Grand, Little, or Brac?

[diverrex]

I'm not sure what a good deal is. I looked at the price for Southern Cross or Pirate's Point and they were both about 2Kpp. Am I missing something?

Well they said they were going to the Brac so I'm guessing

Cayman Brac Vacation rates & specials Brac Reef beach resort

$896 pp, 12 dives, breakfast and dinner. I'd call that a good deal.

 

[AggieDiver]

We are going to LCBR in august and will be paying around $1250 pp for bfast, lunch, dinner, and 12 dives. We will probably do some afternoon dives and maybe a night dive and will end up paying around $1500-1600 when all is said and done.

If you compare that to a place like Coz, to get into a comparable quality hotel on the beach, dive with a top notch dive op, and pay taxi fare into town and back over and over, and pay for 3 high end meals a day, you will spend $1000-1200 at least. And it won't be as convenient as having it all right there and never having to leave the resort unless you want to.

Plenty of folks will come back and tell me how cheaply they did Coz or wherever, but nearly all such tales end up describing a bare bones room at a mid level or lower hotel without a private beach and dock, eating on the cheap at lower end restaurants or cooking some of their own meals, and diving with a dive op that doesn't come close to providing the level of service that reef divers does. If you compare apples to apples, I don't think anybody in the caribbean matches what you get for what you pay at the all inclusives on the sister islands. Don't leave out of the equation that you are diving the best wall diving in the caribbean with 100'+ vis and little or no currents.

 

[-hh]

All three can be great, with good diving all around...

The general caveat that I give is that Grand can be crowded at times, and if you're the type who's after really fine dining, its going to be Grand ... with $100/pp dinners at places like the Wharf ... or to visit Gladys at Pirate's Point on Little. This isn't to say that the buffets at places like LCBR or BRBR aren't good food - - its just that the level of fine dining pretty much can't ever come from a row of steam trays.

Little Cayman is a bit over rated as far as the diving goes. There is so much diving pressure throughout the year on the limited number of sites on the north side that the soft stuff is really getting beat down. Having said that, it is still one of the best places to dive in the Caribbean besides Bonaire, Roatan, and a couple of others. We do LCBR every August and have noticed a deterioration every year... Brac is a notch down in dive quality but is now getting much less dive pressure.

I've also seen the decline in Bloody Bay on LC too, and its been mentioned here at times. While it does cause some unhappiness, most first (or few) -time visitors are able to appreciate it for how it currently is, without the knowledge (and thus regrets) of the "how it was". What can help here is to be proactive with your dive operator to ask them to take you to places that are "Good, but not necessarily famous". This might get you to Splash House, Fisheye Fantasy, Grundy's Gardens, etc, which get less diver pressure. Insofar as the Brac, hurricane Paloma gave it a major rest from any diver pressure and in general, the diving is IMO equal to LC and in some ways better: what I typically see as the differentiator for "better" is frequently that the famous dives on LC start with shallower drop-offs, which allows for longer dives which are often preferred. To summarize Brac diving, it is "big topology", where you're going to be swimming within the reef/wall and not merely swimming over it. The price you pay for it is that the dives will trend to be deeper.

To go/not go during hurricane season (the offers sure are tempting...)

Statistically, September is the highest risk ... anywhere within the Caribbean, not just Cayman per se. Nevertheless, it is one of our favorite times of year to go, since the heat of the summer has subsided, but the water is still warm. One can get the SE wind blowing pretty well at times, but one side or the other of the island is invariably in the lee for diving. Save money by going down for two weeks instead of one


-hh

 

[BDSC]

if you're the type who's after really fine dining, its going to be Grand ... with $100/pp dinners at places like the Wharf ... or to visit Gladys at Pirate's Point on Little. This isn't to say that the buffets at places like LCBR or BRBR aren't good food - - its just that the level of fine dining pretty much can't ever come from a row of steam trays.-hh

Well, having been to both Pirates Point, Brac Reef Beach Resort, and the LCBR within the last 3 years, I'd pick the overall dining experience at LCBR over Pirates Point every time. Gladys has great food no doubt, but the Chef at LCBR does an exceptional job and the variety at LCBR blows away Pirates Point. At least 4 main dishes every night along with all the other side dishes. At least 3 to 4 different desserts that were all out of this world.

But the food at the Brac Reef Beach Resort is even BETTER than either of the above. At least that's what 12 out of 16 folks thought that were with us and had done all three.

