Aqua Boats & Snorkeling w/ Royal Carb?

[lakerat2]

Royal Caribbean offers an excursion Aqua Boats & snorkeling. Has anyone been on this excursion? Any info. i believe they take you to a island? to snorkel. My DH & kids do not want to do stingray city. But we want to snorkel with small groups away from crowds stirring up the area. Any suggetions?

 

Thanks:)

[J and G]

We did this tour in 2001 (admittedly a long time ago and things may have changed) and it was AWFUL! The wind was too strong for the tour and the guides told us that, but said that their boss insisted we go anyway. We are boaters and should have known better, but we do not get seasick (and also knew we would not get a refund) so we went.

 

Right away we found that our boat (a hard-bottom inflatable dinghy) did not go as fast as other people's. Despite the rough water, we finally caught up with the group at the first snorkel stop. One of the guides went under our boat and found that the hard bottom had a small crack and we were taking on water. We were blamed for "breaking the boat."

 

At the first snorkel stop there was nothing much to see for the few who got in the water. There was some large coral (partially dead), but that was about all. The strong current washed us both into the coral and we were scolded for touching it...like we wanted to....it scraped us badly and left little splinter-like spines in our skin that took weeks to heal.

 

It was VERY difficult to get back into the dinghies and the guides offered little, if any, help. Several people returned to the dock at that point. We went to the second snorkel stop (supposedly a shipwreck) which was in a boat lane and was very dangerous! I couldn't believe they took us there!

 

We then returned to the dock, with no beach stop at all. It was a total waste of time and money and I would not consider taking this shore excursion again or recommending it to others. We complained to RCCL about the dangerous conditions but got no response whatsoever.