Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Great Barrier Reef

Hey Baby There are a lot of cruises from Cairns and Port Douglas, so it can be hard to choose. I believe one way to sort them is by deciding whether you want a big reef cruise or a small one. On our honeymoon early this year we tried both and we liked small much more. In Port Douglas we went out on the big Quicksilver catamaran to Agincourt Reef. The pluses are that it is very organized (they are pros at making everything go smoothly), very comfortable (big air-conditioned cabins with an educational video to watch on the way out), fast and safe. A lot of people rave about this tour. There's a big lunch buffet, with lots of shrimp and salads, a roped-off area to snorkel in with lifeguards watching out for you, an underwater viewing chamber (where you can see fish and watch the beginner divers), a submersible ride (we didn't have time to try that) and optional helicopter rides over the reef. It was fun. The only real con was that it was too big for us. Some people have called it a cattle run, but that's overstating it. However, there were some 300 or 400 other people around us, making it like a trip to an amusement park, but with coral and fish rather than roller coasters. There were lines for everything, food, snorkel masks, fins, bathroom. I guess it wasn't peaceful enough. In the Whitsundays we spent several days on a 20 passenger boat. Granted, it was a more sedate pace, but I think even for a single day, a smaller boat allows more personal attention, the ability to visit more than one reef per day, a more picnic-like lunch, more one on one time with the naturalist, and an opportunity to get to know your fellow travelers. And since you won't be bumping into those fellow travelers at every turn, it feels a bit more like exploration than an amusement park. The cons are that space is tighter, there's no big pontoon to hang out on, just the boat deck, the boat is slower and the trip rougher, there will be less variety at lunch and less things to do other than snorkel or dive. But if your goal is to snorkel or dive, a smaller boat will let you do more of that. The reason we did the Quicksilver cruise was for the contrast, and for us, it did not compare favorably. Perhaps if we had kids we would have felt safer at the Agincourt Reef, but as we don't, the roped off areas felt confining. You had to watch out for other snorkelers all the time because a lot of people are paddling around with their heads down. If we hadn't tried the smaller boat first, I think we would have been happy with the Quicksilver cruise. For a small tour, Wavelength Reef Charters in Port Douglas had been recommended to us because they only do snorkeling (we didn't want to dive), they max out at 30 people per boat, visit multiple reefs and are cheaper, with the snorkel safari included, but we didn't have time to check them out. Next time...