Resort day passes for cruisers: Why I still love the idea despite a disastrous first experience
It was only after I had settled into my cabana at the Margaritaville Beach Resort Nassau, a signature margarita in hand, that I realized I had made a terrible mistake.
It had started out as a lovely day. Sunny and warm. But glancing up through the cabana’s slatted wood roof, I spotted something I hadn’t considered a possibility when planning the day: storm clouds approaching.
Menacingly dark storm clouds.
The sort of storm clouds that can ruin a beach day in an instant.
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It was at that moment, just minutes after arriving, that I knew: I wouldn’t be wasting away again in Margaritaville for the day as I had thought. My grand plans for a fun-filled resort day in the midst of a seven-night cruise were about to be washed out.
And, to steal another line from the Jimmy Buffett song, it was my own damn fault.
When I booked the cabana weeks earlier through ResortPass, at a cost of $324, including fees, I had noted with approval the fine print that said I could cancel for a full refund up until the night before arrival. That’s an unusually generous cancellation policy.
If I had just checked the weather forecast the night before, I could have canceled the booking and made other plans. But I didn’t, so I didn’t see that a monster storm was on the way.
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Now all my $324 payment was going to get me and a traveling companion was a good soaking.
Within minutes, the tempest began. My companion and I, as well as everyone else on the beach and around the pool fronting the Margaritaville Beach Resort Nassau, scrambled for shelter inside the resort’s main building.
I can’t blame ResortPass, an 8-year-old company that an increasing number of cruisers are using to arrange day visits to beach resorts during cruises.
As I’ll explain below, ResortPass gets high marks in my book for its offerings. For a cruiser, it’s a useful, if still relatively unknown, tool to arrange a fun day at a beach, pool or water park during a sailing.
The blame for what turned out to be a disastrous day was all on me.
That said, my epic fail, which came as part of an assignment to test ResortPass’ value to cruisers (it actually was The Points Guy footing the $324 bill, not me), did point out an important caveat to consider when using ResortPass or another day pass service when cruising: The weather could easily ruin your plans.
You’ll want to keep an eye on the weather as the day (and cancellation deadline) for your outing approaches.
It wasn’t the only caveat I saw to such bookings (more on that below).
The good news is that after being thoroughly drenched (and spending more than an hour hiding from the storm in a hallway), I was able to salvage part of the day at the resort’s small water park. The rains eventually let up. The sun returned. And that gave me a chance to get a good sense of the value that ResortPass offered.
Here’s everything I experienced from start to finish during my test of using ResortPass to book a day visit to a resort during a cruise. I conducted the test anonymously — ResortPass wasn’t alerted — during a Royal Caribbean cruise from New York to the Bahamas.
The booking process
Booking a resort day pass with ResortPass was a breeze. I simply went to the site’s cleanly designed main page, typed in the destination where I wanted one (Nassau in the Bahamas) and marked a date on a calendar. With a single click, I was shown an easily sortable array of resorts and hotels in the area with day passes available.
From there, with just a few more clicks, I locked in a day pass at one of them.
Picking from the list of available properties was the hardest part of the exercise. In all, there were five within a reasonable distance of the Nassau cruise port — an impressive number:
- Margaritaville Beach Resort Nassau
- British Colonial Hotel Nassau
- Baha Bay Waterpark at Baha Mar Resort
- Graycliff Hotel
- Courtyard by Marriott Nassau Downtown/Junkanoo Beach
What stuck out to me right away was the variety of options at some of the locations. For two of them (the Baha Bay Waterpark and the Courtyard), only a day pass was available. But for the rest, there were additional choices — in some cases, a surprising number of choices. These included spa passes and specific spa treatments, cabana rentals, day room rentals and — at one of the properties — even winemaking and cigar-rolling classes.
The wide variety of options was a pleasant surprise and sent me down a rabbit hole of clicking on the individual pages for each of the options on the site to learn more.
It was one of these additional options — a beachside cabana in addition to a day pass at the Margaritaville Beach Resort — that finally ensnared me (more on this in a moment), and I quickly booked it.
It was a simple process to enter my credit card on the checkout page to complete the booking.
The cost
In general, the day pass costs were quite reasonable. For me, and surely for many other cruisers, this is probably the biggest argument for using the ResortPass site instead of booking a beach or pool excursion through a cruise line.
The day passes for Nassau hotels on offer at the site ranged from $70 per adult for the British Colonial Hotel Nassau to $146 per adult for the Baha Mar Resort — the latter notably higher than the others as it included access to the resort’s massive water park.
In all cases, there were lower rates for children, typically half the cost of the adult price.
In most cases, the pricing was significantly less than the cost for a beach excursion in the Nassau area offered through Royal Caribbean, which operated the ship that took me to Nassau. Royal Caribbean’s Pearl Island Beach Escape, which included just four hours at a private beach in the Nassau area, cost $139 per adult ($89 for children ages 4 to 12). Another Royal Caribbean-sold beach break at the Nassau area’s Blue Lagoon Island cost $104 for adults ($74 for children ages 4 to 12).
Even the priciest ResortPass option, the pass to the Baha Mar Resort’s water park, was notably less than a similar pass to the Nassau area’s Atlantis Aquaventure Waterpark offered by Royal Caribbean ($219 for adults; $114 for children ages 4 to 12).
Why I picked what I did
As noted above, the hardest part of using ResortPass to book a day pass was choosing among the available properties. With all the options available, it took some time.
I was able to rule out one of the choices quickly: the Courtyard by Marriott Nassau Downtown. I had stayed there once before boarding a ship in Nassau, and I wasn’t impressed. It’s a dowdy property with a sorry-looking pool area.
