TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin How Many Cruise Ships?

Hello, I have looked at 3 different websites to see how many cruise ships will be in each day that we are on the island (1/25-2/1). The 3 sites are not in agreement—Cruise Dig, Cruise Times Table, and the more official looking Port St. Maarten (which does not provide # of passengers). Which site provides the best estimate of ships and, therefore, crowds?
Thanks!

Port SXM (official site), and if you really need to know the # of passengers you need to just look up each ship's capacity.


https://gls.portstmaarten.sx/sxm/MainMenu.aspx?ShipScheduleType=2

Yes, the Port SXM site is linked here on TTOL and is the best source. As for passenger loads in general, if the name of the ship is "_____ of the Seas" (doesn't matter what the first word is) it's going to be huge, with Icon of the Seas being the largest, at around 7,000 pax. Princess, NCL, Disney and Carnival will also be large, but not quite so large. Celebrity and Holland America will be a bit smaller. Your biggest loads will be on Tuesday-Wednesday--Thursday. Ships like Star Clipper, Star Flyer, Sea Cloud, Wind Surf, etc., will be dinky in comparison, generally 300 pax or less.

Alternatively, just look at the Maho beach cams. If the guys have set out a lot of loungers, there's gonna be a lot of cruise passengers!

Correct...

For those who don't know, the best link to check for these purposes is HERE

Bill--well, yeah, if you are interested only in Maho.

I use both the official port page and cruise time tables to get a good estimate on crowds and which days to avoid the Dutch side. I make a chart with expected passenger load, arrival and departure times of each ship and plan accordingly.

Two Royal Carib mega giganta city at sea cruise ship can be 10k extra people on island. Those are the days we go nowhere.