Wet'n Wild Tubing - Moderate to bad review (LONG)

[silentbob007]

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know about the experience I had in Belize the past week (March 15).

 

First of all, I was on the Carnival Glory, which is of course a very large ship. Given the number of people who want to actually go to shore and the fact that this is a tender port, debarkation is definately a waiting game. I was told by the shore excursion desk that I would be allowed out on a tender with an early group (instead of waiting for a tender ticket). I showed up to the meeting place an hour and a half before we were to meet ashore for the tour and ended up waiting for over an hour in the Amber Palace until there was a smaller tour going ashore that left room for "independents." Now, I guess I could have rushed line at Deck 0 and tried my luck at getting on a tender, but I really hate line jumpers. Anyway ....

 

Once ashore, we (a friend and I) headed to Marvin's booth to pay for our tour. First of all, evidently the telephone lines were down we found out, meaning that we had to pay with cash instead of credit as I had planned. Considering we still owed Marvin about $100, this pretty much cleared out our pockets (were trying to travel "light" moneywise).

 

Next, there was a large number of people who booked with Wet 'n Wild this day ... 6 off of the Glory and over 20 (I think) off of RCI. My friend and I ended up in a small van, driven by Tom, that was packed with about 13 people. The rest of the group was loaded onto a bus.

 

During the ~1 hour drive to the tubing site, Tom gave out a lot of interesting information about Belize, Belize City, and the Mayans. He set up his tour as an exploration of the religion of the Mayans, which added a bit of a mythological bent to the tubing itself.

 

We finally arrive and wait for the rest of the group that was loaded into a bus. Evidently the bus lost a transmission on the way, so the large group was split up again into two different busses who passed the broken bus on the way (this is second hand info about the other bus, just FYI). Anyway Tom went ahead and took four of us off onto the tour since the first part of the large group that arrived wanted to wait for the rest of the members of their party.

 

About the tubing itself ... Tom really seemed to his way around the cave and kept up his Mayan religion theme for the entirety of the tubing and was determined to show us the nine dark lords of the underworld represented within the caves. Like I said, interesting. At one point in our hike to the river, we took a different branch and ended up ahead of some of the larger groups ahead of us. We then backpaddled a little bit once in the river to go into the cave that we had cut around. In this cave, we actually got out of our tube, and Tom took us up into one of the caves where he showed us some various crystals and ledges where he said that people had found remnants of the Mayan civilization, such as pottery.

 

The river was definately not what I would call fast. There were usually two combinations of current and depth... shallow and quick or deeper and very slow. Now I'll admit that I'm a large man, which means that when the river got shallow, I was really scraping my butt on the rocks, even when I was trying to pull it out of the water as advised. When the river was deep, I found myself constantly having to paddle to keep up the pace of the tour ... which was very tiring. Even with all the paddling, our small group was constantly being passes by very large groups who seemed to be trying to move through the caves as quickly as possible. Many a time, Tom had the four of us over along one wall showing us rock formations while the big groups scurried past. Now, since there were so many people in the caves, I was nervous about losing our small group, and I ended up with a pretty nice neck strain by the end of the day from constantly trying to look around. The caves and this part of the experience was great.

 

Now ... the fun begins.

 

Even though our small group left ahead of the big group, they caught up to us at the end of the river. As we got out, I talked to Tom and told him that the last tender to our ship left at 3:15 Belize time (4:15 ship time), or in about two and half hours. This point had been confused earlier as the RCI ship's last tender left at 4:15 Belize time. Tom's eyes widened a bit, and he said that they'd get cracking to get us back to the port on time.

 

We went to the huts and changed, and by the time all 13 people in my van were ready to go, the bus for the large group had already left. Tom collected everyone, then proceded to race down the tubing "road" which might be the most uneven stretch of ground I have ever seen. We stopped at Amigos, but since we were running behind, all six people going to the Glory would be returning in Tom's van (we had been split up all day ... only my friend and I were Glory passengers in Tom's van before). Now, the other 4 had already gotten to Amigos and eaten by the time we arrive (not sure how that happened), so we waited around for about 10 minutes for our food to be packaged to go. By this time, I'm constantly looking at my watch and working myself up to saying "Forget the food. Let's go." I'm tired from tubing, however, and feel extremely dehydrated, so allow myself to not say anything and just stand next to the bar sucking on the liter of water that came with my soon-to-be-ready lunch. Food in hand, we jump into Tom's van and take off with about an hour and a half before the last tender.

 

My friend and I are eating in Tom's van while we hear the other Glory passengers talking. This is where we heard about the transmission on their first bus. Anyway, on the route we see a broken down bus on the side of the road, so Tom pulls over to let the driver make a call to her company. No problem. I understand.

