This begs the question, since most Caribbean itineraries visit, are the Bahamas ready for visitors again after Hurricane Dorian?

Yes!

The Bahamas are ready for travelers again and especially the cruise lines. While you won’t be able to visit the Abacos given the devastation, Freeport is open and ready for business.

So, let’s talk Freeport.

The best way to get there these days is via cruise ship. If you prefer to fly and stay you’ll need to catch a connection through Nassau until their airport is ready. A few hotels are open and ready for your business too. Since we focus on cruising that’s what we’ll talk about.

We love Freeport. It’s a port near and dear to us. We purchased my engagement ring in a small jewelry store and both of our wedding bands. I have been to Rum Runner’s on many occasions for drinks and food. Port Lucaya has lost several stores over the years and isn’t quite what it used to be which is sad. However, there are still stores to visit, music to be heard, Junkanoo parties and Unexso. They offer a variety of excursions.

The pigs are back for swimming too! Something we haven’t done. Read on for your way of helping out some piglets via the Humane Society. Your tourist dollars help the island in ways you’ll never know and so while you may think there isn’t enough to do on the island that’s just a misconception.

Do it Yourself

We have always done our own ie: DIY excursions when we visit Freeport. We have taken cabs to the beach and Port Lucaya. We haven’t had many hours in port so just a few at a local beach is really all we need as a family.

On our last visit to Freeport in November of 2018 it was a bit overcast and we didn’t let that stop us. We grabbed a cab (shuttle that fit about 8) and headed to Taino Beach. Our driver offered us a deal to drop us at the beach, pick us up and take us to Port Lucaya and was there when we were ready to head back to the Pier.

Dan and I didn’t really want to swim so we hung out on the beach while the kids played in the sand and ran in and out of the water. We spent about 3 hours at this gorgeous beach which was plenty for the girls.

While you’re there…give back

We all know the islands suffered terrible destruction. If you have time and want to do something a little different to help out and give back while you’re in Freeport here is just one idea:

Humane Society of Grand Bahama: Contact them to help socialize with the animals. Yep, you can spend time volunteering and playing with cats, dogs and even rescue piglets. They also have a cool program where you can borrow a dog for one on one time! Their contact phone number is: 242-352-2477. Visit them on Facebook for up to date information.

There are various ways to donate and help the islands. Check out the tourism site for information and if you want to learn more the Washington Post had a feature on the Bahamas.

Nassau and the famed pink towers

Clearly more hustle and bustle occurs in Nassau. It’s definitely a popular location and one that we have personally visited at least 8 times over the years. Nassau was spared any major damage and has stepped up to help its neighboring islands. Pulling into port here your possibilities are endless.

We have done Nassau ourselves and also with excursions. Our favorite excursion that everyone MUST do at least once would be visiting Blue Lagoon Island. You can enjoy a relaxing day at their beach, swim with dolphins, have an encounter with dolphins or sea lions and so much more.

We have also taken a water taxi to the Atlantis to walk around, shop, eat and gamble. It was ok. If you want to experience Atlantis schedule a time to go and stay. If you want to save money check out the neighboring hotels. Sometimes it’s cheaper to get a hotel room for a night (even though you won’t use it) when they may come with free passes to their water park.

The long and short of it. YES, the Bahamas are ready and open and can’t wait to have you visit! Let us know when you visit we can’t wait to hear what you decide to do to see the island.

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Private Island Time

A fantastic view of the island! The tower in the middle is a water slide! You can see it from all areas of the island. To the far left is a beach area. Behind the bridge on the left is a lagoon area with beach and calm waters. Near the balloon is the freshwater pool and kids splashaway bay. To the right is the thrill water park.

So, what’s new?

The upgrades included adding a water park with massive slides ($$), a hot air balloon ride over the island ($$), more cabanas ($$), freshwater pool, swim up bar ($$ unless have beverage package), more restaurant locations and two splash areas for the kids.

For those with teens this is where it’s going to get a bit costly.

YOU HAVE TO PAY TO PLAY.

For those with young kids the splash pads are a fantastic break and those in swim diapers YOU GET TO GO IN!

Choose your own adventure

Visiting CocoCay is a choose your own adventure. You’ll receive a map to the island in your cabin the night before. If you are already booked I’m sure you are already getting the many marketing emails to upsell the various attractions that cost money.

