I was actually thinking the same thing as you, and was planning on renting a car only during the days ships are in port to tour around the island, as we are within the touristy areas of west bay and west end. My fiance made a good point though, that it may likely be the case that many of these people on the cruise could opt for shore excursions, in which case the places were thinking of visiting would be quite busy as well. Maybe someone with more experience could give us info on a great place to hide when the ships come in? :)

and TY Kan for the schedule...are there other ships besides those? looks like I may be lucking out...we've only got cruise traffic on the day we come in, and our last 2 days. not too bad!

you could memorize the cruise schedule, or you could just safely generalize that the ships are in port in the middle of the week and back at their home ports on weekends. Unless it's Carnival, of course, which might go adrift any day of the week.

dhauk....LOL.... so true! Well spoken and heart felt!!!!!

If you're at Infinity Bay, keep in mind that the cruise ship people don't usually get to West Bay Beach until around 10:00 in the morning, and then they have a brief instructional period. They snorkel around like mad for about an hour or two, and then sun/lounge on the beach, usually leaving for their ship around 3:00. (That's not an absolute schedule, you understand, just a general observation.) So, earlier in the morning, and late in the afternoon, the beach isn't very crowded, even on cruise ship days, for the most part. In the afternoon, no better place to be than at the Infinity Bay pool or lounging on the IB loungers by the beach. I would opt for the pool : )

P.S. Saturday is usually the very best beach day. By Sunday afternoon, locals and their families make the beach fairly crowded again, but hey, they deserve some beach time, too!

We had the same concerns and also stayed at Infinity Bay. I noticed you are from Ontario too. Even on the busiest days, it isn't as bad as a summer beach day on any of the Great Lakes. Most of the cruise ship people went closer to the iron wall. They can't sit in the chairs reserved for Infinity Bay. (unless they get a day pass, and I believe those are very limited)

I actually found some advantages to the cruise ship people. They had music and drummers that went to the far end of the beach. It was kind of cool to be in the water and listening at a distance. Surreal feeling. I found the snorkel tours they did outside of IB was helpful. They had a pink buoy out to guide them to the entrance to the channel. Once they were gone or already into the tour, we would go in and now had a land(water) mark. Go for lunch for part of it, enjoy the pool. We didn't notice a huge difference and we had a cruise day with 4 ships and passenger loads of over 11,000 one day!

You should be fine and will love IB.

The beach on cruise ship days was a little busier but not so bad.I guess it depends on what you consider "busy". You can still swim,walk,talk,sleep or lounge etc. easily. If you are into "people watching" then these days are more entertaining.

in general the cruise ships are in on tuesday, wednesday and thursday with perhaps a different number or cruise line on each of the days...but generally that is when they are there.

that said i wouldn't bank of little french key being empty on any of those days. i understand that sometimes you will get a large group of people from a ship going there and it can get quite crowded.

we went to little french key on a saturday morning after it had rained for about an hour....i think we got out to the island by about 10 and there wasn't another non-staff member out there for over 2 hours...it was basically our own personal island and was an excellent experience.

We were at gumbalimba on a non cruise ship day and it was great. They said its crazy there on cruise ship days. We did go ziplining at 1:30 in the afternoon on a cruise ship day and were the only ones there- cruisers only went in the morning. We spent the morning at the beach and it was fine- not as bad as I thought it would be.