Frustrated with Lack on Info on Alaska Cruise Tour Land Portion

I have posted a couple of times about this, but I haven’t received any helpful responses. We are booked on a southbound Alaska cruise (with pre-cruise land tour) on Millennium in August. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get any detailed information on the optional excursions for the land portion of the cruise tour. Please don’t tell me that I made a mistake booking the land portion as part of the trip as opposed to DIY – that ship has sailed. From everything I can glean from these boards, we will be given our options for optional excursions when we arrive in Alaska. So, we have to make snap decisions that day about very expensive excursions? Has anyone had any luck getting any info on land-based excursions? I am a planner by nature and want to do research on any excursions. So do I have to live with my decision to book a pre-cruise tour with the Celebrity, or can someone help me with how to get more info?

I have posted a couple of times about this, but I haven’t received any helpful responses. We are booked on a southbound Alaska cruise (with pre-cruise land tour) on Millennium in August. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get any detailed information on the optional excursions for the land portion of the cruise tour. Please don’t tell me that I made a mistake booking the land portion as part of the trip as opposed to DIY – that ship has sailed. From everything I can glean from these boards, we will be given our options for optional excursions when we arrive in Alaska. So, we have to make snap decisions that day about very expensive excursions? Has anyone had any luck getting any info on land-based excursions? I am a planner by nature and want to do research on any excursions. So do I have to live with my decision to book a pre-cruise tour with the Celebrity, or can someone help me with how to get more info?

We have been told the same thing about our land tour with RCI - that there would be optional excursions offered during our land tour, but that these would only be offered when we reached Alaska. We are spending our time researching excursions for the cruise portion of our trip, and will deal with the land ones when we arrive.

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We have been told the same thing about our land tour with RCI - that there would be optional excursions offered during our land tour, but that these would only be offered when we reached Alaska. We are spending our time researching excursions for the cruise portion of our trip, and will deal with the land ones when we arrive.

 

 

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I have carefully researched and booked the cruise portion excursions - I just don't understand why it has to be a big secret about the land portion excursions/schedule.

Wow, we are also booked on a pre cruise land tour with Celebrity before our 6/29 cruise departs. Ours is 4 days. I was not aware that there was anything optional - my belief was there will be full day tours/travel each day and the only thing not included was meals - otherwise what exactly are we paying for? I started to have some remorse about not DIY'g it but when I looked into a one way car rental picking up in Fairbanks & ending in Seward, the cost was prohibitive.

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Wow, we are also booked on a pre cruise land tour with Celebrity before our 6/29 cruise departs. Ours is 4 days. I was not aware that there was anything optional - my belief was there will be full day tours/travel each day and the only thing not included was meals - otherwise what exactly are we paying for? I started to have some remorse about not DIY'g it but when I looked into a one way car rental picking up in Fairbanks & ending in Seward, the cost was prohibitive.

 

 

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I don’t think there are tons of excursions available as I think the bulk of your time is booked with stuff as part of tour. But maybe a few optional things to fill up your time when you are free to roam. It does baffle me why they would not send out a complete itinerary of the land tour portion with the optional stuff. It would be nice to know this schedule.

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I am confused - are you upset with the people on this board as they haven't provided detailed info to your posts that Celebrity should be providing you? Shouldn't you be upset with Celebrity? I would press them as they know more than anyone on this board about their tours and options.

I would redirect your frustration. BTW - Celebrity/RCL doesn't provide the same amount of tours that Princess and HAL do (they are much larger in Alaska compared to Celebrity/RCL). Princess and HAL do a much larger amount of tours.

I have posted a couple of times about this, but I haven’t received any helpful responses. We are booked on a southbound Alaska cruise (with pre-cruise land tour) on Millennium in August. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get any detailed information on the optional excursions for the land portion of the cruise tour. Please don’t tell me that I made a mistake booking the land portion as part of the trip as opposed to DIY – that ship has sailed. From everything I can glean from these boards, we will be given our options for optional excursions when we arrive in Alaska. So, we have to make snap decisions that day about very expensive excursions? Has anyone had any luck getting any info on land-based excursions? I am a planner by nature and want to do research on any excursions. So do I have to live with my decision to book a pre-cruise tour with the Celebrity, or can someone help me with how to get more info?

I am with you on this.... We booked a land tour with RCI.

