It's really a toss-up. The price is the same...just depends on what time you arrive and if you prefer a longer ferry ride or a longer taxi ride. I know this sounds insane, but I prefer going through Red Hook only because it's a shorter ferry ride. Since I'm already in the taxi, I don't mind sitting in it for a longer trip to Red Hook. Once I'm off the taxi and onto the Ferry, I just want to get there...so I'm always happy that the Red Hook ferry takes half the time of the Charlotte Amalie. Dumb, I know.

Regardless, we always take the first ferry we can catch. If our timing makes it so that we can get to the dock within 10 minutes of either ferry leaving, we head that direction. Just take the ferry schedule with you on the plane and when you have your bags, decide where you want to go. Red Hook leaves pretty much hourly, but Charlotte Amalie is every two hours between 11 & 3 (if memory serves). You can do a google search for the ferry schedules.

By the way, there is another recent post where I describe, in detail, the taxi/ferry process from the airport to St John...can't remember the name, but it was within the past few days.

Crystal is so right! It really is about the timing... we were able to get to STJ an hour earlier by taking a taxi to Redhook and leaving from there because of the time of our arrival and the ferry schedule from CA. It also gave us a chance to see some of STT as we drove across that we would have missed going from CA which is so much closer to the airport. On the trip home it worked out the other way... better to catch the ferry to CA and take a quick cab to the airport... so you'll be fine either way.