Ocean Adventures Punta Cana — Attraction in undefined

Sailing Splash by Ocean Adventures

I DO NOT recommend this tour or any others by Ocean Adventures.

CONS: To start off, I booked this excursion through Amstar and the advertisement was very misleading (I will attach an image below).

Once we arrived from our hotel, we had to wait over an hour for other buses to come in with other guests. We would have much rather stayed at our hotel than wait on a bench for over an hour with nothing to do.

The tour promised a snorkeling session ‘over a coral reef teeming with tropical marine life’. That was completely false. The snorkeling took place underneath a platform where lunch was held (image below). There was fencing to the seafloor to keep the sharks and stingrays contained. It was also dark, being right under the platform. There were at least a dozen sharks clinging to the corners of the enclosures to keep away from us and I don’t blame them. The stingrays did the same. I would have taken photos of this from my phone, but we were forbidden from using our phones except for when we were on the boat. The snorkeling lasted about 10 minutes.

There were two other enclosures as well, one that held 4-5 dolphins. The entire dolphin enclosure was a patch of water, roughly the size of a standard backyard. There was one enclosure that held one stingray, so guests could interact with it. Nowhere in this tour did it say there would be animal interactions. I was not happy when a guide began passing around the stingray for us to touch and hold. I don’t promote this kind of tourism. I would not have booked this tour had I known the poor conditions these animals are kept in.

The speed boats were the biggest attraction for us to go on this excursion. The boats were damaged and hard to steer and control. When accelerating, both passengers had to lean forward to prevent the boat from tipping. Our boat was also significantly slower than the others, so the guide kept motioning for us to keep up with the group and was getting annoyed when we couldn’t. The whole ride lasted about 10-12 minutes which we thought was pretty pathetic. Most of the time we spent in the water just standing around.

Back to the photos, on the boat they told us it was $40 for our pictures. When we went to purchase our photos (since we could not take our own) we were told in the photo store that it would be $60 for the photos. The guy in the shop wouldn’t budge on price so we went to find our tour guide. He adjusted to $40 but the whole thing was so ridiculous. When going through the pictures we couldn’t find our ‘welcome' picture. They told us it was $15 for our welcome picture and that it wasn’t included in the price of the photo package. The welcome picture was attached to a bottle of alcohol. We do not drink so we just asked if we’d be able to purchase the photo and they said yes, for $5. In total we paid $45 for our pictures. I personally still think that price is a rip-off considering we paid $230 for this excursion. I heard people agreeing to pay much more.

PROS: Lunch was provided and it was delicious. Chicken breast with rice and salad. Sodas were provided.

Our tour guide was excellent. He was full of personality and spoke many languages which I thought was really cool since we were a diverse group. He was very inclusive and thorough when giving instructions...

Caribbean Pirates operates by this company is the most valued excursion we’ve ever had from all the trips in Caribbean, 2nd to none. Kids and adults all had a great blast! We are two families with two 6-year old girls. We went to swimming with dolphins first which was overpriced, so we were sceptical about Caribbean Pirate at the time we booked. The excursion turned out to be a great experience! We booked 8:00am trip because 11:30am was full. As soon as we arrived, we were well-organized and well-entertained. There are balloon swords for kids and they immediately start to “fight” with the “pirates” and fake tattoos. The pirate ship was awesome, looks so real. There are snack, sandwiches, and drinks on ship, and open bar for adults! There are non-stop participated pirate shows and dances throughout the whole time. There’s quite a lengthy time of open water snorkeling... so many beautiful fish. For little kids who were intimidated by the waves, they are put in a little clear bottom sea sled so that they can watch the fish with rest of family. The tour-guides are awesome and great swimmers. They make sure everyone of us were taken care of. We were also taken to snorkel in an area with trained rays and sharks. We were given an educational session first. Kids learned a lot! We could really touch the rays, sea stars and sharks! Out biggest compliments go to the staffs - the actors/ actresses, the servers, and most importantly our tour-guide Jose. The staffs are great, hardworking, and very nice and patient with kids. They make sure everyone is involved and entertained through out the whole time. Our tour-guide Jose is just awesome! He was knowledgeable, experienced, extremely pleasant, easy to communicate with, and very considerate. He’s such a great swimmer and made us feel safe during open-water snorkeling. I’m normally too lazy to leave reviews but this time my entire family has urged me to recommend this activity! And we would definitely do it again during our...

We were picked up at the Majestic by a truck with very uncomfortable benches. Even though it doesn’t look very far on the map, it took us an hour to get there; there were many of stops at other resorts, and way too many speed bumps.

Once we finally arrived we were seated on wooden benches to watch the safety videos and fill out the waiver forms. Everyone was confused about the different color bracelets we were given, which was not explained until we arrived at the snuba/snorkeling spot. There was more paperwork to be filled out after we received our briefing.

We were taken by a small boat to the site where they had the small speed-boats. This portion of the excursion was the biggest waste of time for anyone who has driven a boat before. It was basically just another way for them to create picture opportunities for pictures they would sell you at the end of the trip.

Snuba was the next part of our excursion and was excellent (much better than our Aruba experience). It was one instructor per raft with a maximum of four people each, plus an underwater photographer. The area was much better than the one Dolphin Explorer took us to the day prior.

Last was the snorkeling, which was in the same spot as the snuba. This was the highlight of our trip, but also seemed to be the shortest part of it. While we were still wet, they had us fill out the evaluation forms. Up to this point the only thing provided was water, and the selection going forward consisted of some sodas and a rum.

Overall, the snuba and snorkeling were great. However, the transportation to and from the place, and to and from the speedboat area, were terrible.

We would definitely not recommend this excursion to anyone who likes to travel comfortably or has any medical ailments such as back or leg problems.

The snorkeling area (reef & fish) scored within the top five of our experiences, only behind the Great Barrier Reef, Belize, Galapagos, and...