Philipsburg, St. Maarten Port Reviews

It has a nice but small port shopping area. I would hire a taxi to go to town which is cheap. We did a drive around the island and stopped whenever and wherever we wanted.

Need to have transportation of some sort. Took bus excursion to see the city.

Took the water taxi to downtown. Stroll about and had lunch. Beautiful

One of the best--if not the best--port for cruisers. Has it all--nice beach, ton of shopping, a lot of look at, lively waterfront. Cheapest souvenirs anywhere.

Easy beach day! Just hop on the water taxi for a very short ride to the beach. Excellent beachfront bars and restaurants to serve you at your beach chair. The water is to murky for snorkeling but I did have numerous turtles surface around me When I swam out deep.

St. Maarten started off a bit strangely, but ended up having my favorite activity of the whole cruise. Me, my dad and his friend rented ATVs from a vendor near the port, and had an awesome couple hours riding around the island. We even rode to the famous beach where the planes come in right over your heads! My favorite part was when we were riding through the mountains near the port and I saw another cruise ship coming in! It felt like I was in a movie. If you ever come to St. Maarten I definitely recommend this tour. I kept the receipt as a keepsake.

Another port where it is easy to get around. Right at the pier they have duty free shops, restaurants and areas to take pictures. But if you want to get to adventure to a beach the water taxi is only $7 USD roundtrip per person.

We ended up missing the DoubleDecker bus on the first stop of the Double Decker Island Tour. My husband had to use the restroom and it was out of range and he took longer than the break time. A lady who worked at one of the restaurants nearby saw us looking for the bus and told us the bus waited for 15 minutes but we didn't realize we would miss it, but we did. So, the lady at the restaurant was kind enough to get a cab so we could get back to the cruise ship before it left. That was a very scary experience. It ended being a pleasant experience, the cab driver took us on a tour as he brought us back to the ship. As a suggestion maybe extend the first stop a little longer.

St. Maarten was fine, but like most ports there is not much to see or do that is walkable from the ship. My terrible rating is for the shore excursion we did. It was the chair lift to the top of a mountain and zipline down. The issue is that it was oversold by about 10X. The line to board the chairlift was over two hours in the hot sun. Then when you get to the "top" you are not quite there yet, you have to stand in another line for half an hour to actually get to the top. The views were great and the flying duchman was fun but not worth the time. It was billed as a 3 hour excursion, it took almost 6 hours from leaving to returning to the ship. The return bus only ran every hour, we jumped on a bus for another ship or it would have taken even longer.

If you are into planes, this island is for you! It has a world-famous beach that lies directly under a fly path of planes going to/from the island airport and so planes fly right over your head. For my son, who's crazy about planes, it was the highlight of the trip. I went on a history tour. It was not your exciting tour of a big city or beautiful countryside. They island is kind of shabby, but the history is interesting, so I enjoyed it.