Looking for snorkeling tour recommendation

[tocanada]

Last time I went to Belize, I did the cave tubing with Major Tom and it was fantastic.

This time, I would like to go snorkeling. Coral Breeze seems to be highly recommended but I have been to Sting Ray City in the Caymans so sting rays are not essential for me.

Just trying to decide between Coral Breeze or doing a Royal Caribbean excursion BEB1 (Rendeyvous Caye) or BEB2 (Turneffe Atoll).

 

andrew

[FAD]

I am also looking for a snorkeling tour. CB sounds fine but I wonder if anyone has any experience with another tour company (I don't want Eco tours on this trip).

[Will in sunny FL]

You really can not go wrong with Coral Breeze for the Coral Gardens/Shark & Sting Ray alley snorkeling trip & a local lunch on Caye Caulker.

We do it twice a year & still love it.

Look at their online site where the snorkeling tours are explained in detail.

Have a ball.

Bill in FL

[ajl5102]

great thread topic! I am going on Carnival Glory in March and was looking for a snorkeling tour as well. I am split between booking a Carnival one or going local. The bonus of the Carnival is the boat picks you up at the ship, no tender. However, as of now the only Carnival snorkeling excursion they have up is Geoff's Caye. I have read some reviews, and looked at youtube videos and this particular place does not look that great in terms of snorkeling.

 

Does anyone know if Carnival will post more snorkeling excursions closer to the sail date of March 7th?

[FAD]

Will, I know you are a big fan of Coral Breeze I've seen any number of your posts about them.

And i think they would be fine i guess I was hoping for more snorkeling spots.

[Perrier]

Just returned off Carnival Dream (1/9 - 1/16). We did the snorkel cruise through Coral Breezes (Hammerhead Sports) to Caye Caulker. The employees were great! Really nice people! But I wouldn't do this again. There were 18 of us w/3 guides (on a dive boat, not a catamaran). Rather than splitting up the group for snorkeling, all 18 of us went together. Talk about a cluster! I spent more time trying to keep fins out of my face than actually looking at sealife. It didn't take me long to hang back & bring up the rear of the group. Also, it's very shallow when we entered the water, & of course you're not suppose to touch the coral or stir up the sand on the bottom. So, if you have any trouble w/your snorkeling equipment, hopefully you can fix it while floating horizontally. I had a bit of trouble w/my snorkel, & it was while I was in the most shallow area, & I did scrape my knee on the coral b/c I didn't realize I was that close to it b/c I was trying to fix my snorkel. I am not a rookie snorkeler. I am a rookie at snorkeling in such shallow water though. Didn't like it. If you've ever been snorkeling elsewhere w/beautiful coral & sealife, you will be disappointed. And Sstingray Alley wasn't much to brag about either. Now, if you've never seen stingrays, then you'd probably enjoy it. But if you've ever done Singray City on Grand Caymen, then this will be boring. I was in the water at Singray Alley for about 1 minute & I'd had enough. Loved Stingray City on Grand Caymen! But this was just not as grand at that.

[BeachChica]

I have done this tour to Shark Ray Alley and I too would say that it was a bit disappointing, particularly if you are more of an intermediate or advanced snorkeler.

We will be in Belize in March and also interested in some recommendations for snorkel tours (outside of the ship). We have been to Belize several times and done cave tubing twice, zip lining once and Shark Ray Alley. This time we'd love to do some great snorkeling - sounds like that's what some of the other posters are looking for too so if anyone has any recommendations that would be great. Thank you!!! :)

[mdrobtx]

I have done this tour to Shark Ray Alley and I too would say that it was a bit disappointing, particularly if you are more of an intermediate or advanced snorkeler.

We will be in Belize in March and also interested in some recommendations for snorkel tours (outside of the ship). We have been to Belize several times and done cave tubing twice, zip lining once and Shark Ray Alley. This time we'd love to do some great snorkeling - sounds like that's what some of the other posters are looking for too so if anyone has any recommendations that would be great. Thank you!!! :)

 

We snorkeled Ambergris Caye in Jan. I've dove and snorkeled all over the Caribbean and it was in the top five. We used ecotoursbelize to book it. Great outfit and great people. Here's my review. Be sure to check out the video link at the end of the reiview for several short videos of the trip.

