Disney Fantasy-Grand Cayman

Okay, this was hands down my absolute favorite island visit on this cruise. We were so bummed when we tried to book a snorkel excursion with Disney and found that Ben, at 4, was too young. We had our hearts set on snorkeling with stingrays so I started doing some crazy research. You know the research that consumes every waking day? That kind! I was on the search for a private boat rental that would take us to a few different stops without bankrupting us! We called around to a few different places and finally settled on Ebanks Watersports. We booked the “private boat tour” for 3.5 hours for three stops. We decided on Stingray City, Starfish Beach and Rum Point. The cost was $895.00 plus we tipped our captain…because…he did a fantastic job!

If you’ve ever done a stop at Grand Cayman, you know that Disney does “tenders” from boat to dock. You can’t just walk off at Grand Cayman. I messed up BIG TIME and underestimated the amount of time we would need to get from Disney ship to dock. We were panicked which wasn’t a great start to the day. With Disney you have to meet in the theater area and you are assigned a group and you disembark in that order. It took us about 15 minutes in addition to the tendering over. We were fine and Ebanks was super sweet about it. Here we are on the tenders over to the dock:

Once we arrived at dock, we walked a short distance to meet Ebanks Watersports. We hopped into the minivan and off we went. The drive to the club where Ebanks leaves their boat is about 15 minutes. The driver was so nice and we found out that he would also be our captain for the day. We went from the tender boat, to the minivan, to our own private boat. Squeal…look at the views!!

All of the photos were taken with my cell phone, no filters…this is how beautiful the water and sky were that day!! We originally asked that our first top be Stingray City and that was the plan. On the way there though, our captain quickly saw that the place was PACKED…5 other boats and the water was so crowded. He yelled out, “change of plans” and took us to Starfish Beach first! The water here was crystal clear, came up to my youngest guys knees and there were so many starfish. We were careful that the boys didn’t lift them out of the water and we kept handling down to a minimum! While we loved Stingray City, I could have stayed at Starfish Beach all day long. The water was beautiful, there was a small beach area and it was just perfect!

After Starfish Beach, we hopped back into the boat and went to Rums Point. If you plan to eat lunch, definitely visit, but don’t go for the beach and water. The water was very murky and the beach wasn’t great. We wished we had picked Coral Gardens instead. Just a good excuse to go back and see them!!

After we hung out here for a while, the boys swam and my husband snorkeled, we climbed back into the boat and decided to visit Stingray City in hopes it would be less crowded. When we arrived, there was only two other boats, both small. We were so happy that our captain steered us away and made our day so enjoyable!

This was hands down our favorite excursion of the cruise. The water, the private tour, the stingrays…everything was perfect. If you have little guys who don’t meet the age requirement or if you just want to do something more private, check this out!!