Looking over the others, I also soon ruled out the Graycliff Hotel, which wasn’t along a beach. I was looking for a beach experience.
The Baha Bay Waterpark at Baha Mar Resort, with a wave pool, 1,400-foot lazy river and 24 waterslides, looked amazing. But it also was pricey, and I made an assumption that it would be packed with kids — something a quick look at online reviews confirmed. I was looking for more of an adult experience.
That left the Margaritaville Beach Resort and the British Colonial Hotel. The two properties are side-by-side in the same beach area. Both are so close to where ships dock in Nassau that you can walk to them. You see them as you sail in.
In the end, it was the availability of a cabana at the Margaritaville resort that tipped the balance. At $273 for two before fees, it was just $73 more than two day passes to the resort (the latter priced at $100 a piece). That seemed like a great deal for what was clearly a major upgrade.
Compared to the beach and pool cabanas that cruise lines sell to passengers during sailings, it was a steal.
Royal Caribbean, by contrast, was charging $1,199 to $1,399 for cabanas at the Hideaway Beach area of its private island, Perfect Day at CocoCay, for a visit scheduled the very next day. The Royal Caribbean cabanas were more elegant than what I would get at the Margaritaville resort, for sure. They also came with more amenities and access for up to eight people. But, still, that’s an incredible price differential. If I was going to get a cabana experience on this trip, the value option was obvious.
The Margaritaville Beach Resort Nassau it would be.
The experience
Getting poured on aside, my day pass experience at the Margaritaville resort went smoothly.
Going into it, I was worried about how the handoff would work between ResortPass and the Margaritaville resort. Would they have my cabana booking on file when I arrived? Would it be a hassle to check in? But such worries were unfounded. It was easy-peasy.
Upon arrival, I told the first employee I saw, a porter at the front door, that I had booked a day pass for the resort, and he pointed me to a check-in window a few steps away. From that point, it was just a handful of minutes until I was lounging in my cabana. The attendant at the check-in window had my name on file, and he quickly ushered me and my companion into the resort’s pool and beach area. A pool attendant gave us the choice of a cabana around the pool or along the beach. We picked the beach.
A few minutes later, another attendant stopped by to take our food and drink orders.
As promised on the ResortPass site when we made the booking, the attendant said she would bring us two bottles of water, two sodas and snacks at no charge as part of the cabana rental. Anything above that would be extra.
This being Margaritaville, we promptly ordered two margaritas, which were priced at $14 apiece.
It was soon after the drinks and snacks arrived that we saw the storm clouds in the distance. We then noticed the beach area starting to clear out — not a good sign. What did everyone else know that we didn’t?
Just to confirm that things were about to get bad, we also got an unexpectedly quick return visit from the attendant, who said she needed to close out our tab early “because of the coming storm.” She might not get another chance to see us, she said, implying that our day at the beach was about to come to an end less than an hour after it began.
It was around then that I remembered the ResortPass cancellation policy. What a dope I had been to not check the weather. That said, I didn’t have long to dwell on it. I was soon getting soaked.
For the next hour or so, my companion and I took refuge inside the Margaritaville resort — first in a not-in-use restaurant and then, when a cleaner kicked us out of the restaurant so she could clean, a cluster of chairs in a hallway.
We ate one of the free snacks we had brought with us from our cabana, a bag of Doritos, and watched the rain pour down in sheets. It was truly epic.
All the while, we watched the clock. Our time at the resort was quickly running out.
One major caveat to using ResortPass to book a day pass at a resort during a cruise is that the hours that the day passes are valid don’t always align with the hours ships are in port.
In our case, our ship — Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas — docked in Nassau in the afternoon, with the gangway to get off the vessel opening at 1:30 p.m. All aboard time was 7:30 p.m.
The cabana rental sold by ResortPass was for the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Factor in the 20 minutes or so it would take us to walk from the ship to the resort, and that meant that even in the best of circumstances, we would have had about four hours at the cabana.
We knew this going in, of course. But we hadn’t factored in the storm. In the end, we only spent about 45 minutes in the cabana. While the storm eventually passed, the cabana was too soaked afterward to enjoy.
I did spend some time after the rain floating in the resort’s lazy river and taking a nice walk on the beach, but it was less time than I had expected.
The resort itself was essentially as it looked in the pictures on the site. It wasn’t a high-end resort. Its beach area was modest in size and didn’t feel particularly private or luxurious. The margaritas? I’ve had better. But the water was warm, and the sand inviting.
If I’d had kids with me, they would have loved the resort’s waterslides and lazy river, which were open to day pass holders.
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One of several waterslides at the Margaritaville resort. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Our cabana was fine for what it was — a sheet-covered day bed with four posts at its corners, a slatted wood roof and fabric curtains that could be closed around it for privacy. But its location in a high-traffic area just steps from the beach attendant hut, with other beachgoers in lounge chairs all around and a giant beach buggy partially blocking the view of the ocean, wasn’t all that inviting.
While it hadn’t cost much more to book the cabana instead of booking two day passes (which would have gotten us access to lounge chairs by the beach or pool), I didn’t think the cabana was worth the upgrade cost — even for a day with perfect weather.
Bottom line
ResortPass is a solid option for cruisers looking to book a day at a beach, pool or water park during a voyage. As I saw during my test, its site is easy to navigate and lists a wide range of resorts and hotels with day passes available — at least in top cruise destinations such as Nassau in the Bahamas. Its pricing is reasonable, and it has a generous cancellation policy.
The latter could come in handy if, unlike me, you remember to check the weather before your resort day to be sure it’s still going to be a good day to do it. It’ll also save the day if your ship has to change its itinerary at the last minute, as sometimes happens. In that case, you will be able to cancel your resort day pass without penalty.
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