 

We continue down the road, and about 5-10 minutes after passing the broken bus, we hear a pop, quickly followed by a lovely wubba wubba sound. The deeply spiritual Tom curses, and pulls off to the side of the road. We six passengers get out of the van and one (evidently some sort of mechanic) helps Tom get the jack set up ... about one hour until the last tender leaves. Things seem to be going smoothly until Tom has trouble getting one of the lugnuts off of the flat tire. More curses. He finally resorts to using his foot to try to lever the wrench and put enough pressure on the lugnut to get it off. TWANG! The stud breaks off of the tire (and I think takes off a part of the break) ... in other words, we are in some trouble. More cursing from Tom and silent curses from the rest of us. The other passengers mutter something about their luck with transportation that day, to which Tom replies "Ah, so you're the Jonahs."

 

So now we have less than an hour to get to the tender and we have no way to get there. We ask Tom if he should call someone, which he declines saying that "There's always another bus." Being in the mood that we were, we asked about the last bus, which Tom replied was followed by an empty 2nd bus, just in case.

 

After about five minutes along the side of the road, we spy a bus coming down the road and Tom flags it down. This is not a tour bus however. Instead it was evidently some sort of old school bus that was serving as Belizian public transportation from city to city. Tom begs a ride for us (not including him) and asks the driver to let us off at the first taxi stand. He then hands the oldest member of our group of six $5 American and $7 Belizian for the cab fare and tells us to tell the cab driver to take us to the tourist village. So we board the bus and find some seats amongst the passengers that were already aboard. I ended up sitting away from our main group due to the availability of empty seats and found myself in the presence of several individuals wearing camoflauge uniforms ... not exactly making me feel comfortable. I glance at my watch .... 30 minutes to go.

 

We are dropped off at the taxi stand at about 3:00 Belize time, so with 15 minutes to spare. The entire group of six ends up in an old station wagon with no extreme rear seats, meaning that the seating arrangements were less than comfortable with two passengers and the driver in front and four passengers crammed into the lone rear bench. The driver navigates the streets of Belize City with one hand on the wheel and one hand on a Snickers Bar, darting through narrow openings between pedestrians, cars, and merchants. I'm sitting almost on top of the driver and notice that his fuel light is on and that he's essentailly riding on fumes. Oh well, I think, and procede to keep that little tidbit to myself since we were already well away from the taxi stand. Thankfully we arrive at the tourism village with 5 minutes to spare, though the driver takes the opportunity to try to charge us $5 a person for the ride instead of $5 total. The gentleman with the money gave him $20 and told him to be happy with it. I flipped him a couple of more dollars to keep him from coming after us, and we went into the village itself.

 

OK ... happy ending. There was a very large line for a tender back to the Glory, meaning that we could have probably been 20-30 minutes later and still gotten a tender. The man who paid $20 out of pocket went to speak with Marvin and had that money refunded. I didn't want to bother with a few bucks ... I just wanted to get in line.

 

In summary, my thoughts are:

 

Good - The tubing itself. Definately more strenuous than I thought it would be, but a great experience.

 

Bad - Ground transportation. I don't know whether this is a semi-usual occurance or just a really bad day for Wet 'n Wild, but on the day I used them, the reliability of their vehicles was questionable to say the least.

 

Final thoughts - This experience was my first using an independent tour operator, and it will probably be my last at any port at which time is limited and there is much travel involved. Before going on the tour, I was very anxious about getting off the ship, meeting up with who I needed to, and getting back ... and this was before any problems. Yes, we did get back in time. Yes, the tour operators probably did everything they could and this was just a freak-of-nature string of bad luck. But, for me at least since I am an inherent worrier, the savings does not really outweigh the anxiety. Instead of totally immersing myself in the tour, I'm checking my watch. Instead of relaxing on the ride back, I'm checking my watch. From now on, I guess I'll just spend the extra money (or skip the the tour) to stay on vacation.

[restes]

Wow, I'm glad you made it back in time. We went cave tubing with Wet and Wild the day before you (March 14). We were the only ship in port (Grand Princess) and arrived an hour late. We also had to wait for a tender, which got us to the Wet & Wild sign almost 2 hours past our scheduled meeting time.

 

We met up with Charlie (our tour guide) and my first question to him was "Do we have enough time?". I thought for sure it would be canceled. He promised to have us back to the tender line before the ship's cave tubing tour had their group to the tender line. There were only 6 of us on the tour and I thought it was wonderful. Junior was our driver, Charlie did most of the talking and told us a lot about the history and culture of Belize. When the river became to shallow or the current became slow, Charlie had us link together and he would paddle or pull us through. We didn't have any transmission problems or flat tires, so that probably added to the pleasant experience for us. It was really a nice, relaxing day, even with the time constraints.

