View shore excursions before you book?

Is it possible to view the shore excursions for a Celebrity Cruise without a booking/before a booking?

If so, how?

Does the same go for all cruise lines?

By the way, i am looking at the Australian Celebrity website and I don't seem to be able to do it. http://www.celebritycruises.com.au/

Thanks

Rob

I usually use Google and Tripadvisor to check the title and/or location of the shore excursion. Tripadvisor usually comes up with reviews of some sort. Google usually has a bunch of other cruise lines describing the same tour, and I just pull bits of information from each. Celebrity could really do a better job describing them online, and of course you have to add in the website inconsistencies to compound the problem.

Is it possible to view the shore excursions for a Celebrity Cruise without a booking/before a booking?

 

If so, how?

 

Does the same go for all cruise lines?

 

By the way, i am looking at the Australian Celebrity website and I don't seem to be able to do it. http://www.celebritycruises.com.au/

 

Thanks

 

Rob

Yeah Rob..the Celebrity Oz site is really just a portal. Go to the US site and look there, although it can be messy. I have found the Princess Site to be good.. the Celebrity site needs work.

BTW...I did your Solstice cruise in Feb/Mar last year. Fabulous. I also did similar cruise on Sun Princess a few years back...so any Questions on Ports or tours just post here and we will see if I can help.... except for Cooktown...none of the cruise ships go there anymore...bit of a shame.

cheers

Is it possible to view the shore excursions for a Celebrity Cruise without a booking/before a booking?

 

If so, how?

I don't know about the Australia website, but if you can access the US website, this link goes there:

Shore & Land Excursions:

Scroll down to find the name of the destination you want.

You can either click on the link that has the name of the destination, or else

scroll over to the right where it says

"More Excursions Available"

and click "See All"

By the way, i am looking at the Australian Celebrity website and I don't seem to be able to do it. http://www.celebritycruises.com.au/

Under "Plan and Book" did you try the link labeled

"Book Shore & Land Excursions"

Maybe it works the same way on the Australian site as on the US site, but I can't find out because as soon as I click that link labeled "Book shore & Land Excursions" on the Australian site, it switches me to the US site.

(Despite my wishing that I was on an Australia cruise right now, apparently it detects my location and knows I am not there. :D)

Good luck.

You MIGHT be able to see the shore excursions, but be aware that it is also entirely possible that what you will have access to is a listing of all possible excursions offered on that route, and not until you are closer to your sail date will you know which specific ones will be offered on your cruise. This happened to me last year on Solstice -- the original list of all the shore excursions included many that were not actually available on the cruise I was on, which was the last cruise of the season. By then some tour operators had shut down. The shore excursions desk also said that some tours had gotten poor reviews on earlier cruises so they decided not to even schedule them as the season went on.

On the USA site (can't say for sure about other versions of the site) there is a way to download a brochure of all the excursions offered on your particular cruise as a PDF file.

It is on this page (click here) , which is a general excursion link and there is usually also a link for this under the excursion page reached through the reservation info for your cruise as well. Keep in mind that this brochure may not be complete if you're looking at it far in advance of your cruise and may change as they add excursions when your cruise gets closer. Also, the download is sometimes slow and it isn't clear it's working at first so give it a few minutes.

The brochure will have pretty full descriptions of the excursions and the times they are offered on your cruise.

Here is another tip. Once you have the excursion name and number from the brochure or another online lookup try doing a Google search using the number and exact name. You'll often find that you'll come up with various other sources from Celebrity and RCCL that reference the same excursion and some of them may have a more in depth description. Note that the excursion names and number are the same between Celebrity and RCCL and they apparently use a common department to arrange these for both lines.

Also try doing a search here on Cruise Critic on the appropriate port of call forum. Search for the exact excursion name, and try it with and without the excursion number. If you're lucky you'll find others who have taken the excursion and posted a review of it.

Thanks all for your feedback. I'm booked on a Freo/Perth to Sydney to cruise in Feb 2015. There are many on our roll call who are doing a B2B. I live near Melbourne Victoria which is a port stop on the prior cruise (Auckland to Perth) which the B2B cruisers are on.

I think we're OK with the shore excursions on our cruise (although I have a couple of questions for you Flipper). What I wanted to see was what shore excursions were available in Melbourne so I could give some advice/feedback to those on the roll call for the prior cruise stopping there.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers

Rob

Yeah Rob..the Celebrity Oz site is really just a portal. Go to the US site and look there, although it can be messy. I have found the Princess Site to be good.. the Celebrity site needs work.

 

BTW...I did your Solstice cruise in Feb/Mar last year. Fabulous. I also did similar cruise on Sun Princess a few years back...so any Questions on Ports or tours just post here and we will see if I can help.... except for Cooktown...none of the cruise ships go there anymore...bit of a shame.

