Make sure you check shore excursion prices!

I received an e mail offering me 20% off shore excursions for my up and coming cruise on Seaview. When I went into it and priced up a tour to,Pompeii it came up at £54 per adult and this was the price already with a discount. On checking MSC Shore Excursions (without entering a booking reference) the same tour was showing at £47. Phoned MSC who could not explain different prices but they are looking into it! Just make sure you check prices before committing to any tour.

Suron in Bristol UK

We saw the 20% discount as well when we sailed the Seaside last month. The supposed discount was the same price we paid when booking the excursions months earlier. We figured it was bunk and just another MSC website glitch. Never thought about calling customer service though.

I queried this 20% saving last year and it is really the difference between paying before you cruise or being charged the 15% extra service charge if you book on board.

UPDATE - After lenthgy talks with MSC UK I was transferred to a senior supervisor who was most helpful. She confirmed that there was a gross error in the IT department whereby the price was showing at £47 if just browsing the general shore excursions (without entering any booking reference) but £54 if done via Manage My Booking!!

Not wanting to miss out on this tour the supervisor kindly agreed to book it for us but took no money at the time so it now appears as an outstanding amount on our booking. She is hoping to get us either a refund of the difference (not a huge sum admittedly but it is the principle) or we may be offered some on board credit to compensate for all the trouble this has caused. We should know the outcome early in the coming week.

I think MSC really need to shake up their IT department, the website is awful and we even had to phone in most of our passenger details as the website could either not eaccessed or would not allow us to enter details in full.

Hope others do not have the same problems.

Suzanne

Successful outcome after the senior supervisor acted so quickly and efficiently. It was a wrong price showing in the general MSC Shore Excursions pages - someone in IT made an error I would guess. Anyway we have booked the Pompeii tour, paid the £54 price but have been offered some on board credit to make up for all the inconvenience.

Really think MSC need to get their website sorted out- the supervisor told me that the whole system crashed over the past weekend, they could not log on to their own computers. This affected not only the UK but America and other countries too. Let’s hope things are better now.

Good luck with your planning

Suron

Hi Cruisers,

We are to cruise on the Preziosa in late August to Northern Europe (from Copenhagen) calling at Stockholm, Tallinn, St Petersburg and Kiel.

Can someone please help with the following questions:

Any guidance on the best excursions for these ports?

Is it cheaper to book on board the ship or in advance? (is the price quoted in GBP (£) and Euro the same, i.e without exchange rate conversion?)

Pricing for excursions state that it cannot be combined with pricing reserved for Yacht Club cruisers. Is it cheaper to book on board if cruising in Yacht Club cabins?

There is an excursion package which is slightly cheaper than the individual excursions. Any good/bad experience on these anyone?

Thank you

Where do you find MSC , Cunard, Carnival, other cruise line excursion Prices, since they are not listed easily on their websites?  Princess, HOlland America, Costa, Aida, P&O, Ponant, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian all list their excursion prices right with each daily itinerary activities so potential customers\passengers can budget to see if they can afford to go... 

21 minutes ago, piano340laurier said:

Where do you find MSC , Cunard, Carnival, other cruise line excursion Prices, since they are not listed easily on their websites?  Princess, HOlland America, Costa, Aida, P&O, Ponant, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian all list their excursion prices right with each daily itinerary activities so potential customers\passengers can budget to see if they can afford to go... 

For most cruise lines you will see them when you log in to your personal account and go to that section (excursions).  But you will not see anything until a few short months before your embarkation.  Excursions get scheduled and canceled regularly based on passenger participation under the best circumstances.  I would expect to have to take a last look to see what is actually available and what is left of any pre-bookings if I've made any and keep my expectations in check.

 

I read that fully vaccinated passengers will be allowed to go out on their own and do their own sightseeing/excursions.

They can avoid the exorbitant prices charged by the Cruise lines

Where did you read this? As far as I know there will be no privillege for vaccinated passengers, at least not on EU cruises for Schengen countries. But maybe rules have changed. I would really appreciate if that becomes true.

3 hours ago, piano340laurier said:

Where do you find MSC ... excursion Prices, since they are not listed easily on their websites?

It depends on what country you are booking in.   MSC used to keep it at the link below for US bookings, but they haven't got it updated yet.  You can change the country code at the top of the page to find it for other markets.

https://www.mscbook.com/shop/TAPortalExternalView?storeId=10757&catalogId=10001&langId=&taportalIframeKey=MENU_EXCURSIONS

I've attached the outdated 2020 version below.

Excursion brochure.pdf

19 minutes ago, MouseBerry said:

As far as I know there will be no privillege for vaccinated passengers, at least not on EU cruises for Schengen countries. But maybe rules have changed. I would really appreciate if that becomes true.

Currently US based sailings will allow passengers showing proof of vaccination to do their own excursions.  MSC in the EU and UK currently require all passengers to do MSC sold and approved "bubble" excursions.

This thread is THREE years old .....

2 hours ago, tallnthensome said:

This thread is THREE years old .....

I'm definitely a proponent of locking threads after a couple years, and CC finally adopted that policy for threads after 12 years.  But for someone's first post I won't hassle them.