X-Stream or CaveTubing.com

[rjmontana]

Have narrowed it down to these two companies, would love to hear any input (good or bad-especially bad) you might have from your trip with either of these guys..Not trying to start a bash here, just want to make a good decision and have a great trip. Maybe their both credible and trustworthy companies and either is a good choice, that would be a nice outcome..Thanks in advance for any help deciding, we will be going in just a few weeks now so need to get this booked and behind us..

 

Thanks, RJ

[Fourseventeen]

do a search for these 2. LOTS of posts about both. I would go with x-stream again. I did their tour in oct 2009 and have it booked with them again oct 2010. ONLY tour where your not stuck holding the feet of the stranger behind you. All the other tours make you stay in a line down the river and you must hold the feet of whoever is in the line behind you in the water.

[EastCarolina]

.com was outstanding. I went with them about two weeks ago. Tour guide was funny and made the trip outstanding.

[mleng]

I don't believe there are many people out there who have done cave tubing with multiple companies. Even if there are indeed a handful people out there who have experiences with both, the weather condition (wet or dry season) or the particular tour guide could have a much bigger impact on any one trip. It's not like coke vs. pepsi, where every single bottle of coke all tastes the same.

 

My wife and I went on the excursion with X-stream a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. I posted a detailed review on Tripadvisor, so go check it out there.

 

I personally believe that the caves are so amazing that unless you had a really bad tour guide, you would have a good time anyway. Even those people who paid $90 through the cruise ship and only went through one cave, if they didn't know anything about the independent tours, they would have told you that they enjoyed their excursions too.

 

I chose X-stream ($50) over Major Tom and cavetubing.com ($45) mainly because they claimed to take you through 2 caves and their price included a lunch. We did go through 2 caves and first cave was empty except the 9 of us on the tour. So that alone was well worth it. We floated separately through the first cave, but linked up (holding each other's feet) for the 2nd cave where the current was a little stronger and individual floaters might have run into rocks or walls. There was another person on this board said that X-stream didn't ask people to link up, which obviously wasn't correct since we did link up. But I didn't mind it at all -- everybody was completely wet (from splashing and floating), so the feet were pretty clean. And if you really dislike holding a stranger's feet, try to stay back and be the last person in the chain. :-)

 

The lunch was awesome as I mentioned in my review. So again, that alone would have been worth $5.

 

Finally, for our particular trip, we stopped at a roadside supermarket to allow a passenger to buy a waterproof camera. I went in just to look around but saw they had Mr. P's cashew wine (that's the name brand) at half of the price that I would have paid if I bought them from the duty-free shop at the dock. That just saved me $10.

 

All in all, I was very happy with X-stream tubing.

[kristined]

We just got back from a cruise to Belize, and I highly recomend Charlie's CaveTubing. Charlies has the best price, and he includes lunch. My take is that he is more personable than the other guides we saw, explained more of the structure, and all in all, was alot more enjoyable. There were twelve in our group, and we all had the same feeling-it was a remarkable experience! You will not be sorry if you go with this guy.

[Fourseventeen]

Mleng must have had a different experience then we did. We did NOT link up AT ALL on the river. Our guide was always ahead of us but never asked or even mentioned that we should link together...thank goodness. Im not into having some strangers feet in my face. The lunch was great! The chicken they gave is was amazing. Our tour guide was JP (if im not mistaken) and he was wonderful. He also stopped at the roadside market on the way to the caves so we could get a drink or a snack to tide us over until lunch after cave tubing.

[hamlettm]

NOTE: This is my review and you must agree with it 100% or you can't continue. This means I am 100% correct in everything I say and your not allowed to disagree with me in anyway, shape or form. If you don't agree leave now please. Yes of course I'm only joking. =)

 

I heard so much about Cave Tubing and got to read all the great reviews here on the boards before I booked my excursion. Now that my family of 4 have just returned from our cruise I thought I would write up a review on all of our thoughts and include a massive amount of images.... I hope this might help your decision on cave tubing!

 

What To Bring With You

- A water proof camera - http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/panasonic-lumix-dmc-ts1/4505-6501_7-33596253.html?tag=mncol;lst

- WATER SHOES - MUST HAVE!

