Which cruise ship shore excursions should you avoid? — featuring Royal Caribbean Blog

0:00 what's the worst fear you have about booking a Shore Excursion probably that it's a waste of your time money or both and today I've got five short excursions that I took that I instantly regretted up next [Music] hey everyone it's Matt from oldgreenblog.com there have been a few short excursions I've taken over the

0:25 years and I would love to get my time and money back for sure excursions are a major part of any increase vacation because the ports of color cruise ship visits is really an extension of the overall trip each day you visit a new Port there's just enough time to get a taste of what that City or Islander

0:39 country has to offer and I gotta admit it's one of the first things that attracted me to going on a cruise being able to go to these amazing places whether they're beautiful exotic interesting cool or combination of all those really had a major draw for me so the idea is you go on a cruise ship

0:55 every day you're whisked away to a different Port of Call and the opportunity to do something fun on Shore and most of the time I have no problems in fact I've had usually good luck with choosing a Taurus I've learned the sort of things I like and don't like to do but once in a while I run into a dud and

1:11 realize I've made a mistake sometimes the issue is subjected because I personally don't care for the type of tour offered or something else just isn't my cup of tea other times I felt torch didn't measure up to expectations but in any case it left me wishing I had done something else I think a lot of

1:26 people struggle quite frankly with what tour to pick and which Shore Excursion would be right for them so today I wanted to share examples of five tours that I took that were really big mistakes and why they were mistakes in that hoping that not necessarily you're going to avoid necessarily these five

1:41 specific tours okay there's five less out of the hundreds you could possibly choose from but more to the point that you're gonna get some insight as to why these didn't work so help you pick a better short Excursion for you and your family let's start with number one and that is the Blue Waters Beach Escape in

1:56 Falmouth Jamaica ever since rokerman started visiting Falmouth Jamaica I've really struggled to find a great go-to short Excursion I often get questions here on our YouTube channel about what to do in Falmouth and and to be honest I still don't have a good answer for you part of the issue is found with this

2:10 relatively new crew Sport and so there are a lot of attractions nearby which means you need a long bus trip to get to the great stuff that's in Jamaica on one visit in 2016 I thought the heck was spending an hour or more on a bus we're just gonna go to the beach enjoy the Caribbean Waters because how bad could

2:26 it be we try the Blue Waters Beach Escape that I booked through Royal Caribbean and it reinforced one of the most common issues a person can have on a tour booked through the cruise line and oversold an underwhelming experience while the bus ride was short to the beach it was exactly what I wanted about

2:40 10 minutes we found a ton of other tours that already beaten us there which left very little seating some guests who arrived after us had no chairs available and had to settle for beach chair mats until chairs were freed up by departing guests the short Excursion title says an exclusive Blue Waters Beach Escape but

2:56 clearly this was not as exclusive as one may have thought based on reading that on top of that the food offered by the beaches quote five star chefs was also really underwhelming and pretty Limited in selection so the lesson for me here was to reconsider Beach Break shore excursions sold through the cruise line

3:13 for the overselling aspect it brings with it in the Caribbean especially there are plenty of beaches in almost any port you're going to visit so I'm besser curves by trying to find another way to visit one of the other less crowded options all right now so picky backing on that that was a big oopsie

3:27 right let's move on to number two and that is a day of Margaritaville so another Jamaica mistaka was to skip the tours all together and just hang out at the Margaritaville in Falmouth when you get to Falmouth there is a port area in which there's shops and dining and whatnot and one of those restaurants on

3:44 there is a Margaritaville Bar Resort whatever you want to call it in which you can go there and there's a bar and there's a restaurant there's actually a pool and I thought heck this is the perfect alternative we just tried to do a tour that took us not too long from the port but it didn't really work out

3:58 because it was oversold and all this so we're gonna do the opposite we're going to hang out the port it looks like a very nice pool we'll have a great time so the fact that there was a pool here was really appealing because there was plenty of chairs and food that we'll enjoy even though something authentic or

4:11 anything like that at least we knew that it would be food that someone of us would eat right and you know what the day started off pretty darn good we got some Margaritaville when we got off the ship found our spot and there was no cost to enter the pool or use the facilities and my kids at the time they

4:24 were pretty young at that point really enjoyed the pool unfortunately a lot of other people had the same idea that we did and by mid-morning the pool and the seating was super crowded being on Margaritaville the food and drink were nothing spectacular but also spectacularly expensive the longer we

4:41 stayed the more I thought I could be enjoying the very similar experience back on the cruise ship for a lot less money we eventually packed our things up went back to the ship but the lesson I learned here was Margaritaville is fine for a quick visit but not a whole day stop number three on my list is trying

4:55 to get St John's on my own ever since I visited St John in the U.S Virgin Islands I loved how absolutely beautiful it was and wanted to return every time in fact if you're listening to this I'm here to tell you the most beautiful beach I've ever been to in the Caribbean is in Saint John St John is a

5:09 neighboring Island right next to St Thomas requires a short ferry ride to get over there and in order to get to the ferry ride you need to go to an area called Red Hook Red Hook is not a really popular area because it's not near any of the beaches that are there so among tourists it's not that popular and the

