics that show the bar. It’s a cabana with a Moët sign. https://luxexpose.com/moet-chandon-ice-bar-opens-on-great-stirrup-cay-bahamas/

Public Beach, at the far end of SMB from the port. Taxi. Details in many other threads here.