- Sun Block

 

Cave Tubing Pros & Cons

PROS

- You get to see caves the Mayan Indians actually went into (at least they told us that)

- You get to walk through a lush rain forest

 

CONS

- The water is not deep and you spend most of your time stuck or not moving

- You don't really "cave tube" they should really call it "cave pulling" because the guides have to pull you through because of it being so shallow

- The way they set you up with feet locked etc can hurt some peoples back

- Not really what I expected, have had better tubing in the mountains in the USA.

- You move REALLY slow the entire time

- NO water falls or rapids

 

CRUISE PORT - BELIZE

Our ship "Carnival Dream" was going into Belize and we wanted to find some kind of great excursion to go on. When I checked the forums here at Cruise Critic everyone talked about Cave Tubing and a company called cave-tubing.com so of course I did some more research and checked it out. The first thing I did was go to cave-tubing.com and checked out their website. I noticed a video of people going down what looks like a small waterfall and they are going pretty fast on the front page of the site, I put a screenshot of the video below for you. This is actually the entrance to the caves and the fastest part of the water, the video camera is tilted sideways so it looks like it's going down a hill. The water here and river is actually very flat and the water was moving MUCH slower the day we went. So don't let that video fool you. I thought we were going tubing on a fast river with some exciting rapids and hills, etc. But it's actually a VERY SLOW and often sticky cave tubing adventure. Why sticky? You get stuck all the time!

 

See how this looks like it's going down hill?

 

This is the actual area from my camera

 

 

BOOKING THE TOUR

We ended up booking through cave-tubing.com because everyone said to use them. They have VERY nice staff and treat you well. They were so kind in fact that they even allowed me to go on the tour after I forgot some of my money. I paid them back once we returned to the ship later that day. Is cave-tubing.com the best tour to take for the caves? I'm not so sure, let me give you a few reasons why.

 

When your at the cave system and done your soaking wet and stink of river water. Instead of allowing you to change in the changing rooms at the site (see picture below) they make you get on the bus WET and ride 10 minutes to their site. Why do they do this? My thoughts are that they don't want you spending money on the shops, food, etc at the cave tubing site. They want to get everyone to their site so they can make you spend your money on their food, beer, shirts, etc. They told us we had to leave and not change because we would get lost and could not find our way back to the bus that was only 15 feet away from the changing rooms. However, when you get to the site you are allowed to change and get ready there.

 

Another reason cave-tubing.com may not be the best people to use is due to the tubes they use and the way they set you up to go down the river. Notice in the image below the small black tubes we had? Then notice the nice big yellow tubes with handles the other people had? Our guide from cave-tubing.com actually pointed out that we don't need these huge yellow tubes, they don't work as well, etc. Actually in the river system when we were all stuck these yellow tubes were flying by us and NEVER getting stuck. So the black tubes they have simply don't work well and you always have to lay flat so your butt doesn't get stuck on rocks. This doesn't happen with the large yellow tubes. So I would suggest booking through the CRUISE LINE and paying the extra cash for the nicer tubes that won't get stuck!

 

Cave-Tubing.com also puts you in a huge train to go down the river. We had like 10 people hooked to another 10 people, it simply did NOT work well. The other groups went alone or hooked only families together.

[hamlettm]

So if I haven't scared you to death with my review so far and you still want to go cave tubing this is what your going to experience. First of all plan to wake up VERY early. The cruise ships have to park about 10 miles off the coast. You have to catch the earliest tender to shore so you can return to the ship on time. We got up around 6:30am, got breakfast and then headed over to the shore around 8am. Keep in mind these small tender ships rock a bit on the ocean, so if you get sea sick you may need a patch. =)

 

You can see the images below show the cruise ships parked off shore, small tenders racing to get us, the sun coming up and the tender you'll be in packed full of people on the way to shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hamlettm]

Once your at shore and off the tender you make your way outside and get on the bus. The buses are very nice with A/C etc. Your guides will get up and entertain you for the hour ride to the cave tubing system. Our guide broke out a huge bottle of whiskey and gave everyone shots, then gave one guy the rest of the bottle to drink! I heard other excursions give you your own beer, etc but haven't confirmed that yet. We don't drink so we stuck to our water. They will hand out your headlamps on the bus ride, you need these to see in the dark caves.

