Dominica

Has anyone been to the Island of Dominica recently? Our Jan Escape cruise still only has 2 excursions for the island and I was wondering if it might be dropped from the itinerary. I know they were hit very hard by Maria last year. Any news on the shape of the island? I am trying to make plans

Dominica is open for business as far as I know - we are visiting it in December and have been able to book tours through Bumpiing Tours (Levi Baron) and Antours River Rafting.

Has anyone been to the Island of Dominica recently? Our Jan Escape cruise still only has 2 excursions for the island and I was wondering if it might be dropped from the itinerary. I know they were hit very hard by Maria last year. Any news on the shape of the island? I am trying to make plans

For your sake I hope it isn't dropped as it is a great island. It is one of our favorites. As for only 2 excursions, don't worry, they may add more. It isn't like the cruise is next week. There are also a lot of private tours you may want to consider.

We are on the Dawn sailing out of Puerto Rico departing 3/24/2019 and originally Dominica was one of the stops. NCL took it off and replaced it with St. Thomas USVI. I was pretty disappointed that they took it off but I assume it was because they were concerned it would be up and fully running by then since it was hit so hard last year.

If they dropped that island consider yourself lucky. What a dump.

Has Dominica started to receive ships again? That would be great.

My cruising friend's family of 4 were booked in a Jade sailing next year and after Dominica was taken out they canceled the cruise. They really wanted to visit Dominica.

For your sake I hope it isn't dropped as it is a great island. It is one of our favorites. As for only 2 excursions, don't worry, they may add more. It isn't like the cruise is next week. There are also a lot of private tours you may want to consider.

To each his own, but I have been twice before and it is my least favorite island. I did do the Carib Indian tour, which was fantastic and beautiful, but it's an island I would gladly skip. I was hoping they would change it to a different stop. Having been there twice already, I have no desire to go back. If it is on the itinerary I will stay on the ship :)

If they dropped that island consider yourself lucky. What a dump.

I have been there twice before and sadly I agree with you. It is my least favorite island. Although the last time I was there I did the Carib Indian tour and it was awesome. It is a very lush beautiful island. I feel like I have seen all I want to see there. The people at the pier were very rude and pushy when I was there, and it made me very uncomfortable. If it is a stop on our cruise I will enjoy my time on the Escape :)

We are on the Dawn sailing out of Puerto Rico departing 3/24/2019 and originally Dominica was one of the stops. NCL took it off and replaced it with St. Thomas USVI. I was pretty disappointed that they took it off but I assume it was because they were concerned it would be up and fully running by then since it was hit so hard last year.

We are on that sailing and are also diasppiinted it was dropped. We were looking forward to seeing a new island.

To each his own, but I have been twice before and it is my least favorite island. I did do the Carib Indian tour, which was fantastic and beautiful, but it's an island I would gladly skip. I was hoping they would change it to a different stop. Having been there twice already, I have no desire to go back. If it is on the itinerary I will stay on the ship :)

Agreed. We were there in November 2016 and the “tour” was poor at best. There really wasn’t much to see. The stray sick puppies were very upsetting. I’m very sorry the island was devastated by hurricane Maria, but would not choose to go there again.

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We are on the Dawn sailing out of Puerto Rico departing 3/24/2019 and originally Dominica was one of the stops. NCL took it off and replaced it with St. Thomas USVI. I was pretty disappointed that they took it off but I assume it was because they were concerned it would be up and fully running by then since it was hit so hard last year.

We are also sailing out of Puerto Rico on the Dawn I too am not happy we are going to St Thomsas instead of Dominica. We are sailing in Feb.

To those that were unhappy with the island, maybe it changed after we were there. I do not remember exactly when, but this it was about 10 years ago. Yes, we all see things in a different way: to us on that same cruise, the island we hated was St Lucia but are looking forward to it this next time so maybe we will have a better experience

To those that were unhappy with the island, maybe it changed after we were there. I do not remember exactly when, but this it was about 10 years ago. Yes, we all see things in a different way: to us on that same cruise, the island we hated was St Lucia but are looking forward to it this next time so maybe we will have a better experience

I was there 2 or 3 years ago and I would never go back. It was filthy. In fact we stopped at a bar and the place was swarming with flies that the bartender put a napkin over my soda glass, Mind you this bar was recommended to us by someone on the ship......uh no thanks.

I was on a cruise that stopped in Dominica several years ago. Did an excursion that was listed as a moderate level of activity. It turned out to be broken trails, at some points no trail at all where one had to navigate exposed tree roots, had to walk through a stream with a fairly fast current, there was no bridge. It is where I torn my ankle. There was no means to call emergency vehicle. I had to proceed on with the excursion.

If I ever do a cruise that stops there, I will never do an excursion. I'll just stay on the ship.

I was there 2 or 3 years ago and I would never go back. It was filthy. In fact we stopped at a bar and the place was swarming with flies that the bartender put a napkin over my soda glass, Mind you this bar was recommended to us by someone on the ship......uh no thanks.

