Rose Island Adventure: Snorkel, Sea Turtles, and Private Beach

What started out as frustration and headache turned into an awesome experience! 4 stars because of the issues we faced, would’ve been 5 without. We booked this for a Tuesday and had other things planned other days. We got a message Monday at 7pm that they had to cancel due to mechanical issues but we could reschedule for Wednesday. Cool, we said we’d do that. Tuesday we got an email from TA that we were getting refunds. After several calls back and forth to the company and TA we had to pay again to book because they couldn’t reverse the refund that shouldn’t have been issued to begin with. So we pay again and maybe 20 mins later get a call that they had to cancel Wednesday due to not having enough people for the tour. Luckily we had rebooked for “Saturday” but were to show up when they told us. Otherwise I’m sure we would’ve gotten another refund and had to pay a third time to rebook. We were accommodated Thursday finally and were luckily able to reschedule what we had already planned to do Thursday to Wednesday to make it happen. For the review of the actual experience, Capt Ken and Obie were a ton of fun. The music was 10/10 for me and they took my requests too. Rose Island was absolutely beautiful. They apparently have two packages and one includes the swimming pigs. We did not purchase that and didn’t even see the option to, however that’s fine with me because I don’t believe in exploiting animals for profit. You can see them pretty closely without paying for the actual experience though, it’s just getting to feed them apples and hold them for pictures (eye roll). Anywho I feel it’s a fair price for what you get and the hosts were fun—especially if you like hip hop/r&b/Caribbean music. ????????

Myself and two others signed up for the morning boat charter at 8:30am. A couple of hours after paying for the tour, I received a text that stated that there weren’t enough people interested in the 8:30 trip, but that we could take the 1:00pm trip instead if we’d like. I called the office and explained that while 2 of us could make that work, the third could not. They assured me that that would be fine and said they could refund me for the third ticket. I showed up for the tour and asked again about the refund. This time they said they’d look into it. It’s been a month now, and not only have I not received the refund that I was promised, but they also refuse to answer any of my messages. The time was changed against my will, a refund was promised, and now I’m being ghosted by a tour group. This is pathetic.

Let me start by saying the captain and his crew were very nice and accommodating. I do feel as though the tour was a little misleading. I specifically booked this tour to snorkel with turtles for my birthday and we did not. I’ve been seeing in the reviews it was due to a shark attack 4 months ago which I completely get, but then I’m wondering why you all haven’t taken it out of your description and lowered the price if it’s not something we can do. I was upset to find out that for 15 minutes we would just drive around the Cay and watch the turtles from the boat when just a few yards from us another tour was IN THE WAYER SNORKELING WITH TURTLES !! I get you want to be safe when it comes to sharks but then stop having people thinking they’re going to snorkel with turtles if that not an option because sharks are in the area. Simple. Do not book this tour if you want to snorkel with turtles.