stingray city bahamas

My husband, 17-yr-old daughter, and I chose this excursion while visiting Great Stirrup Cay on a NCL Bahamas cruise. We were offered 3 different time slots, and we chose the earliest one at 9am (I highly recommend you take the earliest one if possible, as the later ones become very crowded and your one-on-one time with the rays will be limited.) A short boat ride from the island brings you to the sting ray enclosure - which is quite large, about 3.5 - 4 feet deep, and filled with many rays. As you leave the boat dock and enter the water, the rays immediately come up to you, rubbing against you, hoping you might have some food for them. The people who worked with the rays were called wranglers, and they were fantastic! Full of knowledge and great personalities! They even handled my 17-year-old wonderfully (teenage girl, enough said!). We had the opportunity to feed the rays and hold them. There were also some starfish and sea cucumbers at the bottom of the ray enclosure that we were able to pick up and hold. The wranglers take photos of you, which are uploaded to a disk for you to purchase, if you desire. The photos were a bit on the high side - $15 for the first one and $10 for each thereafter - but they are a great memory of a very fun experience. Highly recommend!

My daughter and I took this excursion as part of a Royal Caribbean Cruise, I am assuming this is the same one that leaves Coco Cay and you take a 5 minute boat ride to the stingray enclosure. There were only 9 of us so we got some great education about the stingrays and their habitat. The stingray wranglers were so helpful and friendly that they made the experience even better. We found out that one of the rays was pregnant, due in 3-4 weeks and we could feel the babies moving! You could tell that the rays were very comfortable around people and well taken care of. They are fed by tourists and the wranglers but they know each and every one and have a system to make sure every one is fed the same amount. We also learned that the company has only been in business for about 1 month, but has been working with the rays for 3 months prior to that. Although they are currently in an enclosure, they plan to eventually open up the enclosure so that the rays can come and go as they please. The only negative in my opinion was having to purchase the photos afterwards. While I am aware it is standard practice, I think the cost was prohibitive to buying more. $15 for the first and $10 for each thereafter. I might have purchased more if there was a bundled price or I would have rather received a cd of ALL the photos, including those of the other guests for $20. Something to think about. With that said, I would do this again in a heartbeat!!!! But watch out for those stingray hickeys!

Stingray City was a great, but crowded experience. But the stingrays didn't seem to mind. Even after the food snacks were fed to them, they continued to "hang around", rubbing against our legs and allowing us to pet them. We don't go for animals being penned up and used by humans, so this was great. This was the stingrays' natural habitat and they were free to leave us at any time and go to a different part of the sea. But they seemed to enjoy our company and being petted. It was well worth the $49 boat ride to go our to the sand bar. Of course, that included snorkeling equipment, though we carry our own. Don't take fins. Bare feet are all that is allowed on the sand bars. Wouldn't want to hurt the stingrays, who feed in the sand. The only down side was the 100 or so people who are in the water at one time. But the groups were pretty spread out. But not much snorkeling can be done because of all the people.