nabby

I believe Scenic and Emerald are owned by the same company. Emerald was introduced as the "budget choice". I would expect that they are run similarly but that Scenic cruises are a bit more upscale.

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I feel I must stand up for those of us who are stampeding geezers. We were three who wanted to be seated at a table with a certain waiter who was very popular. I was the geezer chosen to stampede and save two other spaces at the table. This only started when we had been in other sections and had other wait staff.

 

I love dining on river cruises. You meet such interesting people. I never noticed excessive noise, but I am hard of hearing so maybe we were all shouting and it sounded normal to me.

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Thank you for this excellent review! I have several travelling friends (all women) and we are beginning to plan our first river cruise in 2019. We are all from Michigan so it is very helpful to hear from a fellow Midwesterner. We first looked at Viking but have become interested in Emerald. We range in age from mid 50 to mid 60, so again your comments are exactly what I was hoping to find.

Now, we need to decide on an itinerary! Much discussion going on among us on Rhine vs. Danube. However, your comments are making me think that we may have another opton here. I am not able to get away from work for two weeks, but many of my friends are retired. Now I'm thinking that they could possibly do the full trip, while I could do the shortened Nuremberg leg. Thanks again, you may have helped greatly in our planning!

Thank you so much for this excellent review. I am in the early planning stages for a river cruise with my group of travelling friends (probably in 2019). We have done ocean cruises but none of us have done river cruising. Looking at Cruise Critic sparked my interest in Emerald and your review really has me leaning toward them. Your file with the daily itineraries was perfect! Thanks again.

Update: I just got back from my cruise, and we did St. John on our own last week. Here are my observations.

1) This is very easy to do. You just need to keep track of time.

2) We were on the Caribbean Princess, so we docked at Crown Bay. Even though we were off the ship right away, we were not able to make the 8:00 ferry. If your ship is docked in Havensight, you might be able to make the early ferry since you are closer. We bought our tickets and took the 9:00 ferry.

3) Purchase the round-trip ticket. You can use the return ticket at any time and you don't have to worry about purchasing it when you come back.

4) When you get to Cruz Bay, it is a short walk over to the taxis. They have people there to direct you to the correct taxi. Tell them where you want to go. We went to Cinnamon Bay to avoid crowds, but at that time of the morning Trunk Bay was not crowded. Later in the day when we returned it was much more crowded. At both Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay, there are always taxis available to take you back when you want to leave.

5) I wanted to do a little shopping in Cruz Bay, so we left the beach at about 12:30. That gave us about 3 hours on the beach. We had the taxi drop us off at Mongoose Junction so we could shop there. It is a short (downhill) walk into Cruz Bay, where there are more little shops. We used our return tickets to take the 2:00 ferry back.

6) When you get back to Red Hook there are also people to direct you to the correct taxi. We had people on our taxi who were getting dropped off at different places: Havensight, downtown Charlotte Amalie (that was us, to do a little extra shopping), and Crown Bay. We shopped for about an hour, then hopped a taxi over to Crown Bay (an extra $4, but that was the amount we had saved by going to Cinnamon Bay instead of Trunk Bay). We were back to the ship shortly after 4:00, and it left at 5:00.

We had a great day. It was also flexible; if the weather had been bad, we could have changed our plans with no hassle. It also gave us time to do the things we wanted to do, in the time frame we wanted.

Thank you for your post. I have done the same thing before but I was having a hard time explaining how easy it is to go to St. John on your own. You did a great job of explaining it. How crowded was Trunk Bay? I was planning to go to Cinnamon instead but most of my friends have never been to St. John so they may want to visit Trunk.

I plan to take the 2:00 ferry back since I enjoy shopping in St. John (more artsy and less touristy than St. Thomas). Our ship is in port the same time as the Carnival Victory (7:00 - 5:00)

:confused:Haven't seen this asked --- I am bringing my own mask.snokel and vest -

but would need to rent my "fins" - is this available at Brewer's Bay ?

There are places in Road Town near the ferry dock that rent gear - Dive Tortola at Prospect Reef comes to mind. I would rent from one of those places. Have fun - I will be doing the bareboat thing down there this year instead of a regular cruise.

Just saw this thread - what great info! I have always had problems with swelling when I am around salt water, probably because I am never around it normally. I don't seem to have as much of a problem as some of you - my shoes get a little tight but I don't swell to the point of being concerned. The funniest is when I go snorkeling in salt water for a long period of time - I can count on waking up the next morning looking like I had an extreme collagen implant in my lips! The swelling goes down after awhile but it is very goofy looking. I will try the aspirin for sure this trip.