Crown Princess British Isles cruise

has anyone taken this trip? Any comments or suggestions on excursions to definitely take. Comments appreciated -thank you

Check out Cruise Critic - Port of Call - Britain, a great place to ask questions.

Check out your Roll Call for your cruise, a place to meet other passengers going on your cruise.

If going during the Edinburgh Tattoo, a highly recommended excursion. The ship docks in Glasgow, you travel about 1 1/2 hours to Edinburgh and the ship departs around 1am.

If you use the search function here and on the Ports of Call-Europe-Britain then you can find several reviews. Lots of great information from those that have gone before!

Yes, we have done this cruise. It was excellent but unfortunately we missed Peter Port because of high winds. Do try and take the cruise during the Tattoo. It was well worth it. Make sure you do a tour that gets you up to the Antrim coast in Ireland. It was beautiful.

We had a huge roll call on this trip (200) and we did many excursions with companies sourced off the ship. There are many highly reputable tour operators that can put together any schedule you would like in each port.

Did this cruise a couple of years ago and visited some great places, some of which I’ve not been to before, even though I live in the UK.

Not sure which ports you are visiting on your cruise, but in Greenock, the Inverclyde Tourist Group offer free - yes free - local tours. There are usually 2 or 3 choices, and I’d highly recommend them. We reserved places online on the tour we wanted a few weeks before, although staff were in the terminal when we arrived, and folks could ‘sign up’ there and then for whatever was available. If there’s a specific tour you’d like to do it’s probably best to reserve beforehand. The tour we did was fab with a great guide and very informative.

They gladly accept donations for the tour in order to keep offering them, and we were happy to oblige for such a great trip.

If you’re going to Guernsey, you can get a local bus that goes around the island for £1. Be aware that Guernsey (and Jersey) have their own local currency including £1 notes. You’ll need to spend any you get as they’ll be pretty useless anywhere else.

We did the ship tour to Loch Ness and had a great time. Again very informative guide and a grand day out. Of course I saw “Nessie” but you may not be so lucky.

If you go to Liverpool, the HOPO bus is a good place to start, and this is a few mins walk from where the ship docks. Gives a good overall view of the city. The museums are also good and free to get into. Liverpool One shopping is also a few minutes walk and has a good selection of shops and eateries. There’s also the Albert Dock to explore or you could do the “ Ferry cross the Mersey”. Both within east walking distance.

Hope this info is useful.

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How's the weather in May? Is it usually cloudy and rainy with high winds? Is sick sickness a concern during this time frame, or in general for British Isle cruise?

Thanks!

How's the weather in May? Is it usually cloudy and rainy with high winds? Is sick sickness a concern during this time frame, or in general for British Isle cruise?

 

Thanks!

I've done the British Isles with Princess twice. In May, I arrived to record low temperatures. A few days before I left, they started having record high temperatures. That wasn't fun. Best advice: dress in layers and be prepared for anything!

We did this Princess cruise in 2015. We did a Princess excursion in every port. Found that very tiring but still did not get to see all we wanted to see. So in 2017 we booked back-to-back British Isles cruises and did excursions in fewer ports but got to see all we wanted.

Our excursions were to the Normandy D-Day site when we docked in Le Havre. The next time there we took the tour to Paris. We also enjoyed the Beatles excursion in Liverpool. We enjoyed the excursion to the fortress at Edinburgh.

I would recommend staying on the ship when you stop in Guernsey. Most of the time on that island was spent waiting in line to get on a tender back to the ship.

We took the itinerary that had an overnight in Dublin last summer. It was great. I found a few review threads here from previous years and a couple of live threads that helped a lot. Just keep searching.

We booked two independent excursions--one that went to Blarney Castle and Kinsale from Cobh and one that went to Urquhart Castle, a boat cruise on Loch Ness, the Clava cairns, and Cawdor Castle from Invergordon. We did the other ports on our own--walking tour from maps I found on the internet in Peter Port plus the castle; Dublin Castle and art museum our first (rainy) day in Dublin then the hop-on/hop-off bus the second day, with a major stop at Guinness; Ulster Museum in Belfast and walking tour; train to Glasgow from Greenock then hop-on/hop-off bus to a lot of different attractions; train to Edinburgh from South Queensferry and Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile there; MuMA in Le Havre.

I haven't done it yet but... I second the idea of booking non-Princess excursions with folks from your roll call. If you have an active roll call it can be a great way to go. There will often be a couple of folks who research the heck out of the excursion options and who are willing to organize groups. On a Hawaii/South Pacific cruise the folks on the roll call got together and booked a bunch of group tours for less than Princess wanted and the tours were at least as good as those offered by Princess. Sometimes they were identical but cheaper.