Out of everything we did in Jamaica, we were most excited to ride Jamaican Bobsleds through the rainforest. Mystic Mountain is a major tourist attraction and sees a lot of bodies everyday, so they are pretty well organized and know how to make the lines flow smoothly. But we learned a couple of things that we wish we knew ahead of time to make the trip even better.

How to book:

I booked online with Rainforest Adventures and I would NOT recommend it. You should book through Island Routes and make sure your hotel knows that they are picking you up. We essentially got lucky because there was another group in our hotel that was being picked up at the same at. The shuttle group, run by Mystic Mountain, had no record of us being picked up or even if we had reservations. I don’t think it’s their fault I think it’s Rainforest Adventures fault. We also only knew about the ski lift, bobsleds, and ziplines and knew nothing about buying the lunch package or the Dunn’s Rive Falls package.

Activities/Packages:

Dunn’s River Falls: This is the first thing that our group did, if you bought this package. You get to climb up and swim in the falls. We chose not to do this because I didn’t want to bring a change of clothes and be wet all day and on the drive back.

Ski Lift/ Sky Explorer: the way you get up and down the mountain is by ski lift, it’s amazing and views are insane. It’s about a 15 minutes track and it’s HIGH. But completely worth it, if we could we would have just ridden the ski lift for 5 hours.

Zip Lining: The zip lining takes about 30 minutes and by the time you’re done you’re halfway down the mountain and you have to take the ski lift down to the exit, so make sure this is the last thing that you do. Unless you want to ride the ski lift again which is an additional fee.

Bobsleds: Riding a bobsled through the jungle isn’t what you instantly think of when you think of Jamaica but this is awesome. The views are insane it resembles a rollercoaster so it goes pretty fast. It’s only 5 minute long in total so it’s pretty short, but worth it.

I don’t have more pictures from the bobsleds because it’s a roller coaster and goes really fast! But each person get’s their own bobsled, we hooked ours up to each other, and the front person controls the speed and stopping (so it’s not surprising we went super fast).

Photo Package: Don’t get suckered into the $15 photo package like we did. They take your picture twice, on the ski lift and on the bobsled and each use a flash that blackens out the background so you can only see your faces. You only get one photo with the photo package so we didn’t think it was worth it. If you want your pictures you can purchase them for $15  a piece at the gift shop.

Views from the top: Priceless

Timing:

Again, to the fault of the agency we used, not Mystic Mountain, we thought this would be a 4 hour long excursion. In reality it’s a solid 8 to 9 hours. The shuttle picks you up at your hotel and it’s a 2 hour drive to Mystic Mountain, then you have 5 hours to do all the activities. If I knew that we had to stay for 5 hours, we would have just booked all the activities provided instead of just 2.

Was it Worth it:

It’s absolutely worth it if you have a full day to spend.

Lessons Learned:

• – Plan for a full day
• – Be wary of cruise season, this is a top cruise attraction so you have everyone from the cruise ships coming too. Luckily they have to leave early to get back on the boat so once they clear out the lines are a lot shorter.
• – Bring cash and a credit card, they have a really cool gift shop and restaurant at the very top. Both take credit card and USD.
• – Print off your confirmation. I had my reservation pulled up on my phone to show them but they needed a physical copy of it to have on file.
• – You don’t have to book in advance, actually it was weird that we did. Most people book excursions at the hotel kiosk when they get to Jamaica. Us doing it online, I think is where the paperwork got messed up.
• – They try to get you to buy bug spray, I’m not sure if you need it but we didn’t.