For those of you in town yesterday, you may have seen Seadream, a smaller sized cruise ship, anchored just off of Cruz Bay. This sight is a common one during high season, which is on the horizon. Cruise ships, however, more commonly dock in St. Thomas and oftentimes hundreds if not thousands of passengers jump in a taxi, hop on the ferry and visit our island for the day. Here are a few tips for cruise ship days…
For starters, how do you know if there is going to be a cruise ship in port? Well it’s pretty simple actually. VINow.com maintains a record of all cruise ships coming to both St. John and St. Thomas, which also includes the number of expected passengers per ship. You can find this information by clicking on our Island Information page, then click on Cruise Ship Schedules.
When you review the cruise ship schedules, you will see three ports listed – Cruz Bay, Crown Bay and West Indian Co. Cruz Bay means that the ships will anchor offshore in Cruz Bay. The West Indian Co. dock is the one in Havensight in St. Thomas and Crown Bay is closer to the airport.
When cruise shippers visit our island, they typically do one of three things: 1. They like to hike over to Honeymoon and Soloman beaches because of the proximity to Cruz Bay; therefore when there are several cruise ships in port, you probably want to avoid these beaches. 2. They like to visit Trunk Bay. Why? Because it’s one of the best beaches in the world. I always avoid Trunk Bay on cruise ship days. 3. They hop in a taxi and take a tour of the island.
For those of you visiting the island during Thanksgiving, you’re going to want to avoid these beaches on next Tuesday and Wednesday. There’s roughly 15,000 passengers scheduled to arrive on Tuesday and nearly 17,000 scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. And while not all of them visit St. John, a good portion do. So plan accordingly.
News you could use today folks. 🙂
Good advice! We always avoid the places popular with the cruise ship guests.