Cave Tubing / Zipline Combo With Major Tom - Getting Back to the Ship On Time

[maggiek99]

Okay, so we leave in a week for our trip. I have booked the cave tubing / zip line combo with Major Tom in Belize. Now, I'm concerned (after reading other posts elsewhere on cruise critic) that we'll run into a time problem with being back to catch a tender. Has anyone done this combo trip with Major Tom recently who can allay my fears? We don't want to get stuck in Belize but do want to do both the cave tubing and ziplining.

[izzydog]

I have the same question. We booked the same tour with Major Tom for April and now my wife is a little nervous. Any input would be great.

[izzydog]

I emailed Major Tom about this and here is his reply,

 

Absolutely NO PROBLEM with timings - a whole bunch of us independents work together closely to ensure safety, good timing, and lots of fun - this has worked well for the past 12 years, since the start of cruise shipping in Belize.

I think we should be fine. They wouldn't offer the trips if they didn't think they could make it. Also if people started missing the ship, we would be hearing about it and they would not be in business very long.

[izzydog]

maggiek,

 

Be sure to let us know about this excursion and how it turned out for you. Hope you have a great cruise!

[Snorkel2Much]

We did this tour 2 weeks ago and had over an hour to spare after we were dropped off at the port. They offered to take us around town to some "better" stores but I declined, I had given the rest of my available cash to our guides for doing an awesome job. Everyone of the guides had cell phones and the different tour companies seemed to get along pretty well so I was confident that if we had any transport issues one of the others would've pitched in.

[izzydog]

Hi Maggie, hope you had a great cruise. I was wondering if you had any updates on your trip?

[maggiek99]

Izzy,

 

We had a good cruise. During the last two weeks, I decided to switch our excursion to go with the ship's excursion, because I was starting to read some recent negative reviews about Major Tom's operation. It was about $35 a person more, but it was fantastic! I never felt like I was being herded at all (like sometimes happens on cruise ship sponsored tours). Our bus was 32 people but we were split up in groups of 8 people per guide on the cave tubing. The ziplining was great because we just started and worked our way through the course, and never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to zip. I am not sure which company NCL uses but we had two of the best tour guides on our bus trip (Eduardo and Jose). They gave us so much information about Belize! I did get an email back from Major Tom saying that they would refund my $38 dollar deposit, but haven't seen the refund yet. I only canceled a couple of weeks ago, so that may still come along. The ship was actually about 1 1/2 hours late leaving Belize. While eating dinner, we saw several boats (not our tenders but smaller boats) bring people out to the ship. I never heard if those people were on a cave tubing tour, or if it was just irresponsible spring break kids who lost track of time. Lucky for them, the boat did wait! Hope this helps with your decision...

[kristieokc]

We just did the cave tubing tour last week with Major Tom and had no problem whatsoever. There were probably 30 or so people on our bus; half (our group) did cave tubing only, and the other half was doing a cave tubing / zip lining combo. Our group finished the cave tubing first and had a bit more time (maybe 20 minutes or so) to eat lunch. The food was good, but we were served out of styrofoam containers and told to eat on the bus, holding our to-go boxes and drinks in our lap. That was the only part of the day that I didn't enjoy. When the other half of the group came back, they had done zip lining first, then cave tubing, they were given their food, and the bus headed back to the port. We were back with a small window of time for shopping .... not as much as other ports, but definitely enough that I never worried we would miss the ship.

 

Our guide (Coppertop, or Charlie, as he preferred) was able to take a bit of time with our group since we were doing cave tubing only. He let us jump off rocks into the river (great fun for the teens .... and I'll admit, some of us grown ups, ha!) before starting. He showed us quite a bit of the terrain, caves, the flora and fauna, and even had the braver ones in our group try eating termites before we started floating in the caves.

 

This time of year, I found the water to be quite chilly. Some people had bigger tubes that seemed to sit them higher up out of the water and I wondered if that might have been warmer. I'm sure in a few weeks when summer gets going, being down in the cool water will be ideal .... just a bit nippy for us this time of year. But overall, a great excursion, and one I would gladly do again with Major Tom.

 

Have a great time no matter who you go with!!