Regal Princess- Princess Cays Private Beach Offers Many Activities

Here’s Day Five in a series of blogs from our friend Jackie about her recent Regal Princess experience! Enjoy!

Princess Cruises- Princess Cays Private Beach Offers Many Activities

Alan plans to snorkel and take photos of the colorful fish in the coral reef. Karen is looking forward to browsing through local arts and crafts at beach shops. Their son Sam is taking an aqua bike ride with a new friend and their daughter Lauren wants to practice her paddle boarding.

The family from California says they have been looking forward to Princess Cays which offers plenty of adventure and attractions. Or folks can just lean back in a beach chair and relax.

The private 30-acre beachfront resort owned by Princess Cruise Line since 1992 is the first stop on our weeklong cruise aboard the Regal Princess. Princess Cays is located in the Bahamas, in the southern portion of the island of Eleuthera, which was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

The island is 100 miles long and about 2 miles wide. After Columbus visited the island on his maiden voyage, a British group called the Eleutherian Adventurers settled on the island in 1648 to escape religious persecution. They named the island Eleutheria, the Greek word for freedom.

The island is graced with gently rolling hills and miles of sparkling white sand beaches and mangrove trees. Eleuthera is about 200 miles from where we set sail in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Choices to fit every interest

As with all shore stops, passengers can stay aboard the Regal Princess and enjoy a huge choice of shipboard activities or they can go ashore for even more things to do. On Princess Cays, activities include swimming at the private beach, renting water fun equipment, shopping at the island marketplace and dining at the complimentary barbecue lunch.

Princess Cays has a coral reef teeming with schools of tropical fish for snorkeling and provides all the necessary equipment, including a small bag of fish food to ensure that snorkelers see plenty of fish up close.

Ships can’t dock here so Regal Princess passengers must take tenders from ship to shore and back. We will be anchored offshore with tenders available only from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and it is not convenient to take the tender back and forth so passengers are packing what they need for a day on the island.

Bars and drink stations are plentiful on Princess Cays and a large complimentary barbecue lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the island. Grill choices are burgers, hot dogs, chicken and ribs with all the fixings. There’s also a big tropical fruit area if diners want to eat light in anticipation of dinner on the ship.

Princess Cays is connected by a series of paved paths that lead to palm tree dotted beaches where clamshells and private bungalows are available for rent. Bring water shoes, as the shoreline by the water can have sharp rocks and coral fragments.

Unlike some other cruise line private islands, Princess offers excursions to nearby villages from Princess Cays. Although Princess uses a section of the island, the rest of Eleuthera is inhabited by a population of about 11,000 residents. When there is no ship in port, Princess Cays has a population of two – the onsite managers who live on the property.

Princess Cruise Line runs excursions to some of the smaller villages outside the complex, such as Rock Sound known for its bottomless blow hole. The ocean hole is a perplexing natural phenomenon because even though the ocean is a mile away, the rock formation is filled with seawater that appears to ebb and flow with the tides.

Story and photos by Jackie Sheckler Finch.