My family (sons 14 and 15, wife, my sister, her husband, their daughers 13 and 16 and my mother) did this excursion through
DCL and we LOVED it.
The bus ride was like 45 minutes, but the tour guide talked to us a lot during the ride about Jamaica. Ya Mon! And taught us how to be HI-RY (happy). We were told we could leave things locked up on the bus and that we would have a chance to change before the Swim with horses part, so I left my water shoes on the bus and kept my sneakers on for comfort during the horseback ride.
At the horse ranch, they gave us all helmets that fit, and then paired us up with horses (about 40 people in our group). Because they were picking people they felt were appropriate for each horse as it came out, we were all out of order, but they were ready for that. The ride started on a circular dirt track, so that they could keep the horses walking (in circles) but pull people out of line and match them up with their group of friends/family. This also gave you an opportunity to get comfortable on your horse. Soon our group of 9 was all together. Then the real ride began. It was a nice wooded, course, but it didn’t have the ocean views I thought we were promised. It was about 45 minutes, as advertised. But unfortunately, right at the end, BEFORE going back to the bus, they took us all through the water. So all our sneakers got soaked, while our water shoes were dry on the bus. Don’t know why they did that. THEN we got to go change our shoes before the real beach part. So don't wear sneakers if you have anything else, or at least take your socks off!
The beach ride was Fantastic. Groups of 15 this time, different horses. And instead of a full saddle and stirrups it was more of a pad. What a bid difference a saddle makes! Not only is the horses spine much more obvious, but holding on and steering become much harder. Being without a saddle was more of an adjustment than being hip deep in the water. But it was great! Like an advanced course to see what we learned on the first ride. The guides were great, and we went out into the water pretty far. Luckily the waves were non-existent, but we were basically in the ocean.
Another big difference between this trip and many others is that they welcomed your own cameras. In fact, the guides often took our cameras from us and took pictures of our group for us. Sure they sold their own pictures too if you wanted them, but I thought it was really nice of them to take pictures with our cameras even if it cut into their pictures sales.