You have a day at their private island. We were there from about 8am until 4:30pm. One of the best parts of this private island is that you dock at the island. No more tenders which takes time away from enjoying the beach.

The Galleon Ship

Galleon Ship. This is located as you walk in and is great for little kids. Word of caution: the slides which come from the various levels of the boat and end up on the bottom where you see the blue area are very fast! Our kids ended up sliding all the way to the brick walkway.

Oasis Lagoon Pool

Oasis Lagoon Pool Rules. Chairs line the pool and there are lounge chairs in the water too! The zero entry is great for kids and they have plenty of life jackets available for all ages. The water is padded until you get to about 3 1/2 feet depth. Be prepared for plenty of chairs to be taken with no one using them in sight–they are all off doing other activities.

Splashaway Bay

Splashaway Bay. Slides are to the left, pad in front with water buckets and climbing structures! There are also showers for washing off.

Chill Beach

Chill Beach is the original beach area and one that we love. That’s the family walking to secure chairs. It was quiet and located next to a snack stand, games and near the kayak tour counter. Word of caution: this area is open to the ocean. On our last visit our little little was stung by a jellyfish hiding in the seaweed. Note: we now carry a small spray bottle of vinegar to help get the sting out if it happens again! This time around we saw some beautiful stingrays swimming and even a reef shark that we caught on our gopro.

As with all cruise ships there are plenty of activites

Free airbrush tattoos! SWEET! The kiddos loved their free airbrush tattoos that they got on their way out. We got there late so there was just one color to use (yellow) and endless patterns. They lasted about a week!

Not so perfect…downright made me mad

I’m a less is more kind of girl. Since I’ve been cruising since I was about 8 I have enjoyed the relaxing aspect of cruising. I think that’s why I am drawn to the ships that are more midsize with not all the latest and greatest thrills.

So, here is what made me angry and I am sure other parents will agree. See the images below. My little little is 5 years old and measures 40″ when we went on this trip. On the Adventure of the Seas they have two splash areas for kids. The purple slide in the image on the left you need to be 42″ to go down. The staff from Adventure Ocean manage the stairs.

So, my daughter got denied. She was devastated. I was devastated for her. They said she could be in the yellow slide on the other side. You can catch a glimpse of this on the right side of my photo. Well, in this area moms let their babies in swim diapers just sit in the water area at the bottom of the slide. So, my kid would have flown down and knocked them over. She was way too big in my opinion no matter how small she is to be in that area.

My anger at Royal Caribbean

Well, let’s fast forward to our private day now in CocoCay. See that purple and teal slide on the right? My kid is allowed to go down! This is why I am ticked off and angry? An island OWNED and OPERATED BY ROYAL CARIBBEAN. My kid can go down this large slide and yet not allowed on the small one on the ship? Not to mention I saw smaller kids on the ship’s slide later in the week smaller than she is go down.

I try to play by the rules. I don’t expect any favors and come on. Are you kidding me? When our kids were in swim diapers we knew they couldn’t go into the pools no matter how low the water or splash pad. I get the whole kids can’t swim until potty trained on the ship and this though it’s outrageous.

So, if you skipped to the end here are some tips to enjoy your Perfect Day at CocoCay

1. Get room service on the ship for continental breakfast and eat early or bring it with you (boxes of cereal are perfect) to the island to enjoy even more time. There is plenty of food to have for snacks when you need them.
   
2. Head to the beach first then pool area. We had no problem getting chairs at that time.
   
3. Save time for the splash pads in the afternoon (that way you wash off the beach before heading back to the ship.
   
4. Try the funnel cake! What an awesome surprise. We had quite a few. Located in the snack shack near Chill Beach.
   
5. Try to get it all in, unless you already know you are heading back again.

Honesty is the best policy

Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves and had a semi-perfect day at CocoCay. It took time to get the lay of the land, when we didn’t need to before. This go around wasn’t quite as relaxing as in the past. Again, we didn’t have to deal with kids saying they wanted to do the big slides or having to go here or there. It was grab a chair, pay for an umbrella and enjoy the water and sand.

Now that we’ve been and know what to expect we can map out our plan in advance. Overall our day worked well moving from beach to pool and slides so we’ll do that again for sure! We did have a HUGE bahamian downpour during the day and that helped clear some of the crowd away!

