Sounds like high season has been very good, but when we were on the island last July, it was by far the slowest we have ever seen during the summer. We only made dinner reservations once in three weeks which was at Spiga when we had a group of 6. There were probably only 8-10 others in the restaurant the whole time we were there. We ate at every restaurant in the village at least once and never had to make a reservation. We walked Orient beach end to end numerous times and were truly surprised by how few people were there. The few times we ventured to the Dutch side(no cruise ship days), it was the same...had lunch at Mary's Boon one day and we were the only people there and one couple at the beach chairs. What we experienced was far greater than 25% fewer visitors compared to what we experienced prior to Irma. We haven't been to the island during high season since before Irma as we determined that for us, the added cost and congestion were just not worth it.
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