Land&Sea: Turtles, Hell, Nautilus anyone?

[Janeite]

Does anyone have any experience or feedback on the Land and Sea Tour excursion -- in our case from RCI?

 

This is a tour with stops at the Turtle farm, 7 mile beach (photo op), Nautilus half-sub, rum cake factory, and Hell. It's a 3.5 hour tour.

 

We're planning this for our GC stop because we're a 3-generation group. It gives some experience of unique elements (reefs, ship wrecks, turtles, and "Hell") for a group of 6 from age 8 to age 86!

 

I do think it's the best mix for our ages and interests. But I'm curious what opinions have been for this. Thanks for any input!

[Mel8730]

Would love to hear a response to this as well. We have a group with an age range of 13 - 74. My 13-year old daughter actually suggested this tour.

[rbm444]

We originally had booked a longer tour but when we got on board we had a note in our cabin telling us the tour was cancelled. The only option we had was do nothing or the Turtle Farm, Hell. Rum Factory, 7 mile beach tour. I think it was suppose to be 2+ hours but I think that includes the time they take to stuff the bus with as many people as possible. Let me just say that the turtle farm was really interesting and a very nice clean set up. The rest of the tour was worthless. In and out of a crowded bus with maybe a few minutes at each site to buy something. They jammed us in so tight in the little bus that our daughters had to sit on our laps the whole time. The shortest stop was 7 mile beach, just time for a picture and back on the bus. It really was a hurry up and get back in experience. I guess that is why I am not doing ship excursions anymore. We have had some great experiences with tours we have booked on our own. Granted this was 2 years ago so hopefully it has changed. Do some research here and maybe you can find a tour operator that will customize a tour for your group.

[Mel8730]

Thanks for your response! I will keep looking.

[PlanoDebbie]

I've been to GC twice now.

 

First time we took a tour to see Hell, Turtle Farm and Rum Cake Factory. Total waste of money. If you've seen anyone's pictures from Hell, you've seen all of it. Hell is just a bunch of black rocks that someone said kind of made them think of Hell. Rum Cake Factory turned out to just be a little gift shop that was sampling some rum cakes. They are very small and not very good. You can buy the exact same ones on the Carnival ships. Turtle Farm was a little interesting to see, but definitely NOT a must see.

 

Based upon reviews we read on CC, we booked the Rays, Reef and Rum Point tour through Nativeway Tours. It was awesome. We had a very small group of 17 people on our tour. Ages from 11 to 75. Got lots of personal attention while being in the water with the Stingrays. Next was snorkeling on the barrier reef. Not too many fish, but the water was beautiful. After that we had lunch provided at Rum Point Beach with lots of time to also relax on the beach and in the water. I would definitely book another tour with Nativeway again in a heartbeat. They were professional, friendly and very helpful. Our captain was Thomas. He and his crew did an outstanding job. We still had an hour to shop at the pier when we returned.