excursion in Ocho Rios - (have already checked port board and searched here)

[glorialagos]

Hello!

 

My friend and I will be boarding Nieuw Statendam in two weeks and will be taking the HAL excursion "Dunns Falls and Dolphin Cove".  The two reviews posted on the excursion are very good, but over 10 years old.  I did not find what I was looking for on the port board.

 

Has anyone done this excursion recently?  Are there suggestions you could give us?  I have seen the general pushy vendors and challenging falls info.

 

I am more curious about the Dolphin Cove part.  Also, the excursion is for 4 hours and a lot of what I have read says there are long lines.  Do the HAL excursions skip the lines or is there not much time at either place?

 

There is no mention of lunch provided.  Can someone recommend a place for lunch?

 

Any info on this excursion is greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

[CruiserBruce]

I seriously doubt there will be a lunch for a 4 hour tour...that would take up over an hour of the tour!

[QuattroRomeo]

https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/ca/cruise-destinations/caribbean-cruises/caribbean-ports/ocj/29320

 

You might try reading this, it has 37 reviews, several are recent. I found it searching excursions on the general HAL site.

[OlsSalt]

How many other ships are in port with you that day, both close and near by. This is a popular excursion. 

 

Might want to consider rafting on the "Bray" (?) River in Jamaica -it was pretty and  serene. Crowd handling was good. 

[glorialagos]

2 hours ago, QuattroRomeo said:

https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/ca/cruise-destinations/caribbean-cruises/caribbean-ports/ocj/29320

 

You might try reading this, it has 37 reviews, several are recent. I found it searching excursions on the general HAL site.

Thank you SO much!!!!  These reviews are extremely helpful and just what I was looking for!

 

[QuattroRomeo]

Glad it helped! I find that when you look at the excursions on a booking, sometimes the reviews are there and sometimes not. So I try the general (no booking) site too and often they are there. But we all know how bumpy the website maintenance is! 

Plus, in Jamaica many of the tours are the same from 3 different ports, so you can try looking at Falmouth and Montego Bay, too.

 

[tartanmom]

We were on the Zaandam holiday cruise a few weeks ago and did the Dunns River Falls Express tour. It was excellent and there were no crowds. It seemed that the Express tour went directly to Dunns River first thing in the morning while the combo tours did the Dunns River portion 2nd. There was one group of 3 people about 100' ahead of us while climbing and no one behind us. We weren't rushed to go up the Falls and there was plenty of time for photos as we went. As we were leaving the parking lot was filling up quickly so I'm sure the later excursion groups would have experience more crowds. The vendors were just starting to set up as we were leaving so we avoided a lot of that "pushy-ness too".