KatieJayCruise

5 ships is about average fro Cozumel which has 3 cruise ship piers. The island can easily handle that volume. Don't stay on the ship - just figure out what you want to do/see and do some homework. ;)

 

Cozumel is an island, so most of the activities revolve around the water (snorkel, scuba, sailing, etc.) or beaches. Most of the beach clubs are lined up along the west side of the island with only their amenities and business model differentiating them. Travelling with kids? Want water toys? All-inclusive food & drinks? Snorkeling from the shore? Party atmosphere or quiet/relaxing?

 

For just two of you the Cozumel Bar Hop tour is a great way to see the island (both sides) and visit some funky bars. Afterwards you can do some shopping in downtown before heading back to the ship.

 

Good luck with your planning and have a great cruise! :D

Thanks for that JohninDC!

I'm used to the smaller ports that don't have more than a ship or two at a time, so I was pretty nervous to see so many! Glad to know that this is pretty average, so hopefully we find something interesting to do! We enjoy water, but we also live in Florida and experience the beach all the time. Our biggest want is to find some really good mexican food, something Florida is lacking in, and enjoying the island. Maybe a Bar Hop would be a good start, and ending it with some lunch! We're there for 8 hours so we have plenty of time.

Me and the husband are traveling on the Carnival Magic, and it looks like we will be in port with Carnival Dream, Oasis of the Seas, Norwegian Getaway, and Carnival Vista in Cozmel on October 5th. That's a lot of ships! We really wanted to explore the port and just find a good place to eat, but now I feel like it's going to be kind of miserable with that many people in port at a time!

This is also our first time in Cozumel, so staying on the ship seems pretty lame!

Has anyone else experienced this volume? Was it as busy as it seems like it's going to be?

I would say it depends on the excursion. I am holding off on my beach excursion because if the day is cloudy and a big chance of rain I want to be able to not go. If you pre book and the excursion is not canceled, you have to go or lose your money.

This was one of our concerns! It seems to be a toss up on what to do!

It just never fails to amaze me that people actually brag about how they so cleverly break the rules and get away with it. I do wonder how it feels to be so special that the rules don't apply to you.

 

 

Tom

No one is bragging. Someone asked a question, and I told them how my husband managed to do it. How is having a bottle of liquor different than a bottle of wine? Neither myself nor my husband like wine. :rolleyes:

I don’t understand why anyone would wait. I like knowing what we will do and having it paid for before hand.

I don't know. My husband wants to wait until we board the ship. I'm indifferent except that we might miss out on some of the options by waiting. I was trying to convince him that there were better prices if we book now ;);-) Mr. Sancho's reservations (not excursion on Carnival) in Cozumel are already all booked out for our day in port, so I told him stuff is gonna start going soon if we don't do something! Our cruise is in 42 days!

A trick that has grown immensely in popularity in recent years is replacing wine with liquor, using food coloring to disguise it as wine and re-corking/re-sealing the bottle. A few years ago, it was a little-known trick and easy to get away with. They used to glance at your wine bottles and nod, then usher you on through like herded cattle.

 

However, that was then and things are different. Thanks to folks all over social media sites sharing their booze-concealing products and techniques, pretty much all the tricks are now widely known by C&BP. They aren't stupid and they know how to research social media for tips.

 

I was on a cruise out of New Orleans a few weeks ago and it seemed as if they are on a warpath to catch people doing this now. Now, they take your wine bottles and shine flashlights through the liquid, tilt the bottle in all directions and shake it up to check the consistency, look for sediment, etc. They take your sodas out of their boxes and examine every single can. They meticulously search every carry-on piece you have with you.

 

I witnessed it on embarkation day, where it took my party 2 hours to get through security and onto the ship because people were getting so throughly searched. It was 90+ degrees that day and we had small kids with us. You do the math.

 

Security personnel have been trained to know what wine looks like vs liquor during these tests (I saw some of their training posters in a search area). They will confiscate anything even remotely suspicious in a heartbeat now. It means nothing to them to take your things. It would appear that the days of being able to get away with this are over. They're cracking down hard. I just wouldn't even risk it, TBH.

 

Also need to be considerate of other passengers who have to wait excessively long times in line while these raids take place.

 

 

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I didn't find this to be the case on our cruise out of Miami in 2017, or the one in 2016, or the one in 2014. My husband gets twist off red wine, fills it with rum, dyes it red, and buys the heat strink seals online to reseal the bottle. They've never scrutinized our wine bottles. They don't hold flashlights up to them. They look at the bottle to confirm it's a bottle that says wine or champagne, confirm that the seal is intact, and away we go. I guess New Orleans is much stricter than Miami or Port Canaveral.

Me and my husband did the Cayman Crystal Caves tour last year for our Honeymoon Cruise. It was great, I really love caves, and it was a perfect excursion. I think it's extremely overpriced from Carnival however, and the only reason we were even able to do it, was because we had received a carnival gift card for our honeymoon. I believe the tour is fairly cheap if you go directly to them. The drive is about 40 minutes, it's a pretty drive. We got lots of history about Grand Cayman on the drive there and back. I don't know the cost for a taxi or rental to drive there yourselves. FWIW, if you enjoy caves/caverns and have the money, it's worth it. It has been my favorite excursion that I've ever been on. I wish it was a bit cheaper, we're going back to Grand Cayman this October, and I'd love to visit again, but not without a gift card ;-)

Me and my husband visited the Cayman Crystal Caves in October 2017. The caves are surrounded by a "jungle-like" atmosphere, and the mosquitoes were BAD, both in the dark caves and throughout the jungle. They excursion even provided a lemon grass based repellent, which did help. I would imagine any sort of "woodsy" type locations are going to have quite a few mosquitoes, so plan accordingly.

Thank you so much everyone for your thoughts on this!

Some good points I didn't think about--selling out, times selling out, etc.

Not too worried about the excursion desk line, we always book through the HUB App or on the TV (very convenient!)

Now to figure out which excursions to take for our cruise at the end of September! So much to choose from!

We sailed on the Sensation in October 2017 for our Honeymoon. It was a great ship. Our only complaint was that we had plumbing issues for the first two days in our cabin. The shower drain would back up, and water would come out the drain in the bathroom floor (as well as the shower drain) and flood the bathroom each time we would shower, within seconds of turning on the water. By the third day of the cruise, they finally fixed it.

We always end up booking excursions once we get on the cruise. There has only been one time where an excursion we would have been interested in was full. Is there really a price saving difference between purchasing them ahead of time versus on the cruise?

My first two cruises took us to the Bahamas in November and December. The temperatures stay the same, Mid 80's, sunny, warm. The water is the biggest thing that changes temperatures that time of year in the Caribbean. Still a great time to visit, IMO.