This was a great way to... - This was a great way to see the island & learn about the French & Dutch side. The beaches were beautiful. We stayed at 2 of the beaches for an hour and then Majo beach for about 30-40 minutes which was fine considering there are very few chairs & is pretty crowded. There is a large restaurant there though if you wanted to grab a drink and watch the planes land.

Outstanding guide ..did a... - Outstanding guide ..did a great job...very knowledgeable of the area. Answered all our questions and was very flexuble with the tour.

Alex is an amazing tour... - Alex is an amazing tour guide! Would definitely book with him again! Beautiful beach tours! You need to experience this your!

A beautiful tour of St. Maartin beaches. - This tour was lovely and so much fun for us and our 3 teenagers. Shawn was our guide. He kept us entertained with his commentary and between stops. We did trivia for rum punch. It was so much fun and the beaches were beautiful. I was nervous about finding the tour since we had to go outside the port to find the meeting place, but it was so easy. Highly recommend!!

Absolutely awesome - Sean was an absolutely awesome tour guide. He was so much fun and entertaining and accommodating. This tour is just fantastic. The best excursion that I have ever done on any cruise that I have ever been on. And I have been on 17 cruises. I highly highly recommend this to everyone

Triple Beach Tour Diabolical - Tour started 1 hour late due to driver waiting for a late person. Had to stand in the hot sun waiting. We only got to experience each beach for 30 - 45 mins and had to pay an additional $30 for 2 beach chairs and umbrella at one beach to sit comfortably. I personally would have preferred one beach for the day. Driver also tried to cut out time short due to another commitment.

Not as Expected - Tour guide tried really hard, but this was nothing like what was advertised. Envisioned sitting for an hour or two at 3 different beaches. More of a drive around the island and spend a very short time at a couple beaches. Spent 1 hour at Orient Beach. Then went on a random hour of traffic into a town on the French side. Then were told there was just a quick stop at Maho. We talked the guide into 15 min at Mullet Beach. Then 30 min at Maho to see a few planes come in. Not a bad experience at all, but also nothing like what we imagined when we bought this tour. There were 6(!) cruise ships in port which made our guide overly concerned about traffic. She ended the tour after 4.5 hours when we expected longer. If you do sign up for this cruise, just know they meet you just outside the port gates, not so much at the end of the pier as advertised. We looked for a long time to find them. St. Martin is beautiful, but I'd go straight to Mullet Bay then onto Maho beach for the last hour of my time.

Quite Disappointed - Considerable time was spent deciding on this excursion. I read so many positive reviews from multiple sites. We love beaches. Loved the reviews. So we chose it. Disappointed. It all started on a bad footing. The company made a decision to WAIT for a family of 4 who turned out to be 1 HOUR LATE. While waiting, the 8 of us who arrived on time, sat in a hot van for 1 hour. Though A/C was running; a sitting vehicle cannot circulate air adequately. Second, we learned there was a discrepancy. We signed up for the Tripple (triple) Beach Tour. The 2nd family signed up for a city tour . But both families were assured that we were each on the right tour; we would see 3 beaches and along the way, get a tour of French and Dutch sides of the island with a myriad of buildings we'd pass. But starting 1 hour late led to problem after problem. Unlike the write-up description, the tour began at Orient Beach (not Mullet Bay or Maho). We all voted and asked to stay there for 1.5 hours because we didn't feel we needed 1 hour to see the jets fly over Maho Beach. The last 2 beaches, Maho and Mullet Bay, are by the airport. After lengthy van ride with limited visibility , especially if you are not sitting in front row, we arrive at Maho and are told we have 35 minutes of beach time on this very tiny beach overrun with people. Literally, no place to sit muchless set a towel. We "must get off the beaches by 2 PM so we are not stuck in horrendous traffic that gets backed up when the bridge goes up at 3 PM." So that allowed us only 35 minutes on Maho Beach and no time on Mullet. If we stopped at Mullet it would have caused us to potentially get caught behind the bridge as it went up. That would risk some passengers not getting back to their ship on time. We agreed we couldn't risk that. So, yep. we got 2.15 hours at the beaches. Don't believe them when they tell you you'll get 4 hours of beach time. Nerline, our guide, is a very capable and loving woman. She is knowledgable. She truly wants you to enjoy your trip. But when a decision is made to wait 1 HOUR for a family of 4 that is late and lost, we all lost out. That decision, not made by Nerline, should never have been made. We wish we had just gotten off at the Port and walked to all the shops (15 minute walk) and restaurants, and enjoyed the very nice beaches there. It would have been a limited view of St. Maarten but at least we wouldn't have been trapped in a cramped, hot van passing this school, that grocery store and this municipal building while wishing we had been to 3 beaches.

