something I wished I had known

[cruisevirgin06]

Belize is a tender port...I knew that...what I didn't know is if you have an excursion booked thru Carnival (not sure if this is the case with other CL) that is for snorkelling, snuba, scuba etc...the tender you take off the ship goes directly to your excursion and you never step foot on Belize. With that in mind if you are looking forward to going into Belize for shopping or anything like that try to get the earliest time you can as it is almost impossible to get off the ship early if you don't have an excursion booked. Our excursion was at 12pm and we wanted to go into Belize in the morning...they give out stickers for Belize tenders and check your tickets prior to getting a sticker. We asked the guys doing the tenders if they thought we could do it..the response was we would probably get off but might not be able to get back as the tender operators might want to wait for the tender to be full before heading back to the ship.

 

Just something to think about.

 

Also if you are interested in cave tubing...I would suggest trying to book privately as there were 500+ people with the carnival cave tubing excursion on my ship alone.

[tennisgirl27]

I agree about the cave tubing. IMO, the cruiseship cave tubing excursion is NOT safe. They only had 2 guides for about 40 + people. My private guide had to rescue someone who got stuck behind a rock in the cave.

 

Certain areas of the cave can be a bit dangerous if the water is moving quickly. It's only a matter of time before someone gets knocked out on a cruise line cave tubing excursion!

[sounder]

We went in to Belize in the morning, did a bit of shopping & were back out to the boat by 10, had a bite to eat & off to our excursion by 11 - no problem. The tenders were back & forth all day - even if there weren't many people in Belize to go back to the ship, there were people on the ship waiting to get in to Belize, so they are constantly back & forth. I think the ship crew warn you, just to err on the side of caution.

[cruisevirgin06]

when we went to get our number 1 sticker they told us there was no way we were getting off the boat before 10am. We had been talking to some other people that we met that were trying to get off as well and we ran into them later in the evening and they said they didn't get off until 10:30. I guess it just depends on how many prebooked early morning excursions you have going. Glad things worked out for you :)