There was only our ship in port that day however, there will be up to two ships at one time so think midsize like ours plus small. One of our favorite ships, Grandeur of the Seas, is expected in port the same day at Adventure. That means there will be close to 6K people versus our 4K when we were there.

It’s a personal decision on what to spend your money on. I’m here to help save you time and money and I don’t see the justification.

We can’t wait to go back and enjoy even more though we’ll stick to the FREE parts and not worry about paying to play!

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Where to even start? With our In It Forever principle we talk about how the most important part to anything is the EVER. Those last four letters in the word that stand for: Experience, Value, Engagement and Relevance. If an excursion while in port can fit into all of these areas then go for it! After all this trip is about making new experiences and seeing parts of the world you either haven’t been to before or finding new ones to check out. We’ll be talking a lot about various ports that our family have visited and what we’ve done in future posts not to mention interviewing you our readers on some of your favorite with tips and tricks thrown in.

Let’s start with the age old question of, “Do I need to book my excursion through the cruise line?”

There are pros and cons to booking your excursion through the cruise line. The pro’s being that someone else has done the work for you, you’ll be with others from the cruise that maybe you’ve gotten to know, you’ll most likely be seeing some of the best the island has to offer and most importantly you ARE guaranteed to not miss the ship! Now the cons. You’ll be with others from the cruise that maybe you’ve gotten to know (had to!), your excursion can be canceled for any number of reasons at the last minute (even when they don’t make sense to you), pricing is usually higher than if you did it on your own, and most importantly in this area you are NOT guaranteed to get back to the ship by the time it sails.

So that last one I talked about, the whole ARE/NOT guaranteed to get back to the ship, what is that about? When you do an excursion and it’s purchased through your cruise line you are guaranteed to not miss the boat when it sails away. Example: say you arrive in port at 7am. You will most likely be ready to disembark anytime between 8-9am and depending on your excursion will have a set time to do so. The cruise will tell you that you need to be back on board by 4pm for a 4:30 or 5pm sailing roughly. If your excursion is running late the boat will wait. If you did whatever excursion you wanted on your own you will be waving bon voyage from the dock if you miss it. We have actually seen people running to get on the ship! And if you’ve missed the boat ever, we definitely want to talk to you! Make sure to send us an email to contact@cruisingwiththefamily.com.

With all that we have done it BOTH ways. I’ve done more excursions through the cruise line as a first-time cruiser because I was so afraid to miss the boat. However, the more that I’ve visited the islands the more comfortable I’ve become in realizing that I can easily do it on my own for a fraction of the cost and I’ve never once been afraid of missing the boat. When it was just Dan and me cruising the cost didn’t matter as much yet when you start to add in the family the costs can skyrocket! One plus side to note (and check with your cruise line) kids under a certain age typically don’t need excursion tickets and are FREE. I have to admit our next cruises we now have to pay for our entire family of 4 and that’s going to be a tough one to swallow!

Know that no matter what you decide to do have FUN! It’s a personal preference. If budget matters look to the tours that cost a little less or use that onboard credit you may have gotten when booking the cruise! Find tours that will be age appropriate for all involved and make sure to do the research something as simple as glass bottom boats don’t always allow kids under a certain age (4 at one port we went to recently) to go on board so that was nixed off our list!  If you want to just relax on a beach when you get to whatever island in most cases you can do it on your own and that’s what we’ll be talking about!

We will touch base on excursions in coming posts on the following ports (and are always adding more):

1. Antigua
2. Baltimore, Maryland
3. Bermuda
4. Boston, Massachusetts
5. CocoCay (Royal Caribbean Private Island)
6. Costa Maya, Mexico
7. Cozumel, Mexico
8. Freeport/Grand Bahama Island
9. Grand Turk
10. Half Moon Cay (Carnival Private Island)
11. Halifax, Nova Scotia
12. Key West, Florida
13. Labadee, Haiti
14. Miami, Florida
15. Nassau, Bahamas
16. Port Canaveral, Florida
17. Roatan, Honduras
18. San Juan, Puerto Rico
19. St. John, New Brunswick
20. St. Kitts, West Indies (Lesser Antilles)
21. St. Lucia, West Indies (Lesser Antilles)
22. St. Maarten, West Indies (Lesser Antilles)
23. St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
24. Tortola, British Virgin Islands

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