Short time in port, Stingray City?

[ailinsh1]

We are stopping in Grand Cayman on the RCCL Voyager on Apr. 3. This is our second cruise with RCCL; DH and I went 5 years ago for an anniversary trip, but this time we're bringing the kids (15, 12). We loved Stingray City last time and really want the kids to have that experience.

 

I'm nervous about the timing, though, with factoring tendering into the equation. Ship's arrival time in port is listed as 10:00 AM; departure time is listed as 4:00 p.m.. So my guess is the last tender will leave at 3:30. As much as I'd love to book an excursion privately (which is what we did last time), I'm really wondering if it would be better to just do it through the ship so we get priority for tendering in the AM and don't have to worry about the timing at all. This time in port seems incredibly short; on our last cruise, we were in port by 10:00 and the last tender was at 5:30.

 

So, thoughts? I'm just going to be so disappointed if the excursion through the cruise line is so overcrowded we can't even really enjoy it....

 

Sondra

[MsHoo]

Sondra - I highly recommend Moby Dick if you want to go out to Stingray City. They are very conscious of your times and will ask you what time the last tender leaves so they will have you back on time. They were very professional and safety conscious. We took a Carnival Stingray excursion Dec 2010 and the boat was overcrowded and they didn't provide nearly enough squid to entice the stingrays over to us. However, Moby Dick's boat wasn't overcrowded and we had plenty of squid and lots of stingrays. They also had 3 guides in the water with us holding stingrays for pictures whereas the previous one only had 1 guide and you really had to jockey for position to get a picture with the stingrays. We would definately book them again. :)