 

[-hh]

Well, having been to both Pirates Point, Brac Reef Beach Resort, and the LCBR within the last 3 years, I'd pick the overall dining experience at LCBR over Pirates Point every time. Gladys has great food no doubt, but the Chef at LCBR does an exceptional job and the variety at LCBR blows away Pirates Point. At least 4 main dishes every night along with all the other side dishes. At least 3 to 4 different desserts that were all out of this world.

But the food at the Brac Reef Beach Resort is even BETTER than either of the above. At least that's what 12 out of 16 folks thought that were with us and had done all three.

I've done all three as well.

I agree that they are all excellent buffets, and I agree with your point that Gladys has less variety...but that's a necessary attribute since PP has so many fewer guests too: its the price to be paid for not having 20+ people bustling in the chow line of front of you. In any case, I was really only addressing 'quality' and not also the factor of 'variety'. Obviously, both are important, and the weighting between the two is both a personal choice as well as a situational one.

Larger resorts' menus tend to be pretty rigidly fixed around a weekly schedule, which is often predicated the preordered food that's in their industrial freezers. Yes, there may be ~3 choices for Monday dinner, and three more for Tuesday, but every Mondy has the same exact three choices and every Tuesday has the same exact Tuesday choices. I've found that this becomes repetitive, particularly if one takes a longer (ie, 2 week) dive vacation to the same destination (as well as repeat visits). As such, I'm been more willing to sacrifice some variety in deferenece to pallet...a YMMV personal choice...particularly if this means less frozen food and more fresh & local.

FYI, Brac Reef now has a "fine dining" dining room in their new (post-Palmoa) layout which requires dinner reservations and is an extra charge. We've found it to be pretty similar/competitive to the dining room up at the Alexander Hotel. And of course for true local fresh food (& style), there's Aunt Sha's on the Brac.


-hh

 

[BDSC]

FYI, Brac Reef now has a "fine dining" dining room in their new (post-Palmoa) layout which requires dinner reservations and is an extra charge. We've found it to be pretty similar/competitive to the dining room up at the Alexander Hotel. And of course for true local fresh food (& style), there's Aunt Sha's on the Brac.


-hh

I've heard about the "fine dining" option at the BRBR. I haven't actually talked to anyone who has been there yet but I gotta figure it's going to be pretty good. I hope to go back to the Brac in the next year or so and then I'll try the new place to eat one night. "Mr. T" said it was great.

 

[AggieDiver]

I've also seen the decline in Bloody Bay on LC too, and its been mentioned here at times. While it does cause some unhappiness, most first (or few) -time visitors are able to appreciate it for how it currently is, without the knowledge (and thus regrets) of the "how it was".

Anybody who has been anywhere in the Caribbean over a long period of time will have that same opinion. If it is worth diving, it will eventually be declining and will suffer from excess diver pressure. I heard the same thing from my uncle about Coz back in the late 80s, I have heard the same about GC in the 90s, I have heard the same about Roatan and LC and T&C in the new 00s. There is no place that is "getting better every year". Where I think you are wrong is that the diving in LC is still spectacular and far from overrated. It may not be what it was a decade or two ago, and long term familiarity may breed a certain nostalgia for the conditions of yesteryear, but that doesn't mean the wall diving can't still go toe to toe with anywhere in the Caribbean and come out on top.

What can help here is to be proactive with your dive operator to ask them to take you to places that are "Good, but not necessarily famous". This might get you to Splash House, Fisheye Fantasy, Grundy's Gardens, etc, which get less diver pressure.

This is very true. I think the DMs get in a rut at times being asked every week to go to the same "famous sites" and if a group of divers will ask about other sites and trust the DMs to take them off the beaten path, often the results far exceed expectations.

 

[BurtonJackson22]

I'm not sure what a good deal is. I looked at the price for Southern Cross or Pirate's Point and they were both about 2Kpp. Am I missing something?

For how long? We paid less than half of that for a week.

Did you try getting the discount rates at the Activity Guide site?

It's here:
Cayman Islands | Complete Cayman Islands Vacation Planning and Savings Guide

 

[BurtonJackson22]

Well they said they were going to the Brac so I'm guessing

Cayman Brac Vacation rates & specials Brac Reef beach resort

$896 pp, 12 dives, breakfast and dinner. I'd call that a good deal.

It's a good deal but not that much cheaper than at least 2 others with much better food, less crowded boats, more freedom, and lots of other things. Maybe it's just me but I would never go back to LCBR. The other Little Cayman resorts are all much better. As always, MO, YMMV.

 

[smokey braden]

burtonjackson22,
welcome to this board.