 

cheers

Hi Flipper

I think you've already provided some info on Elephant riding in Bali for me. So my next question is about the Darwin tours. It's likely that we'll get a Darwin trip in on its own (same for FNQ and the reef) at a later date so not that fussed if I miss something - I'll get it next time. We're a party of 4 (2 couples) any recommendations? Personally I'm keen on the war history but it's possible/likely I might get outvoted.

And what about Cairns? We're thinking the Kuranda railway and skyrail. We don't arrive until midday so options may be limited.

Cheers

Rob

Hi Flipper

 

I think you've already provided some info on Elephant riding in Bali for me. So my next question is about the Darwin tours. It's likely that we'll get a Darwin trip in on its own (same for FNQ and the reef) at a later date so not that fussed if I miss something - I'll get it next time. We're a party of 4 (2 couples) any recommendations? Personally I'm keen on the war history but it's possible/likely I might get outvoted.

 

And what about Cairns? We're thinking the Kuranda railway and skyrail. We don't arrive until midday so options may be limited.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

Hi Rob

We have visited Darwin Twice on a cruise. I do have to say that the sightseeing options can be a bit limited, unless you can arrange to spend time going further afield. In my view best done when you can spend more than a day in Darwin.

First time in Darwin I had arranged to hire a limo for a couple of hours. We went with another couple and were shown around all the sights by a very entertaining and flexible driver. Price was right too.(He even drove us through the local Drive Thru Bottle shop so we could pick up some supplies - but I don't think you can do that with the ships nowadays)

Have a look here: http://www.askdarryl.com.au/

Second time (on Solstice) we decided to have a look at the Darwin Bombing scene. My wife is not necessarily into that sort of thing, but she did find it a very fascinating and informative tour. The guide we had was a typical Territorian and kept us always amused. The tour includes visits to the usual sights anyway, and certainly one of the highlights was the war museum... yup...not doudy..very high tech in fact, and very fascinating. All Australians should visit at some time.

Have a look here: http://www.bombingofdarwin.com.au/

I read about your cruise's late arrival at Cairns, and I remain bewildered as to why. Our schedule was a normal early morning arrival, but arrived late morning as we had a genuine delay when we had to make a major detour off Arnhem Land to off load a crew member in a Medivac operation. Quite a stunning event for the passengers however.

My suggestion is that you do the Kuranda rail trip...and pay the extra couple of bucks for Gold Class... you get a better carriage and you are served refreshments (albeit by a lovely chap with a very limp wrist ;)) You can combine that with a ride up on the Skyway Gondola. Only issue is getting to and from... might be worth investigating taxis. When we did it (1st trip) I had our local cricket guy drop us off at Kuranda township and when we got to the bottom at Redlynch I simply asked the driver of one of ship's tour coaches if he had room for another couple and we were sweet.

cheers

Thanks Flipper

Flipper

I see your on Solstice in December. I'm an enthusiastic beer brewer and consumer and I love trying new/different styles and brands.

Whilst I'm sure I won't go thirsty on the cruise, I'm keen to know what they are serving on board before we cruise in Feb. We've got the Classic package and are thinking (likely) of upgrading to premium.

Would you mind doing a bit of very important pre cruise reconnaissance for me by taking a photo of beer lists available at a couple of the bars? And of course if you happen to sample a couple and provide some comments/feedback (purely for reference and research purposes of course) then even better! If you are a beer drinker, let me know what your beer of choice was on the cruise.

You could either post back the photos/comments back here or email me at rob dot(.)green at (@) westnet dot(.)com dot(.)au No spaces anywhere.

I'm told there's trojans and bots that trawl this website for email addresses which is why I've written in that format. I hope you can make sense of it.

It's a few months before your cruise but I'd be grateful if you could do this for me. If you don't want to or forget ... it's no big deal.

Cheers

Rob

... I'm keen to know what they are serving on board before we cruise in Feb. We've got the Classic package and are thinking (likely) of upgrading to premium.

 

Would you mind doing a bit of very important pre cruise reconnaissance for me by taking a photo of beer lists available at a couple of the bars? ....

Take a look at the following posts which include attachments showing what you're looking for:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2048745

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=44102777&postcount=27

The second one above is from an Eclipse cruise from the UK and on those cruises the menu prices of the drinks, and the package drink $ cap, are all adjusted up to include the 15% service charge rather than being before it. That's why the price limits mentioned are higher than on the first posting.

Take a look at the following posts which include attachments showing what you're looking for:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2048745

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=44102777&postcount=27

 

The second one above is from an Eclipse cruise from the UK and on those cruises the menu prices of the drinks, and the package drink $ cap, are all adjusted up to include the 15% service charge rather than being before it. That's why the price limits mentioned are higher than on the first posting.

Thanks Flipper. I have seen those lists via threads on the Celebrity forum already. However from what I have read what's actually on board can vary from ship to ship particularly any craft beers they may have. And given it will be sailing in the Southern Hemisphere along way from the US & Europe which is home to most of those beers, I wondered what changes or substitutions may occur.

Cheers

Whoops. That should have been thanks Lsimon (not Flipper).