 

They also played music on the ride over and talked about Belize. The city is very poor and you will see this during your ride.

 

 

 

 

 

When you finally get to the cave tubing site they tell you to go change and leave all your valuables on the bus. You walk 15 feet to a nice changing/bathroom area, get changed in a private stall and use the bathroom before your tour. Make sure you USE THE BATHROOM because you won't be back here for over an hour and people don't like pee in the river! =)

 

Once everyone was ready we got into a big group outside with our bathing suits and head lamps. Then we walked down a rocky path to get our tubes. We walked right by a huge set of nice orange tubes with handles, I was really hoping to use those! Instead of the nice tubes we got these really old black tire tubes with no handles, they were thin and had a huge valve stem coming out one side (this valve stem gets stuck on rocks). They also give you huge life vests you have to wear, other tours had smaller thin ones that looked more comfortable.

 

 

 

[hamlettm]

At this point your going to have to carry your tube and vest about 30 minutes to the start of the river system. When you come to the river they have a rope setup to help your cross and start your walk into the rain forest. They stop here for 5 minutes to allow people to jump off a rock into the river if your up to it. Keep in mind tho if you get soaked your going to stay that way for your entire walk! We had about 4 people in a group of 50 jump into the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once everyone is over the river and out of the water you start your journey through the rain forest. They have a huge trail to walk through. During the walk they tell you about some of the plants etc. You get to stop in a small cave to see cute bats hanging from the top. Make sure you stay up front close to your guide or you won't be able to hear anything he says.

 

 

[hamlettm]

When your about 5 minutes away from the river the guides will carry the tubes for the girls. You can see one of the guides doing just that in the bottom image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hamlettm]

Now we have FINALLY reached the river! The guides from cave-tubing.com let all the other groups go first. He said the reason behind this was "so we can see the mistakes they make and not make them" but the truth was they simply didn't want to hold them up because we were always going to be STUCK!

 

Once at the river system you will notice some groups go alone down the river (I would have enjoyed this option better). Our guides made us lock legs and feet together in groups of 10 and then made us hold on to another group of ten beside us. Then they tried to actually pull us and drag us through the river system. This did NOT work as the front guys were always hitting rocks and the walls and getting stuck. It seemed like they had lots of new people working and it wasn't very unorganized.

 

Everyone in my family from my wife to my kids said their back hurt when we got done and my son said his feet were asleep from having them under my heavy arms for so long. So try to go with the SHIP tour group so you can use the LARGER tubes with handles and go down with just your family.

 

YOU DO NOT need a guide to go down the river, it is so shallow (like 3 inches in parts) that you can just get out if you get stuck. There is no place in the river system I would be afraid to go down alone. Also there are like 400+ people going at the same exact time.

 

 

 

 

 

[hamlettm]

Once you actually get into the caves your going to notice that you get stuck all the time. The water is very shallow and the guides had to keep pushing and pulling us off rocks. The groups they setup got split apart and a few guides had NO IDEA what they were doing. When we were moving and not stuck it was pretty neat as the cave was pitch black and everyone had their lights on. You don't see anything amazing in these caves and the ride through the caves only lasts about 20 minutes or less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hamlettm]

Look, those guys on the yellow tubes are passing us again!!!! Notice how they are going alone?

 

 

Once we got to the end of the caves we went down river about 10 more minutes. Our guide actually left us and we were running into the side of the river, logs, etc. I have no idea why we didn't split up because these trains of people were NOT working out.

 

 

 

 

 

You can see this group actually went the wrong way and one of the guides had to go get them and pull them back over.

 

[hamlettm]

This shows you how slow the water moves and how shallow it really is in some places. The water coming up to the guys chest was as deep as I noticed it anywhere.

 

 

 

 

The END FINALLY, for the last 3 minutes they let us break apart and float alone, that was the best part of the entire trip.

 

 

Once the tour is over you return your tubes and life vets and get on the bus WET. You drive about 10 minutes to a small shack where the cave-tubing.com guys sale you beer and chicken/rice for lunch (you have to pay extra for this). You can also change and use the small bathrooms at this location. Once your done they get you back on the bus and take you to the cruise port. They collect CASH from you at this point and also ask for a tip. Most people seemed to tip $10 or $20.