 

Next port was Belize City. Now here we got even more adventurous. We booked an excursion where we flew over to Ambergris Caye for a snorkel trip to the Hol Chan marine reserve and then over to shark ray alley to swim with the sharks and rays. This was done thru ecotoursbelize. This excursion had to be one of the best excursions we’d ever taken. Search the cruise critic members list for my user name and look for the post on this excursion and you will find a full review with pics and video. But here are the highlights. First the tender ticket process with Carnival. They start handing out tender tickets between 7:30 and 8am in the Follies theater. I arrived about 7:15 as we needed to get off the ship as soon as possible to catch our flight. The Carnival reps showed up about 7:30 and informed me that it would be about 20 minutes till they handed out the stickers. I was the only guest in the Follies. They let me stay and closed the doors and the other guests started lining up outside. A few realized they could go to the balcony seats on deck 3 and walk down the stairs inside the theater so they got in early and the Carnival reps let them stay. At 7:35 the Carnival rep asked me whether I was on a ship sponsored tour and I relpied “no”. He gave me a sticker with a number 4 on it. This is a numerical value only and does NOT represent when you will get off the ship. They will start with a number (4 in this case) and then go in numerical order after that. So it does not mean you will be the 4th group getting off. We went up to the cabin and got our snorkel gear together and headed back to the Follies theater at 8am where all persons wanting to go to shore or on tours have to depart from. After reading the previous reviews I figured we had a long wait. We were scheduled on a 9:30 flight (ships time) so we had an hour and a half to get off the ship and make it to the municiple airport. WOW!! They started calling the Carnival sponsored tours just after 8am. They called number 4 for all persons who wanted to go to shore on their own. COOL, we were off the ship about 8:25am. They tender took 15 minutes exactly. We were met directly on the pier with a rep from the tour company and they took us to their office on the pier to issue us flight vouchers and take care of the paper work. After a few minutes they drove us to the airport (7 minutes) and we arrived there right at 9am. Caught the 9:30am flight over to Ambergris on Maya Island Air (14 minutes). We were met at the airport shack by a rep from the snorkel/dive shop and he walked us over to their shop and we got our fins and gear. I’ve dove and snorkeled all over the Carribean and the Hol Chan marine reserve is some of the best snorkeling I’ve ever done. There are park rangers in boats right there to make sure it remains pristine. I jumped into waist deep water, stuck my head in and right there was a green sea turtle and ray. WOW again. Within 10 minutes we’d seen rays, turtles, two morays and nurse sharks. It was hard to get out of the water. Next stop was shark ray alley. On the way there we ran into a pod of dolphin. A rare occurance in the shallow reef area our dive master told us. He pulled right up to them and for 5 or 6 minutes we had a great photo and video ops. Our dive master encouraged us to jump in with them but then we’d missed the photos and videos. Besides they were moving pretty fast and I figured you’d only have a few seconds at most before they were out of sight or touch. It was a very exciting experience. Once again look for my full review and videos by searchng Ambergris Caye in the Belize forum. This excursion is done every day ships are in port and they have never had any guest miss the tender back to the ship. All I can say is BOOK IT! You will not be dissappointed. It is $115 per person and this includes everything. They hand walk you thru the whole day, flight and everything. After the snorkeling we grabbed a bite to eat and walked back to the airstrip for our 2pm fllight back to Belize city. It is a beautiful flight with great views of the many Cayes. The last tender leaves at 4pm and we were back on the pier at 2:30 with plenty of time to have a couple of Belikins at the Wet Lizard.

 

videos. click on the link and they will play automatically back to back. First two short ones are of just tendering into Belize City.

[FAD]

Wow MDROBTY I can’t believe you answered this question because I have been trying unsuccessfully to read your long review which is important to me because you went on this airplane trip to snorkel while many of the reviews have been by people who wanted to dive. I am going woozy trying to find you long review on either Port of Call- Belize or under your member name. Can you post your long review here or give me more specific on it’s location (like the date posted)?

