Balmoral Island — Attraction in New Providence

Awful awful experience at Balmoral Island. Staff were rude and the experience I paid over $100 to do was badly organasied and completely ruined the experience. Left quite upset. Arrived at the island to be stood at the registration desk being ignored. Then when finally the tickets were being accepted they took my ticket and told me to wait to side without any explanation as to why. The staff then proceded to serve everyone else whilst ignoring me and not explaining why i had to wait/what the issue was.

I was then finally served last and told that my dolphin encounter time would be 9:40 (around 15 minutes to wait). I waited where they told me to and the only staff that called anything during this time was for the 9:30 dolphin SWIM (different from the encounter). So they went in and i waited, then it got to 9:55 and i was wondering whether they had forgotten about me (though i was stood only a few metres from the desk). I stepped back to the desk and asked them what was going on - without any apology and making it seem like it was my fault they said 'they are already in the water, where were you?!'. Nobody had called the 9:40 encounter during this time yet i recieved no apology and was made to feel as though i had made the mistake. I was then told to go join them even though i had missed 10-15 minutes of the short encounter/introductary talk already, othereise i would have to wait 2 hours on the island for the next one (with very little else to do on the resort).

Due to having to quickly get changed and rush down the dock to join in i slipped on the wooden dock down the flight of stairs scraping my arm and none of the staff checked i was ok and to not miss out on the encounter even more i just joined in. The experience itself was ruined already as i was so upset and angry by the customer service and the way i had been treated already. At not point did anyone make any sort of apology for how the experience had been organised and for me missing out on part of my experience which should have been a memorable one for good reasons.

I left the resort as soon as the experience had finished and didnt buy any photographs (which were more expensive than the experience itself) due to the awful experience i had had so refued to pay any more for it. I would have liked to have had perhaps one photograph of my experience as the Dolphin was beautiful but as a solo traveller $120 for all the pictures or nothing seems so unreasonable.

I then got back to my hotel to find that the discomfort of the encounter being on a sharp rocky area had cut/bruised the sole of my foot and had to be disinfected and wrapped. All in all i felt very upset with my entire experience and regretted deciding to choose balmoral island for my encounter and it really was dissapointing to have my last couple of days in the beautiful bahamas affected by...

We booked the Dolphin Swim excursion from a website before our cruise (instead of through the cruise line). Cruise lines charge almost double the price you can book excursions through non-cruise websites.

We disembarked our cruise ship in the morning, took a small nice walk to Señor Frog's in Nassau and boarded our water taxi (which was included with the excursion, so no extra cost). The water taxi took us out to Balmoral Island where the dolphins and rays were. The water taxi ride was fun for the family and probably took about 15-20 minutes. Some fun scenery to see on the ride.

We arrived at Balmoral Island and registered to get wrist bands for a time to do the dolphin swim. As we waited, there was a nice beach with plenty of lounge chairs and umbrellas just to relax. We had our snorkel gear with us and jumped in the water to see what we could see. Unfortunately, not much to see for snorkeling (so leave that gear behind if you have it). There were buoys and ropes that wouldn't let you go very far out to where I'm sure the good stuff was. I'm sure this was for safety because water taxis were coming and going and they didn't want swimmers out there with the boat traffic. Regardless, we had plenty of fun swimming and picking up small shells on the beach. My daughter has a nice collection and she loved it. As a father, I loved helping her find "the good ones". :)

The Dolphin Swim was fantastic. We were completely in the water swimming with them, spinning in circles while holding their fins, having them dance with us on their tails, giving them a kiss, and a family photo.

Don't confuse a Dolphin Swim with a Dolphin Experience. The Experience costs less, but you do much less. Basically you stand in the water waste deep and they swim past you and you get to touch them. The Swim is the best full interaction for not that much more compared to what you get.

When we finished, we went to a building where we could purchase pictures and videos. I will say that the price for the DVD was pretty steep, but we did buy it. It was one of those once in a lifetime types of moments and I don't regret buying the DVD. The money is gone, but we have the memories captured. The pictures and videos were well done.

Finally, water taxi back to Señor Frog's, walked to cruise ship, very fun day!

BTW, the island was beautiful and a fun place to spend the day on the cruise ship side of the island. We didn't go to the Sandals side. We didn't need to, and I'm not sure we would have been allowed to if we wanted to. So don't worry about going over there. Plenty to do on the cruise side with the limited...

We won a free excursion on our Carnival cruise for the dolphin swim encounter. We've swam with dolphins in Cozumel so we thought it would be the same. Such a disappointment!! Our "swim" consisted of a being brought to building that needs to be under construction. No air, no fans, DIRTY NASTY STAINED chairs. Absolutely filthy floor. After a brief "lesson" your fitted with a life vest and taken out. You then swim (a fairly long way) out to the platform where the trainer is (if you can't swim you're out of luck). You get to "dance" with a dolphin, rub your hand across them when (or if) they swim around the group - and thats it!! They do NOT allow the dorsal swim and actually told us that what what we had been previously was "false advertising". The trainer was extremely rude to everyone in our group, but she was really great with the dolphins (she even baby talked to them like I do my dogs). We spent more time swimming to and from the platform then we did interacting with the dolphins (20 mins total). Next they move you over enclosures so they can take staged pictures with a dolphin. The only way you touch the dolphin is while they take your pics (maybe 3 minutes total). So in TOTAL we interacted maybe 7-9 minutes with dolphins. We didn't bother to view our pictures as we had already been warned of the exorbitant prices. If I had paid the $149 per person I would have been LIVID. After, you have beach time, and the beach is absolutely gorgeous. Plenty of beach chairs and umbrellas available - although grab your chair quick, some are really nasty and broke down. Bring your own water - $5 if you buy it there. $10.50 for a hot dog and $15 for a cheeseburger (it was disgusting) - but don't forget the 20%+ TAX they charge!!! Total ripoff and becauae you are LITERALLY stranded there - there is nothing you can do. Bathrooms - omg horrible is all I can say.

I gave 2 stars because the beautiful, sandy beach is...