Shore Excursions

An important part of any Caribbean cruise is taking shore excursions. What better way to take advantage of your giant floating hotel then to see the sites and learn more about the exotic islands you're visiting. The cruise lines offer dozens of shore excursions to the ports they call on.

Some ports have more and varied options than others. For example, Ocho Rios, Jamaica and Grand Cayman literally have dozens of choices. But with the good comes the "not so good". Crowds and waiting are common occurrences on most shore excursions. For the cruise lines, this is hard to avoid, since they're trying to provide unique experiences for many thousands of visitors each day. Consider Grand Cayman, the last time we were there, there were five mega-ships in port that day. If each ship only carried 2,000 guest (most carry more), that adds at least 10,000+ people to this tiny island. The logistics can be staggering.

To handle the masses of cruisers who want to take cruise-line shore excursions, the cruise lines have to herd people from their onboard meeting place, to the dock and onto a motor coach. If you're like me, you don't like being herded.

There is an alternative, we recommend using ShoreTrips!. They're an independent company with their own bonded and insured tour operators. In fact they have more than 400 tour operators on 22 islands delivering more than 1,000 shore trips. To utilize ShoreTrips! visit their site and book your excursions in advance, they'll send you vouchers with instructions on when and where to meet your guides. This way you avoid the waiting for cruise-line sponsored excursions and walk right off the ship and start exploring.

Click on this link to start searching through their wide variety of ShoreTrips.