Why so few trips with Celebrity?

[etoile]

We will be stopping at Bonaire on our Celebrity cruise in February. I was looking at the excursions offered by the cruise line, and I was amazed that there were only TWO. One is a $700 fishing charter for 4 hours and the other is a sail, beach, and snorkle trip on the Samur, $69 for 3.25 hours. Does anybody know why there wouldn't be any other trips? Is there anything to do in Bonaire that we should know about?

[m steve]

Bonaire is a scuba paradise and that's about it. Not a lot of shopping or majorsightseeing.There is a National park on one side that has parrots and other wild animals. Other than that there are the slave huts next to the flamingos and salt flats and the big antennae for Radio Netherlands and a Christian group. Lac bay is quite shallow and you can find conch there as well as flies. There's a lot of cactus and wild donkeys.

[gizmo]

I am surprised there is no island tour offered. Maybe when you cruise gets closer you will be offered more tours.

[Mr. Boston]

That's odd, we will be on the exact same cruise departing on 2/23/08 and the Celebrity shore excursion brochure lists 13 different excursions for Bonaire. They do update the brochure periodically so you might want to check again.

[2Canucks]

Hi etoile

 

 

We have the "same" problem! Celebrity is only offering the 2 excursions you mentioned for our sail date Jan 19/08 too. I emailled Celebrity and they replied to keep checking...which I have done for the past 2 months with "no" changes so decided to phone Celebrity. I was told they were only offering these 2 excursions and there would be no more excursions added to the list! :(

 

As Mr. Boston mentioned there are lots of excursions listed in the Shore Excursion list online... accessible to everyone... but when you access your "offered" excursions with your "Registration" number for your cruise date only 2 come up!!

 

Someone (many cruises) on our Roll Call mentioned that Bonaire is a very small island with a "smaller"tour guide/company list" to pick excursions from and also the "Princess Cruise Line" has the "dibs" on all the tours offered on this island... so when they are in port on the same day as your ship the tours are all booked up through them!! :( The Crown Princess (3080 pax) is in port on our day in Bonaire so I guess Celebrity wasn't left with many excursion choices.

 

This Bonaire board is so slow with no "local" help/info available online to get any info on other "private" tour guides like other ports...wish there was a way to contact someone there! I have tried the tourist office and they snail mailed me a tiny brochure with pictures and a list of hotels, airlines travel agents and a few "dive' tours were mentioned with telephone numbers...no email addresses! If you're interested I could post the names I received but I have "no" knowledge or experience with any of these tour companies....and reviews here on this board probably won't happen.

 

We've decided to do a "walkabout' and have come across some names of bars/restaurants that were listed on "Things to do in Bonaire" through "Google"...reviews from land based holiday people. We only have a "short" stop here from 1:00pm to 7:00pm. Taxi's etc at the pier...to do any personal tours...aren't mentioned anywhere so will have to wait and see when we get there and then decide if we want to "risk" it. We usually do "lots" of research on "private tour guides" and we don't book anyone unless there's "lots" of reviews/feedback from cruisecritic members.

 

Hopefully in the near future someone will hook up to the Bonaire board and pass on answers to all of our questions. :)

 

Good Luck with your Bonaire day!

 

Pat :)

[bluff121]

Hi etoile

 

I know this post is a little dated but I thought I'd reply just in case...

My husband and I along with another couple on are this very cruise in February (I've chatted briefly with you on roll call for Celebrity). I've done a bit of research on Bonaire for the same reason (they're so limited with excursions). From what I gather, this is a great island for snorkle and scuba and that's probably what we'll do. I've pulled this from some other discussions that might be helpful:

 

http://www.bonairetalk.com/

www.edenbeach.com

Part of Bonaire's "charm" is that the reef is immediately all around the island - which means a rocky shoreline. We had a great time snorkeling there (at Eden Beach)... then had a glorious beach day like you described the next day in Aruba, at Palm Beach!

Eden beach is part of the Eden resort. There are showers, changing facilities, bathrooms, a very nice beach bar. Rental lounges are available and there is quite a bit of shade under lots of palm trees. The snorkeling is superb! Just like swimming in an overstocked aquarium. Highly recommended.

We'll probably taxi to Eden Beach and snorkle and lay about for the afternoon! Hope this was helpful!!

[etoile]

Sounds like a good plan to me, bluff! I notice that there is exactly one more tour from Celebrity now, a little trip to Klein Bonaire. I will probably follow your lead and go snorkeling. :)

[bluff121]

Hopefully we'll see you there!

 

We've been a little behind the curve on planning our excursions... is it safest to plan with the Cruise Line or are there many reputable tour operators out there? We tend to err on the looser side of things with respect to island tours (rather than being so structured). So I try to avoid the "30 people packed on bus tour" of this or that island. Since we're on the same cruise, do you have any other suggestions? Recognizing this post is for Bonaire, drop me an email if you have a chance: ama624@charter.net.

 

Only 50 more days to go!

~Amy