Wacky Rollers Tour

While researching shore excursions for our cruise port stop to the island of Dominica we chose 2 shore tours. In the morning we did a whale watching tour for me and in the afternoon it was all about adventure for the kids. Online I found The Wacky Rollers web site at www.wackyrollers.com. They offered many tours in Dominica but the one that caught my eye was the new Adventure Park they had recently opened. We have done traditional zip lines before but the Adventure Park was more like an obstacle course up in the tree tops. There are 27 challenges or obstacles and 7 zip lines.Two of the highlights are a Tarzan jump and a zip line that crosses over the Layou River and back.

One of the reasons we chose this tour was for my son. We were celebrating his fifth birthday the day we were there and he was too young to have ever done a zip line before. This park actually has an area just for kids ages 4 and up. They are assigned their own guide who takes them to a course built just for them where the get to complete obstacles and do zip lines but stay at a safe 3 feet off the ground.

When we arrived we found out we had the park all to ourselves. We met the guides in the main house where they fitted us with our safety gear and gave us instructions. We then went outside and were led to the first tree which we had to climb up to begin the course. My husband and daughter looked up at the tree and asked me what I had gotten us into.

Some of the obstacles were easy like walking across the wires stretched like tightropes or going across a zigzag log bridge. The one that was the hardest was what we called the swinging logs (see picture above). This challenge is to cross a bridge that is made from logs that have been turned on end with only a small circular cut side facing up. They have drilled a hole through the log and suspended it by a cable. When you step on the log it sways and swings out from under you. Lucky for us the guides were patient and eager to help us across. Early in the course my husband had an accident where he slipped and caught both his upper arms on a guide wire (see picture above). Between the injury and the fact that he is out of shape, he had to quit half way through. The guides were very understanding and lowered him down to the ground where he went to the end of the course to wait for my daughter and I to finish.

The course was really tough to get through but when we were done, we felt like we had won an episode of Fear Factor and were very proud of ourselves. I can not say enough about the guides. They were wonderful and made us feel extremely safe by checking and rechecking our equipment each time we arrived at a new obstacle. My husbands injury was not caused by anything that they could have done or prevented. He was wearing sandals and should have been wearing sneakers so he would have had traction. At the end of the course we were treated to beverages and fresh cut fruit. The tour takes place on the grounds of a cocoa plantation and they picked fresh cocoa pods which they cut open for us to taste. They then loaded us in an van and returned us to the dock where our ship was.

This was a great tour and I would do it again. When we went we were able to book directly with the Wacky Rollers and got it for about half of what our ship was charging for the same excursion. I have heard that the Wacky Rollers signed a contract with the cruise lines since then and will not allow you to book with them directly if you are arriving by ship. As with anything this is always subject to change so I would email them for the correct information before booking anything.