Haven't been to Dominica yet (scheduled to in January) so I haven't seen it first hand yet..... but after having been to Martinique...that's another island where I will never get off the ship again if we were to go. It was a dirty disgusting place and sounds very similar to your experience in Dominica.

Haven't been to Dominica yet (scheduled to in January) so I haven't seen it first hand yet..... but after having been to Martinique...that's another island where I will never get off the ship again if we were to go. It was a dirty disgusting place and sounds very similar to your experience in Dominica.

Just to show the difference, I didn't find Martinique so bad at all. It seemed like one of the larger cities in the carib that I've been to and was pretty simple to navigate. It did not seem so 3rd world and found lotsa nice architecture and infrastructure along with well stocked stores. Of course there were bad areas but what city doesn't have them?

Has anyone been to the Island of Dominica recently? Our Jan Escape cruise still only has 2 excursions for the island and I was wondering if it might be dropped from the itinerary. I know they were hit very hard by Maria last year. Any news on the shape of the island? I am trying to make plans

We used Reyno Tours back in Dec. 2015. The island is beautiful. Take a tour and enjoy the island. For those who don't know there is a medical school on the island attended by many Americans.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g147282-d2547694-r145746021-Reyno_Day_Tours-Roseau_Saint_George_Parish_Dominica.html

Haven't been to Dominica yet (scheduled to in January) so I haven't seen it first hand yet..... but after having been to Martinique...that's another island where I will never get off the ship again if we were to go. It was a dirty disgusting place and sounds very similar to your experience in Dominica.

I agree about Marinique. We actually planned a cruise party bases on it being one island we had not visited. As it turned out we did not get off the ship and visit as it was a Sunday and we learned everything was closed We did talk to several who choose to get off. A few did tours. All said the same thing rude people and nothing special about the port. Sometimes it is just as much fun to stay on board and enjoy the peace and quiet.

We did the champagne snorkeling excursion-it was drizzling so no good pics but what an awesome way to spend a few hours. We met the excursion guide just off the pier and he led us through a very aggressive group of yelling drivers/tour guides. Upon return, they were gone. We did not venture into town - it looked way too sketchy. A small parade of musicians and dancers set up around 2pm in the area in front of the waterfront buildings for about an hour. I did get my hair braided by a woman at the pier gate - it was so awesome and kept the hair out of my face for the next two weeks.

I toured with this guy twice and loved it. http://sweetdominica.com/ Plus screws spa is awesome when I was there.

I loved Dominica! We were there in 2013. It was my favourite port because it's not so touristy. It felt authentic to the way people live there. We did a tour (through NCL) that took us to a look out, then to 2 waterfalls. We hiked a short ways to each of them and got to swim in one of them. We loved chatting with our tour guide and learning about her and her fiancé and their life on the island. Then we wandered around the town and visited some of the shops where the locals shop. I was friendly with everyone and they were friendly with me. I loved that it wasn't perfectly clean and "fake" and touristy. I didn't feel unsafe because the town is right at the pier, and there were people everywhere. What was anyone actually going to do to us? Sounds like I'd like Martinique too :D

Dominica is lovely! I haven't been since the Hurricane last year, so I'm not sure what the current condition is.

I would highly recommend taking the open jeep tour that tours the island and goes to Ti Tou Gorge. We went to some beautiful gardens, smelled lots of amazing herbs, and flowers, including the main ingredient for chanel #5. The stop at Ti Tou Gorge was one of my best experiences ever, it's a fresh water stream through a gorge carved from an ancient volcanic eruption, we swam up a ways to a waterfall and jumped into the water from the rocks. The fresh water is rather cool, but when you get back to the entrance point there's a small waterfall of shower warm water heated from a thermal spring that you can rinse off and warm up in. The best part was that there were no other tours there, and apparently no one else on our jeep wanted to swim, so it was just us and the guide.. Not often you get the whole place to yourself on a cruise sponsored tour.

If you didn't enjoy Dominica because of the obvious poverty, I implore you to take a second look and focus your sights on the natural beauty of this island.

Oh! forgot to mention whale watching!

On my second visit to Dominica I went with a friend, I wanted to river raft, she wanted to go whale watching..It was my birthday so we decided to river raft Dominica, and whale watch in Grenada. Big mistake we found out! The whales are protected in Dominica not in Grenada. Our table mates took the whale watching tour in Dominica and saw so many whales, said they had an amazing experience...However, when we went on the whale watching trip in Grenada the next day we found out they basically never see whales, the guide said she'd been working on the boat for 5 years and only seen them once!

Lesson learned!

We were originally scheduled to go there during our South Caribbean Cruise this coming Thanksgiving but it was changed to St. Kitts. Wasn’t happy they took away an island I’ve never been too before but was happy in the end seeing that the island still hasn’t recovered from last years hurricane.