Review - Just back from Captain Marvin's Snorkel

[robcool]

I, my wife, and my two sons (12 and 14), just returned from cruising on the Carnival Miracle. One of our ports was Grand Cayman, and we booked with Captain Marvin's Watersports for the Stingray City and Snorkel excursion. It was a great trip, I recommend it to anyone who has the chance! Their website is at Captain Marvin's.

 

We choose the 1/2-day (3 hour) snorkel trip. The trip started at 10:00am, and our ship arrived at 7:00am, so there was no problem with the tender. We were able to wait for the mad rush to get out of the way and take our time getting on a tender. The e-mail I received after booking said to meet them at their office 2 blocks left of the pier. We had no problem finding their office right down the street from where the tender dropped us off. Their office also has a mall store so you can shop for souvenirs if you like. We paid for our excursion, waited about 20 minutes for the rest of the people that were booked, and loaded into a bus to take us to the boat. There were about 15 of us in the group.

 

On the way to Captain Marvin's pier (about 15 minutes) our driver told us about the island and some of the main attractions. There is still a lot of damage from the recent hurricane. Many buildings are without roofs, and what are left of the trees are mostly mangled ruins. Once to the boat we loaded up and headed out to the fist of two snorkeling stops. Both snorkeling stops were in very clear water about 10 feet deep, had some very nice coral, and many fish. The next stop was stingray city. The water there is very shallow, shallow enough that you can stand. The rays immediately come swimming up; they know they are about to get fed. The rays are amazing! Some are huge, and they are just all around you. You can take a piece of squid, hold it in your hand, and the rays will come right up and suction it up. Our guide held one of the rays and many of the people had their picture taken giving the ray a kiss. One more stop to another great snorkeling spot and back to the pier with plenty of time to get back to our ship and a 4:00pm sailing time.

 

Along for the ride was a person taking video with an underwater camera. After the trip you could buy the video for what I considered a pretty steep price, $60 for a DVD. I am sure the video was cool, the camera operator had on scuba gear and got some great shots, but I could not see paying that much for the video. Some people in the group did buy it.

 

One of the things I really liked about this trip was that our snorkeling stops had no other people there. We could see the ships tours. Those boats were loaded to capacity with what I would estimate to be 50 to 75 people. It certainly did not look comfortable to me. The two stops we made to snorkel were just our boat. Where we stopped to see the rays was far enough away from the ship's tours that we were not crowded at all. Our guide was great. He found a moray eel for us to look at, and brought up a live conch from the bottom.

 

The cost for the trip is $39/person, well worth it for the fun we had and the small group we were with. The youngest in our group was 9, and the oldest was very mature, so this trip is pretty good for everyone. My hat is off to Captain Marvin and his gang. Check them out if you make it to the Caymans.

If I ever go back I will!

[dna1990]

Could you describe the boat that was used? Was it the cabin type boat pitcured on their homepage?

[robcool]

I had to go look at their homepage to see!

 

Look at the boat in the top-left corner of the page. It was like that. There were two stories of decks, one at the level of the pilot's cabin and one above. The boat was very comfortable.

 

Hope that helps!

[TeresaJenkins]

Thank you so much for the review! I am going it alone w/Captain Marvin's Jan. 4th.

 

My group booked with the ship, and they will be so jealous when I get back from my roomy 3 stop adventure. Heehee

 

I can hardly wait!