[mdrobtx]

FAD, scroll down this page to find my review and the next to read our discussion concerning snorkeling off Ambergris Caye. There's video also.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1069185&page=6

[jobythebay]

Hi, Any ideas?

 

We will be in Belize with some family members. One of our daughters (30) wants to scuba and we want to snorkel. We would love to at least start from the same place as she does. I know she is not an adult but a doctor but still she is our kid and the thought of leaving her on her own by herself to do a scuba trip is not very appealing. Still one of the reasons she is taking the time to spend this week with us is to scuba in Belize...so ideas of tours/tour companies? Thanks

[ktwest]

We just returned from cruise on NCL Spirit...we took the ship's Shark Alley Excursion to avoid the tendering issues (if you don't book the ship's excursions you have to wait to get off the ship..up to 2-3 hours...although, they didn't check our tickets...we met at the theater at 7:45am ..they called our tour and we were put on a tender to shore).

 

The Shark Alley Excursion was a bit of a disappointment for a couple of reasons...the tour operators did not have enough gear (so, we waited an hour for gear to arrive).

 

The boat ride to the snorkeling is almost 1.5 hours each way on a crowded uncovered boat. Our tour was overbooked with 53 people, should have been 35 at the most.

 

The reefs they took us to were more geared to beginner snorkeling. Shark Alley had a bunch of manta rays and we saw a couple of nurse sharks.

 

You then travel another 15-20 minutes to San Pedro for a local lunch, not really worth the extra time traveling north. They should have gone south to another local joint, closer to Belize City.

 

I didn't think the tour was worth the money. I would recommend finding an excursion on your own to a closer snorkeling spot.

[Will in sunny FL]

Sounds to me like you should have gone with Coral Breeze Tours !

We were with them last week on 11/15 & the 49' boat with lots of shade had 16 people on it to Caye Caulker where half got off to spend the day which left us 8 snorkeling at the two stops.

The Carnival Dream now has Belize as their first stop & we were the ONLY ship there all day long which was a super change for Carnival to make !

Probably our best day with CB & weather ever !

Our favorite snorkeling is still Tayabana Beach in Roatan.

[MamaParrotHead]

I'm not normally a big fan of ship tours, but if I'm ever in Belize again I will make an exception. I wasted atleast an hour between waiting for tender ticket/group to go, then tendering all the way into Belize City and then riding the excursion boat literally right past the ship I'd just come from to head out towards the snorkeling area. Then ofcourse after the tour all the way back to Belize City, past the ship again, and then having to tender back to the ship. Total waste of precious port time.

 

On top of which, we had a stinker of a time with Coral Breeze tours. Tons of things went wrong...from them not having proper snorkel equipment for my son (inspite of my informing them ahead of time), to not being able to see a thing while snorkeling (which was frustrating bc we'd wasted so much time getting out there, I'd have guessed they'd know we would have zero visability because of how rough the water was), rude crew, the list goes on. Mark was great about giving us a decent refund, but I can't give them a good recommendation in good conscience.

[holdon216]

:rolleyes: We used Eco this past July and felt the same about them as the CB comment. I was possibly goin g to go the CB route this time but don't knwo what to do now. Don't want to cave tube or zip line. SO... what else is there to do in Belize???

[BeachChica]

Cave Tubing and Zip Lining are the main things to do in Belize. I have been there several times and have never really seen great snorkeling that this accessable from a cruise ship. Did the Shark, Ray Alley with Coral Breeze - that was just OK. Last time we booked a snorkeling & Cay Caulker excursion through the ship - the snorkeling at the reef was more of a beginner level - pretty shallow and people everywhere but there was definitely things to see (juvenile fish, saw some squid etc.). The beach at the Caye was nice for relaxing but not much else to do there. If you're looking to do some good snorkeling I would suggest a different port. the snorkeling is excellent in Roatan.

 

Jessie

[Gueifu]

Well this is a good site