St John - Trunk Bay for Day Via Shopping or Walking Excursion Tour

[cruisin'sz]

Our ship offers several 6 1/2 hour tours to St John (one for shopping, one for walking) - can we do one of these tours and "ditch" the shopping/walking portion without any problems? We'd like more time on St John than the St John Beach & Snorkle Tour gives- also, we are intrigued by leaving directly from the boat rather than making the trip to Red Hook. Plus, this tour allows us to remain in St John until 3:45 p.m. - if we had to go to Red Hook first, we'd need to leave a lot earlier.

 

Finally, does anyone know if Celebrity using its own boat to make the trip or the regularly scheduled ferry (as the times appear to be the same)? I would hate to spend $40 to take the tour if I can take the same boat back for $24. If it is the regularly scheduled ferry, then why does everyone seem to gravitate to Red Hook to make the trip?

[Ms411]

I read a post on some forum (not sure if it was this one) that said the walking tour leader was perfectly fine with people opting to do something else other than take the tour, and gives people directions on taking cabs to the beaches.

 

Many people opt to do STJ on their own, because they may want to do something on STJ that's not offered on their ship (hike Lind Point trail), or their ship doesn't offer a variety of tours to STJ (not all ships offer the same tours), or if the ship takes you by boat to STJ you're spending more time going back and forth than you would by taking the ferry, or they just want to do it on their own so they can do/see what they want.