Blue Hole and/or Dunn's River Crowded?

[bigrednole]

I keep trying to decide if I want to do an excursion when we go to Falmouth. I look for videos and reviews. People all love them, but every video I see there are lines of a 100+ people waiting to jump off a 10 foot platform or work their way up the falls. I wanted to see what others experiences are with this. I figure with 8 hours in port, 1 hour bus ride each way, waiting in line for a large number of people is overcrowding to me and not really worth ~$100pp.

 

What are people's thoughts that have done it?

[CntPAcruiser]

I can't speak to the Blue Hole, but for Dunn's River Falls (and also Green Grotto caves), we used a private van from Ocho Rios for the four of us. We did the caves first, which were very nice, and then our driver took us to Dunn's, where we parked, and he gave us some tips and got us into the park. Our driver told us not to bother paying for or joining a group tour to climb up the falls. It was generally crowded, or busy at least, but since we were on our own, we just took it at our own pace and had a blast climbing up, splashing in the natural pools and small waterfalls, and enjoying the beautiful views. In fact, we like it so much, we walked back down and went up a second time. 

 

If you can, get a more private tour or transportation so you're not with a big group. The groups that went up the falls went in a long line with hands joined and honestly didn't look like they were having much fun. Although it sounded like a very touristy thing to do, going up the falls is one of our favorite memories of that port stop.

[jiimmy2k]

Dunn's River can no longer be packed during this time crisis