 

On the ~1 hour trip back to the port, Marvin called Charlie a couple of times on his cell phone to check our status. We did arrive at the port 10 minutes past the last scheduled tender. However, we were at least 30 minutes AHEAD of the ship's cave tubing tour, so it made no difference. We still had to wait in the tender line for about 20 minutes. We were back on the ship before the ship's cave tubing tour (of 40 people) ever even made it to the tender line.

 

Charlie told us that the following day (March 15) was going to be a very busy day. He said that they were planning to get started at 5:30 am.

[Marcys]

Marvin, thanks for resonding to this post. We have 20+ Cruise Critic members booked with you from Carnival Valor on June 14. I have been nervous about just this sort of thing and even e-mailed you twice about this.

 

To help put my mind at ease, I hope you'll answer a few questions.

 

In your e-mail to me you said that in case of an emergency you could contact the port agent to have him (or her) contact the ship to let them know that 20 passengers were enroute. I don't know if a ship would wait for 20 passengers if they were contacted by the tour company and port agent. Do you know?? I know if we were running late it would GREATLY put my mind at ease to know the port agent and ship had been notified and were expecting and waiting for us.

 

Also, you said that you also run (own?) tender boats and that they could be used if the last tender had left. Correct?

[Marcys]

I'm sorry, Marvin, I know you told me that you ran some of the tenders, but the information about contacting the port agent was not from you, rather it was from Paul at Coral Breeze. But...are you also able to contact the port agent and/or the ship?

[silentbob007]

Hi Marvin ... I figured that you would be watching for my review. I hope that you and others have found my review fair. I DO realize that there were just a lot of things that went wrong and were a bit out of your control. I did not want to paint your company in a completely bad light, however I wanted to write an honest description of my experiences.

[Marcys]

silentbob007 I think you were fair and I think that Marvin stepped up to the plate, so to speak, by responding. Things can go wrong, we're all nervous about this, just look at the titles of some of the questions posted. But, it's how the situation is handled that's important.

 

Do you know if they had notified the port agent or the ship? We were running very late with Coral Breeze last summer and although Paul responded that they could contact the port agent when I e-mailed him after the trip, the tour guides never told us this nor offered to do it.

[silentbob007]

Marcys, the port agent or ship were not contacted in my presence. Outside of that, I don't know.

 

Marvin ... I forgot to add this earlier. There is something you could do to make me feel better about the situation. Since we ended up paying for the tour in cash unexpectedly, my friend and I were going to tip Tom with our last $10 because he honestly was a great guide and the tubing part of the trip was truly excellent. However, given when we parted Tom's company that we weren't sure if we were going to need our last $10 to make it to the ship, we did not give hiim a tip for his excellent service to that point (and as it turned out, he did get us to the ship on time). If you could throw a little extra money his way for us as a tip, we would greatly appreciate it.

[Marcys]

Marvin, once again, thanks for responding! :)

 

Do you know if a ship would really wait if they knew 20 people were late but enroute back? Also, what changes if any will you make to reduce the risk of this type of thing happening again and since we all learn from experience, would you do anything differently if this were to happen again?

 

Thanks so much for your honesty, Marvin! We still plan on seeing you with 20+ other Cruise Critic cruisers on June 14. Just looking for some reassurance since I have nightmares about this type of thing!:eek:

[silentbob007]

Marvin, once again, thanks for responding! :)

 

Just looking for some reassurance since I have nightmares about this type of thing!:eek:

 

One thing I'll still say is that even with all of the stuff that happened, we still made it back.

[joyride]

Wow! I will be in Belize on April 15th and we are booked with Wet N Wild. I have several concerns now.

 

My first concern is timing. The Coral Princess is scheduled to be in Belize from 7AM to 3:30 PM. Since we are on an independent tour, I know we won't get on the first tenders out. I am still unsure if this is ship time or Belize time! We decided to book independently so we would have the advantage of being in a smaller cave tubing group. But, I don't want to miss the ship. We are supposed to meet Wet N Wild at 8:50 AM, but I'm not sure if that is the same time as our ship time????

 

My second concern is the recent postings that have said the water is very low and that the paddling can be very difficult. We are 4 girls that are in our 40s and we are not athletes or anything.

 

Third, there are postings here about problems with the vans, snake bites, etc. I am pretty adventurous, but I don't want to be in harms way at the same time!

 

I'm not sure what to do now. This is one tour that we have been really looking forward to.

 

Marvin - if you read this - could you please respond to my questions?

 

Thanks!

 

Joyce

[mnsawyer]

This is why we chickened out and decided to do a snorkeling tour with the cruise ship! Plus, after April 3rd, Belize will be 2 hours behind eastern daylight time so that makes it even more confusing! Not only is the scheduling and timing an issue but if the river is low that just compounds the issue. I know that river tubing in Belize is probably a once in a lifetime event but for us, not at the cost of the stress of it all plus heaven forbid, missing your ship. Also, riding in sub-par transportation to the rain forest just isn't something we want to do.