Carnival Bannister Island Snorkeling vs No Snorkeling

[rosenc1c]

Our group is leaning toward doing Bannister Island. I understand Carnival's Bannister excursion leaves directly from the ship and allows us to bypass the tending process. Half of our group wants to snorkel and the other half only wants to do the beach. I see that Carnival offers a "Breach Break" and "Snorkel and Beach Break". Does anyone know if both excursions take the same boat to the island? We didn't know if we each booked the tour that we want if we were going to be split up on different boats.

 

If we book through an outside company we will tender to the Tourist Village. I've read it's not very big, but is it worth seeing the TV? Is there much shopping?

[clackey]

Our group is leaning toward doing Bannister Island. I understand Carnival's Bannister excursion leaves directly from the ship and allows us to bypass the tending process. Half of our group wants to snorkel and the other half only wants to do the beach. I see that Carnival offers a "Breach Break" and "Snorkel and Beach Break". Does anyone know if both excursions take the same boat to the island? We didn't know if we each booked the tour that we want if we were going to be split up on different boats.

 

If we book through an outside company we will tender to the Tourist Village. I've read it's not very big, but is it worth seeing the TV? Is there much shopping?

If the Carnival tour is like the Bannister Island tour that we took a couple of years ago thru Fab Tours, they haul everyone to the island and then load the snorkelers onto a boat headed to the reef. Then they return them to the island for some R&R. The tourist village is nothing but shopping. Everything from diamonds to drugs.