Poor Communication with Tour Company - I am very upset with how this experience was organized. I thought booking with Viator meant I was getting high quality service. I booked this tour and everything seemed great until we got to the port. The details for the meeting spot were very vague, the contact number didn't work and we had no idea who was in charge our our tour. I didn't realize that ship time was 1 hour difference then island time. As soon as I figured this out I messaged the contact number on the ticket, not response. The pinned spot on the map to find the tour operator was incorrect, We spent 30mins wandering around the port looking for our tour company. We asked multiple people and tour companies and we were finally led out of the port gates to someone that had been looking for us. When we got in the van the other passengers were very upset with us because we had made the van wait for an hour. This was very embarrassing but i understood why they were upset. We tried as hard as we could to find our tour guide with the limited information we had. Once we were on the tour our driver was good and i was happy with our experience with her. We only had time to go to two beaches because of the concern of the traffic on the bridge. If this was an issue I would have thought the 3 beach tour would not have been an option for cruise passengers. Unfortunately this experience has made me decide that i no longer trust Viator for my excursion choice when I go on holidays.

Not What Was Advertised - We booked an excursion called “Tripple beach Tour” that visited all three of the best beaches and advertised about 1 to 2 hours at each beach (yes the two p’s in triple is how the excursion is spelled). First off, the excursion says to meet at the cruise port. What they don’t tell you is that the cruise port it huge. It has a bus terminal for excursions on one end. On the other end is a parking station for most of the other tours. We went to both and no one had heard of this company. We finally figured out that we had to leave the port to where a bunch of random taxi drivers and other off-the-beaten-path excursions were waiting. It took us about 40 minutes of walking to find the excursion operator. They then had had us sit around for about 30 minutes waiting for others to find them. A random woman walked up to us and told us we were in her tour van. She put us with two others. The tour became very weird very quickly. The guide began pointing out everything on both sides of the road, like… everything including stray animals and random houses. She also ended every sentence with, "right?" Which is fine, but the problem is if you didn’t say “right” back, she would yell at us that we were not answering her. Try answering “right” to every sentence someone says, especially if they are talking nonstop about everything they can see and think. We started taking turns in our 4 person group saying “right” like putting another coin in the machine to make it keep running. The excursion was nothing like what was advertised. It kind of started somewhat like what was advertised. We did make it Orient Bay first.. and did stay there for an hour as advertised. It was unfortunately the least exciting beach. Though beautiful, it was super windy and I suppose this is the norm as there were countless kite surfers and kite surfing rentals. Then our “beach excursion” became an impromptu island guided tour instead. This included about an hour driving into a super congested area, turning around and going back through all the congestion a second time for no apparent reason just to return to the main road. What was that all about? The guide said she was skipping Mullet Beach because “It’s just too hard to get in there. Too many cars. Too many people. We also don't have a lot of time left.” When I suggested we should still try as it was described as one of the best beaches in the Caribbean, she finally relented. Agreed that it’s a small parking area at the beach, but there was no traffic. No congestion. She gave us 15 minutes. Easily one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. White sand and pockets at the first entrance for snorkeling over small rocky/reef areas. I wish we had started here instead. Maho beach was only about 10 minutes away from Mullet Beach. It was all that it was described as. Super crowded, but no one cared as soon as a big plane would come in to land. People would hug and high five when a big jet would fly just a few hundred feet overhead. Totally worth the stop, though I would not recommend spending the entire day here. We were allowed 30 minutes from our guide. In total, one hour Orient Beach, 15 min Mullet Beach, 30 min Maho Beach. Our guide had decided that our all-day tour ended at 1:30 pm to return to the port. The other people in our group pulled out paperwork showing all the time we were supposed to spend at the various beaches and description of the tour. It didn’t matter. We had the guide drop us off at the main boardwalk across from the cruise port. It also has a beautiful beach and all kinds of stores and restaurants. We rented a couple of chairs for $10 for the remaining 3 hours that were supposed to be part of our excursion. There is a water taxi from there for the large cruise crowds that return from across the bay.