 

 

CONCLUSION

So would I go on this tour again? Probably not. If I did have to go I would make sure I had the larger tubes with handles and smaller life vests, I would also make sure I could just stay with my family and tube down alone as the locking up like a train simply does NOT work at all.

 

I hope my review and pictures will help you decide what you want to do. I'm sorry if I seemed like I was being negative but I tried to explain it the way my family felt about the trip. We were really let down as we were SO excited and thought it would be amazing.

 

I'll be doing a review of my FAVORITE shore excursion soon so keep checking back!!!

[mboatman]

Thanks for the review, I have this tour booked through Carnival, I hope it turns out a little better than what you posted. Seems it was disorganized and not a leisurely float down the river.

I'll post when I return about the Carnival tour.

[hamlettm]

Thanks for the review, I have this tour booked through Carnival, I hope it turns out a little better than what you posted. Seems it was disorganized and not a leisurely float down the river.

I'll post when I return about the Carnival tour.

 

If you have it booked directly through the cruise ship I think it might be better than trying to do it through another company. Please let us know.

 

Thanks!

[kathryn747]

thanks for posting this, wow what a cattlecall. We went tubing in Jamaica and it was a total of 12 people, we didn't even see other people. And the water got low in places there too.

[LJLB6]

We had a very similar experience to yours with cavetubing dot com, and I posted our experience on another thread in the Belize board.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1132184

 

On the way to the site, our bus broke down--they did promptly get us a new one---but I would have been extremely anxious if this would have happened on the way back to the port. I realize that they couldn't help the bus breaking down . . . but it just added to all of the other problems of the day.

 

I wanted to use the restroom but they were rushing us when we got there . . . don't know why though because we certainly didn't rush to get down to the river. We walked slowly---and did stop to see some vegetation and termites---but lots of groups passed us by. If we would have gone right down to the river, we would have avoided that huge bottleneck in the caves. I thought there were WAAYYYY too many people in our group---there were a lot smaller groups passing us by while we struggled with all of these people. My tube was very soft and kept getting hung up on rocks--plus add on the fact that my derriere isn't exactly small when it comes around to "butts up". Ironically, we had a similar experience where the guide wasn't paying attention and we floated away--the two people in front had to push off the side of the cave to keep us from crashing into the walls.

 

The guest in front of our "wagon train" didn't even have a life jacket on--they asked him if he was a strong swimmer, and if so, would he give up his vest so they could use it to tie tubes together 2 abreast. The guides had told us earlier that a Carnival passenger died (different tour group) 2 years ago when she fell out of her tube and got "stuck" in high water--and then they turn around and ask people to give up their life vests.

 

My daughter wanted to buy a t shirt before we left---they wouldn't let her stop--they herded us onto the bus to go to their private area--I guess so we would buy from them only. But they only had mediums available so she ended up not getting her cave tubing shirt.

 

I went into this excursion with high expectations after reading about it on the cruise critic board. I thought our experience may have been an isolated incident, but after reading your review, they need to revamp their operations.

[hamlettm]

thanks for posting this, wow what a cattlecall. We went tubing in Jamaica and it was a total of 12 people, we didn't even see other people. And the water got low in places there too.

 

It was CRAZY busy here, I think over 200 people at once were trying to get into the cave. You can see from some of my images that it was packed. The people didn't really bother me, it was just how shallow and slow the water was, I could have had more fun in my bathtub at home. :rolleyes:

 

 

 

We had a very similar experience to yours with cavetubing dot com, and I posted our experience on another thread in the Belize board.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1132184

 

On the way to the site, our bus broke down--they did promptly get us a new one---but I would have been extremely anxious if this would have happened on the way back to the port. I realize that they couldn't help the bus breaking down . . . but it just added to all of the other problems of the day.

