Grand Cayman - Most time in the water Snorkeling?

[woodcycl]

My wife and I will be on the Carnival Liberty this Saturday for a 7day trip and be in Grand Cayman mid-week.

 

Did a lot of searching on the boards and found a lot of great information. I think we will go with Captain Marvin's for our snorkeling excursion. But, just want to check with folks in-the-know ... what are our options for being in the water the most amount of time snorkeling? Seems like most of the offerings are only a few hours and they take you to a minimum of 2 and sometimes 3 to 4 different places. My wife and I would like to spend more time actually snorkeling than traveling once on the excursion. Any thoughts?

 

Does the Captain Marvin Full Excursion 5 hour Barrier Reef, Coral Gardens, Stingray City tour, and lunch have more snorkeling time than the Half-Excursion 3 hour tour ...same things ... but without lunch?

 

Any other outfits we should consider to obtain more in-water time?

 

Many thanks,

Brian

[Sea2Port2Sea]

I hope there are some good answers to this because it is exactly what I am wondering also. We will be in GC in April. I was there 2 years ago & we booked with Nativeway, which was good. We did the Rays, Reef & Rum Point tour. We were at stingray city I guess about 30 min or so, long enough to ooh and awe and take pictures. Glad we weren't with a cruise sponsored tour since they spent longer there, more people on their boat plus they had to take so many pictures. Nativeways took pictures, but it wasn't the sole purpose of visiting stingray city. It was a neat experience. Then it was off to snorkeling in the reef. I can't remember how much time it took to get there, but it seemed that we didn't have much snorkeling time, maybe 30-40 min. max and all of a sudden, we thought, done already? Well, okay. Off to lunch at Rum Point Beach, which was really great & the beach was beautiful. But we had about 1.5 hrs there - would have preferred to have more snorkeling time.

So, back to GC this April and looking at our options. Like you, I thought about the Capt Marvin's excursion. The one with lunch doesn't give you that much more snorkeling time - I contacted them. They go to the same places as the half day excursion; sting ray city, coral garden & reef - so 2 rays stop, but then the extra time is used to get to Kaibo Yacht Club for lunch. When I emailed them and said our stop is 8-3 they said there is not enough time to do the full day excursion, which is what I suspected. Email said that the half day excursion gives about 25-30 min. snorkeling time at reef & coral garden. I'd rather spend more time in one place in the water, than going from one place to another. Not sure yet what we will do.

[woodcycl]

Thanks for the reply. That is exactly what I was afraid of ... spending only 30 to 40 minutes in each of the reef areas. I'd prefer to have a snorkeling only excursion or one with minimal time with the stingrays if at all possible.

 

I look forward to everyone's thoughts and recommendations.

 

Thanks much,

Brian