bannister island

[emjay]

Does the tender boat pick you up at the ship and let you off at the port? If it brings you back to the ship do you have time to take a tender over to look around?

[xeriod]

Does the tender boat pick you up at the ship and let you off at the port? If it brings you back to the ship do you have time to take a tender over to look around?

It depends, Royal and Carnival both book guests to the island so they stagger the times so its not so crowed. In my case we took a boat from the tourist village to Bannister at about 11:00.Then back to she ship from the island. So we had time before hand to look around by catching an early tender.There were people already there when we got to the island that had been taken right from their ship to Bannister. They left about 1:00 and I assume they went to the port .

[waterbugohio]

Is there a way to get to bannister island on your own?

 

Jut want to spend a couple hours there in the morning. Don't want to snorkel, see the manatee, or do a tour of Belize.

 

Anyone help?

[emjay]

We booked ours on the ship and it is from 8:30 to 12:30. I am hoping that will give us time to go around the port for a bit.

I was just afraid not to use Carnival in Belize. Roatan we booked on our own but for Belize I think I would just feel more as ease booking with Carnival.

[mitsugirly]

From what I've read on here, NCL is the one that picks you up and drops you off on your ship instead of tendering to the port and then getting on another boat to Bannister. (I may be wrong, but just what I've read).

 

I don't know if the Carnival excursion times are the same as NCL (we just booked this excursion as well for December) and our excursion is only for 4 hours. I think it's 8:30 am until 12:30pm. So, that leaves plenty of time to tender over to the port to look around in our case. :)

[CENTEX CRUISER]

We were there last March with Royal and were supposed to be picked up from the ship, but they changed gears, and tendered us to Belize City, and after the tour they took us directly to the ship.. As it turned out, I am glad they did this , as it was our first time in Belize , and we got to take a look around , and have a beer or two..They said they did this because people were complaining that they wanted to shop some also..

[OCruisers]

A couple of years ago on an excursion to Bannister Island booked through Carnival, they picked us up directly from the ship and returned us directly to the ship. Any who wanted (and many did) could stay on to be taken to Belize City to be dropped off and would need to return on a ship's tender.

 

We loved Bannister Island and were disappointed when our Princess cruise there did not offer it last year.

 

Some independents do. :)

 

http://www.thewetlizard.com

 

Click on their Water tours.

 

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[gltrans1]

We were just there on 12/24/12 on the Liberty of the Seas. We were the only ship in port that day. We booked the excursion through RCCL and tendered directly to Bannister Island. We arrived at 10:45am and tendered back to ship at 2:45pm. That did leave enough time to take tender to port to walk around if you want to. Last tender back to ship from port was at 5:30 pm. The beach was great but there are only enough chairs for one group. About an hour after we arrived another RCCL excursion came for a 1 hour beach break and most had to sit on their towels.

[CENTEX CRUISER]

The lack of beach chairs is what gripes me about shore/beach excursions. If they have that many people who purchase the excursion, the least they can do is have enough chairs available..

[mitsugirly]

You must have had a pretty large group from just your one ship going there to not have enough chairs for everyone. We were the first one's to arrive at Bannister last week and then 2 more excursions came a little later on and there seem to be enough chairs for everyone. :confused: Did you walk all over the area down to the end around the playground area? There are chairs there too.

 

Now...my only complaints was that there is no running water in the bathrooms to wash your hands and only a "drip-drip" out of the so-called outside "showers" to rinse off the sand and salt water. Yea, I kind of have a problem with that. :(

[OCruisers]

There have always been tons of chairs when we've been to Bannister Island. :)

 

LuLu

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