 

I wanted to use the restroom but they were rushing us when we got there . . . don't know why though because we certainly didn't rush to get down to the river. We walked slowly---and did stop to see some vegetation and termites---but lots of groups passed us by. If we would have gone right down to the river, we would have avoided that huge bottleneck in the caves. I thought there were WAAYYYY too many people in our group---there were a lot smaller groups passing us by while we struggled with all of these people. My tube was very soft and kept getting hung up on rocks--plus add on the fact that my derriere isn't exactly small when it comes around to "butts up". Ironically, we had a similar experience where the guide wasn't paying attention and we floated away--the two people in front had to push off the side of the cave to keep us from crashing into the walls.

 

The guest in front of our "wagon train" didn't even have a life jacket on--they asked him if he was a strong swimmer, and if so, would he give up his vest so they could use it to tie tubes together 2 abreast. The guides had told us earlier that a Carnival passenger died (different tour group) 2 years ago when she fell out of her tube and got "stuck" in high water--and then they turn around and ask people to give up their life vests.

 

My daughter wanted to buy a t shirt before we left---they wouldn't let her stop--they herded us onto the bus to go to their private area--I guess so we would buy from them only. But they only had mediums available so she ended up not getting her cave tubing shirt.

 

I went into this excursion with high expectations after reading about it on the cruise critic board. I thought our experience may have been an isolated incident, but after reading your review, they need to revamp their operations.

 

I thought it was weird how they rushed us as well, then once we were on the trails they slowed us way down. They made us stop and let like 5 other groups go by us so that we were last. When we got to the river we got ready at the very end while everyone else in front went ahead. I think due to the lack of experience some of their guides had they simply always want to be in the back. Also the rushing us at the start and finish is simply so we can't purchase goods or food at the site...... which is pretty sad. If you think about it they make about $5000 a day just from one bus and that's ALL CASH PROFIT!

 

Anyway, sorry you had the same experience we did, maybe our reviews will help people decide twice about cave tubing here. I'm not even sure I would have enjoyed it with another group, it was just to slow for me all together.

[debster818]

We are doing the combo tubing/zipling with Major/Minor Tom. I hope our experience is better than yours. If not, we will try to make the best of it.

[janisutx]

Your review and photos are full of information. Thanks for posting a realistic version of a cave tubing excursion. I have forwarded the link to my daughter. Our Belize experience will be better thanks to you.

[hamlettm]

Your review and photos are full of information. Thanks for posting a realistic version of a cave tubing excursion. I have forwarded the link to my daughter. Our Belize experience will be better thanks to you.

 

Your very welcome I hope it helps :D

[PnkyandtheBrain]

Based on your pictures, I'd say the river was a good 2 feet lower than when we tubed at the beginning of Feb.

 

I do agree that you'll have a better tubing experience with a much smaller group.

 

Brad

[GinDon]

First off, let me say that I LOVED all your pics. I felt like I was reliving the experience all over again.

 

We had a somewhat different experience on our Cave Tubing Excursion a couple of years ago. We used X-Stream Cave Tubing Co., booked on-line. They had a representative easily findable when we got off the tenders. As we had a bit of wait for other passengers, we had time to buy our "I Survived Cave Tubing in Belize" T-shirts before the tour. Our bus had AC, but wasn't nice like yours..........more like a beat up school bus.........but it got us there. We drove through Belize City a little. Not sure if this was a mini tour, or just the way to get where we were headed. In any case, our driver provided running commentary on what we were seeing in the City, and later in the countryside we were passing through.

 

From looking at your pictures (again, great photos) I can see a big difference in the depth of the river from when we were on it. We had deeper water, and a pretty fast current in a lot of places. We free floated. Our group was about 12 people. Black tubes, but plumper than yours, I think. We only had a couple of "Butts Up" moments during the whole ride. The current took me away a couple of times, twice I had to push off the walls, and once I floated into a prickly bush once we got out of the caves. Great source of amusement for my family group.

 

Some tours include a chicken/rice meal, but ours didn't. There was a cooler of fresh cut-up fruits for us to pick into, after the tour.

 

It seems like the depth and current of the river dictates how much fun the tour is. Not sure if there is a season that is better for Cave Tubing, or if it depends on the weather of the week. We were there in late October.

 

Your review was very interesting and informative. Wish more people would give a blow-by-blow review of their tours. Thanks for taking the time to post for all of us!