De Palm Island

[JHCruiser123]

Has anyone ever been to de Palm Island?  My daughter would like to spend the day at the beach in Aruba and this has snorkeling, beach (with hopefully chairs to sit on) and food included.

 

[LeeW]

Been a few years.  It is possible to book directly but then you need to meet their transportation somewhere.  Basically the other end of the runway to a pier that has a tiny ferry to the barrier island.  Chairs, food, drinks, small water park, snorkeling and some extra cost items like snuba and helmet dive.  Snorkeling area is sea side of the island.  They do have some wave protection but can be a bit rough.  Lots of fairly large fish.  Never tried going in water at "beach" since really was just sand on top of the coral island.  Can be very crowded since they do a lot of cruise ship bookings.

 

Beach and snorkeling are kind of mutually exclusive in Aruba.  Good beaches like hotel area on Palm Beach have terrible snorkeling.  Good snorkeling is mostly offshore and around some wrecks.  We usually just take city bus 10 north to somewhere on Palm Beach, get off, walk the beach or swim and then take the bus back.  Some places do rent chairs although many of those in the closer non-hotel Eagle Beach.  

[mitsugirly]

We go here every time we're in Aruba (land vacation) and absolutely love it. It has amazing snorkeling!

 

There's a lot to do there: Water park with water slides, see the flamingo's on the beach, all the food and drinks you want, various animals, dance classes, pool tables, volleyball and so much.

 

Don't write off doing a SeaTrek or Snuba there. The Snuba is AMAZING! Like I can't even describe how much more you will see and so easy to do. The instructors are amazing! The SeaTrek is the best we've ever done and we try to do these at any port that has them. They are interactive as well. 

 

You can find my latest review on my blog and it has TONS of pictures located HERE  which includes the Snuba portion.

 

I have a previous review located HERE which will have the SeaTrek portion.

 

I hope that helps.

[cruising_rocket_scientist]

We are doing the SeaTrek helmet dive (walk) through the cruise ship on De Palm Island. Has anyone done this? Our tour shows all the things that are available at the resort. Are these included or extra? It's a six hour tour, so I'm hoping it's more than just the helmet dive.

[mitsugirly]

24 minutes ago, cruising_rocket_scientist said:

We are doing the SeaTrek helmet dive (walk) through the cruise ship on De Palm Island. Has anyone done this? Our tour shows all the things that are available at the resort. Are these included or extra? It's a six hour tour, so I'm hoping it's more than just the helmet dive.

Please see my post above. The seatrek there is awesome! You’ll find our pictures in the review 

[Birdnutty]

We went to DePalm Island with an NCL excursion 2 weeks ago and really liked it.The busses picked us up about 100' from the gangway and since our tix were paid for and everything arranged, we immediately got onto a ferry (what I felt was overloaded) and in 5 minutes we were there.

 

 Unfortunately, the water was quite rough that day for snorkelling, the waves stirred up a lot of cloudiness, and tossed us around uncomfortably.  Like Mitsugurly said, the fish were amazing and snorkelling would have been awesome if it hadn't been so rough.The water is quite shallow throughout, so  I was much too frightened of being dashed against the coral and got out after 15 minutes.  A record for me.  I could last forever generally. The luck of the draw.

 

Everything else she said in her review was what I experienced - the food, the unending drinks, (we didn't do the Sea trek).  One thing I highly recommend is water shoes!!!   The beach swimming area, was much calmer than the snorkelling area, but is very rocky and making it uncomfortable to walk out into the water for the first 20 feet or so.  

 They had a little enclosure with some turtles and tortoises in it, and quite a few hermit crabs of all sizes.  Great for the animal lover. The cute little cheeky bananaquit birds were ever present, stealing sips from unattended drinks, and grabbing food morsels everywhere.

Looking forward to going back, hoping for less wave action.  

Since Mitsugirly covered everything else, here's some photos of some of the wildlife. 

[JHCruiser123]

Thank you everyone it looks great!  For some unknown reason Celebrity canceled the excursion to de Palm Island.