5:24 issue is getting to there because it's far enough away you certainly can't walk you need a taxi of some kind so my plan was to go to the ferry to nearby St John and enjoy a day at one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever visited we went to the taxi stand in downtown Charlotte Amalie which is right where

5:37 you disembarked the ship and we asked for a taxi to get us over there each Taxi Driver passed on us someone else as they were unwilling to drive us there for some reason the taxis in Saint Thomas are primarily these converted pickup truck buses and the taxi operators all want to maximize every

5:54 seat in the vehicle so unlike saying New York City in which you get a taxi and it is your vehicle here you are sharing them and really in St Thomas the taxes in the form of a sedan as an example are really non-existent so after literally 30 or 40 minutes of standing around trying to figure out someone who would

6:09 take us there we were told the board one of the buses that goes to Red Hook except the bus that was not going to Red Hook when I got on the bus I asked somebody else like hey where are you guys going and they said they weren't going to Red Hook it was going everywhere else but Red Hook and

6:21 basically the idea was they would take all those other people there and then they would say pity on us I guess and drop us off in Red Hook so clearly the plan was to take these folks somewhere and drop us off later I was so irritated in the situation that I decided I would rather spend my day back on this ship

6:35 then deal with a taxi Consortium my lesson learned here was to either book A Royal Caribbean Excursion of Texas Saint John or pre-arranged private transportation to the ferry area number four on our list is Kennedy Space Center no don't worry I love Kennedy Space Center I'm not here to tell you

6:51 that it's a bad idea in fact I loved it because when I was on anthem of the Seas we did our first visit to Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral Florida and it was amazing the issue was how I chose to get there so as I mentioned we sailed on anthem of the Seas from New York and had

7:05 a ports off in Port Canaveral I don't remember why but when we decided to visit Kennedy Space Center I was fixated on finding a Royal Caribbean Shore Excursion to take us there Kennedy Space Center is a very short distance by car for Port Canaveral and I'll be honest I have no idea why I did just take a taxi

7:20 over there we got to the Space Center without any problems and had a fabulous time but we wasted a lot of time with the bus I had booked the Kennedy Space Center Express tour through Royal Caribbean which was not a guided tour and would simply drive us to the entrance and then give us a time to

7:33 return back part of my mistake was assuming five hours at Kennedy Space Center was going to be too much time and I'd run out of things to do the reality was it was the opposite I wish I had an extra five hours because it was incredible to visit there so had a just taken a taxi to Kennedy Space Center or

7:47 a Lyft or an Uber for that matter we could have squeezed out another hour or two from our day rather than relying on Royal Caribbean Transportation so there's the lesson learned and finally my last shore Excursion mistake was going to Mr Sanchos and Cozumel and the most recent short Excursion goof was

8:03 spending the day at Mr Sancho's Beach Club in Cozumel now this is not my first time there I've been there before but we decided to go back post pandemic see what it was like and within a half hour of arriving that little voice in my head started saying this is a mistake and I try my best to enjoy the day but it was

8:19 really a disappointment it's my opinion that Mr Sanchez's popularity seems to have led to one of the faux pas of any Beach spot overcrowding they clearly had sold every single chair at the resort and I found it to be overcrowded and in my opinion unenjoyable the wait staff were great I have no problem with my

8:35 staff at all but I found it disappointing how busy things were because it felt like we're all pushed together a little too much making matters worse was the food which came out overcooked and just wasn't up up to standards especially considering that we're in Mexico I'm not getting great

8:48 food I know Mr Sanchez is a beach resort that a lot of people have enjoyed over the years but in my opinion based on my experience I thought it pal to comparison to many other Beach days in Cozumel now before we get going I do have one more recommendation that's actually to avoid tours that go to Walt

9:04 Disney World this is not based on personal experience but just a word of caution a lot of people that visit Port Canaveral for the day are attempted to book a short Excursion that takes them to Walt Disney World in nearby Orlando or even Universal Studios we'll put that out there as well it's an hour-long

9:18 drive from the port to Orlando and seems like a great idea for a day visit the problem with this idea is how incredibly expensive a one-day pass is to the parks along with the timing because your cruise ship arrives much later than when the theme parks open for the day compounded by the fact that will take

9:34 you time to disembark and then get drive to the parks you'll have a very limited window of time to enjoy what Disney has to offer moreover because you have to be back on board the ship much sooner than the theme parks close there there's just no way you're going to get your money's

9:47 worth from a day visit if you want to experience Disney World with a cruise your best bet is to do a land vacation before your cruise for a few days and then book a short weekend cruise on Royal Caribbean to recuperate for all that walking around so there you have it there are my five miles really six I

10:03 guess cruise ship Shore Excursion mistakes that I instantly regretted let me know in the comments below which tours have you done that you really knew off the bat that you made a terrible mistake I can't wait to commiserate together in the comments below and if you found this video helpful hit the

10:18 like button subscribe our Channel and turn on notifications that way YouTube lets you know we have a brand new video to share this has been Matt from welcomingblog.com we'll talk again real soon