MV Discovery shore excursions

We're sailing on the Discovery 24 Sept 2012, Barcelona to Istanbul. We'll be looking into booking private tours rather than ship excursions. Please contact me (thinksnow@embarqmail.com) if you're interested.

Thanks,

Marcia

We're sailing on the Discovery 24 Sept 2012, Barcelona to Istanbul. We'll be looking into booking private tours rather than ship excursions. Please contact me (thinksnow@embarqmail.com) if you're interested.

Thanks,

Marcia

We found the ship's shore excursions to be very good. Depending on your itinerary if you are visiting more exotic, less frequented ports your planned arrival/departure times may change once you are underway. Caution about too much booking ahead of time privately unless you have good email contact and an escape clause. We had a very pricey private shore excursion booked in Borneo because the ship's one was sold out and the ship due to wind, tides, sand bars and probably less definite port information did require major changes in our times -totally throwing off our original plans.

Luckily our local agent learned about the changes and was there at the unplanned time and luckily hoping against hope we went out to see what was what and was greeted with a smiling face with our names on a sign. He was able to arrange and alternate tour to fit our new time schedule - at a premium rate naturally that also required us going into to town to find an ATM because they needed local currency for the necessary change in state permits.

Anyway, with a ship as small and wonderful and flexible as the MV Discovery which we dearly love, this sort of last minute change of plans can happen and even happened on a ship's excursion that did not turn out so well after all in the Maldives, but at least they were totally responsible for getting us there and back.

This has nothing to do with any lack of responsible planning by the ship's shore excursion staff. It is all where we go on this ship, and the inherent vaguries of weather and local port authorities and tides and wind and .........

So stay loose and stay flexible and always carry your passport and worthy credit card, incase you can't get back in time.

Thanks for the feedback.