The gates will be locked, so you will not be abe to drive in. I think that you may be able to walk in but the resort will most likely be undergoing renovations, so they may not allow you in at all.

There are so many amazing beaches to see, you will not miss anything by not seeing Caneel, in my opinion

Just a friendly reminder, St John (no S) 🙂

You can always access the Caneel Beaches by water.

We were there in Oct last year. The resort was closed but we were able to park at the road and walk in. I agree with xislandgirl above...there are so many other amazing beaches, you probably won't miss a thing. Caneel Bay, itself, was probably one of my least favorite beaches and the bugs were really bad there. The grounds of the resort are beautiful though.

Have a great trip!!

Xislandgirl wrote:
( snip )
There are so many amazing beaches to see, you will not miss anything by not seeing Caneel, in my opinion

We snorkeled from Honeymoon around to Caneel and were frankly surprised by the interesting invertebrates in the rocks towards the west side of Caneel Bay. We were there probably around 4pm in early July and saw more coral banded shrimp than we could count (look for their long white antennae sticking out from crevasses and follow back to the red and white bodies). Once we started looking at the shrimp, we started seeing all sorts of really interesting crabs, some as big as 6-8" across and others 1" across (including a few arrow crabs), and also saw a few brittle starfish which we rarely see anywhere else, and a few moray eels as well. (We saw more of the shrimp there than we had seen in various other spots around the island over the last decade.) Oh, yes, and we were followed by a big (nearly 3 foot) barracuda while we were exploring the rocks. I figure s/he was waiting to see if we scared anything tasty out of the rocks as he was clearly not interested in us and was keeping at (what _he_ thought) a safe distance.

I'm more a snorkel guy than beach guy, though, and defer to Xislandgirl on the quality of the beach itself. It looked like a lawn with chaises from the water, and not something lush and tropical like Solomon or any of the other beaches that I would choose.