Mazatlan - Stone Island

[Seaislegal]

We sailed on the Carnival Pride the week of April 3rd. We had about 400 in our group of Parrot Heads on board. Since the ships excursions are, as always, over priced, I decided to venture out and organize my own excursion on Mazatlan. Carnival’s Stone Island excursion is $75 (and doesn’t even mention open bar).

 

 

 

Based on comments and recommendations from this board, I went with King David to organize my excursion. Initially I was going to just send the info to a few friends from our group, but since they said they could handle a large number I figured what the heck and ended up organizing it for 200 people from our group. For $40 a head we had the excursion tailored to our needs time-wise and had the boat and location all to ourselves for our private group. I communicated back and forth with David and his staff e-mail and phone in the couple of months beforehand to get everything organized. And to make it easier for them I even took the lunch orders from the group in advance so they would know quantities of what to get for 200 people.

 

 

 

In Mazatlan, they met us at the dock at 9:45am and helped coordinate to get our large group out to the buses. At the boat dock folks were shuttled out to the big party boat, where cold beers awaited us. We had a nice cruise of the harbour before landing at Stone Island where we were taken by tractor driven carts to the restaurant we were using. They had the private area laid out for us with the open bar set up. Plus coupons for each person to get their lunch and a choice of two activities (horseback riding, snorkeling, boogie boarding, banana boat rides). They’d periodically announce when it was time for a new group to go horse riding and such and the banana boats just went out continuously all afternoon. The waiters who brought us our lunches also would bring us drinks throughout the day. They were very attentive and would show up with new drinks before we even asked for them! Great service and we made sure to tip them well for it. Around 3pm it was time to round everyone up and back to the boat. We cruised around a bit again so folks could dance to the music and enjoy some more cold drinks. We hated to leave as it was such a great time!

 

 

 

Never having been to Mazatlan before I was of course initially nervous organizing a large excursion like this as I knew I’d hear back from the group if things weren’t good. But all I got the rest of the week were compliments and thank-you’s from the folks who went as they all had a great time. I’d recommend King David’s to anyone as they really pulled off a great trip for us, especially considering the number of people I had going! There was plenty of drinks (as we are kind of a heavy partying group), everyone loved the activities and the service was fantastic! They even surprised me when we first got to the restaurant by having made me a professional banner saying “Mazatlan Excursion – Andrea Biggs’s group”. I definitely bought the banner home and it will hang on my garage wall! :)

 

 

 

So if you are looking for a fun trip, and a MUCH cheaper alternative to what Carnival charges for the same type of excursion, try King David’s. It’s the Stone Island tour that we did, its usually $38 but we paid $40 a head to get it private and customized to our schedule. It was definitely one of the highlights of our week!

 

http://www.mazinfo.com/jungletour/index.htm

 

Andrea in Atlanta