Good News: We really enjoyed our land tour. The guides were great. They provided information the first day of the land tour and helped everyone make decisions on what to book. The guide spent a good deal of time on his cell phone reserving spots for people, inquiring about departure times, changing reservations, etc. He did an excellent job making sure everyone had a nice trip. We were not rushed into making a decision, except for the Denali tour upgrade which they needed to know fairly quickly- first day. Everyone on our coach upgraded, and I would suggest you upgrade if that is an option. I agree that DIY is cheaper with more flexibility, etc. However, people's goals on a vacation are different, and I really don't want to be driving a rental car on my vacation. We also enjoyed getting to know some other folks on our tour. This doesn't happen on a DIY tour.

Bad News you already know, the cruise lines don't give you much info ahead of time. Even on the ship (we sailed before land portion) the RCI folks on board knew very little (actually nothing) about the land tour. Providing information would be such an easy thing for the cruise line to do, not sure why it is so difficult.

I did a the land/cruise Alaska with RCCL and was confused ahead of time also. I did find on their website, after much searching, a tad bit more info about the trip itself. Made me a little more comfy ahead of time. Call Celebrity and see if they have anymore info they can give you.

But as someone else mentioned, there are only a few options anyway. It is not like they give you 2 or 3 new options each day and you need to figure out which you want to do. I also did not feel like the new excursions were too expensive, I believe we did them all. The option was sort of hanging out at the hotel - a big waste of Alaska time to us.

Even though the cost is higher, than lets say doing it on our own, we were pleased with our land portion. If we travel to Alaska again now, I would feel comfortable enough to venture out on my own. First time I did not.

Cant speak for Celebrity but for Princess I booked then online just as I did on-board excursions. There were a number of options available.

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Not much info on Royal Caribbean land tours for sure, I did get some information by e-mailing the Cruise Tours department for our 2019 Alaska trip:

CruiseTours@rccl.com

They gave me some departure and arrival times, and I will schedule our own excursions in Denali (already done the Tundra Wilderness Tour inside Park). there is not much time in Talkeetna so may not do an excursion there. The Cruise Tours department also told me that these tours are sold as a bundle package and that the Tour Director may be able to offer some optiosn once you get on the tour.

I agree with another poster, on these land tours much of it is already filled with activities.

Maybe you are too far out of your departure. Our tour options didn't show up until January for our May departure on HAL's website.

I am confused - are you upset with the people on this board as they haven't provided detailed info to your posts that Celebrity should be providing you? Shouldn't you be upset with Celebrity? I would press them as they know more than anyone on this board about their tours and options.

 

I would redirect your frustration. BTW - Celebrity/RCL doesn't provide the same amount of tours that Princess and HAL do (they are much larger in Alaska compared to Celebrity/RCL). Princess and HAL do a much larger amount of tours.

I agree with this post...perhaps Celebrity simply does not have much to offer, compared to what HAL/Princess does...hence, not much info?

Thanks to all for the suggestions. Post #2 on the thread on the Celebrity Board from AlantaCruiser72 was the response that answered my question.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=55306157#post55306157

Thanks to all for the suggestions. Post #2 on the thread on the Celebrity Board from AlantaCruiser72 was the response that answered my question.

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=55306157#post55306157

Thank you for posting a link to that post. Royal Caribbean also has a cruise tour website that I had visited in the past but I never saw the excursion list. Maybe it is a recent add, because I know I went into resources before, but at least now I have a list of what will be offered for our May cruise. I am posting the link here to help out RSLeesburg and other Royal Caribbean cruisers.

http://www.royalcaribbeancruisetours.com/resources/

Thank you for posting a link to that post. Royal Caribbean also has a cruise tour website that I had visited in the past but I never saw the excursion list. Maybe it is a recent add, because I know I went into resources before, but at least now I have a list of what will be offered for our May cruise. I am posting the link here to help out RSLeesburg and other Royal Caribbean cruisers.

 

 

 

http://www.royalcaribbeancruisetours.com/resources/

Thanks SO much for this! I have the brochure for the land tours, but never saw this list of excursions.

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Thanks SO much for this! I have the brochure for the land tours, but never saw this list of excursions.

 

 

 

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You're welcome. They seem to be working on making that website better. The 2018 brochure shows the A tours schedule and then just says to reverse it for the B tours. If you look at the 2019 brochure on that link, it separates them and makes it easier to see what the days schedule will be.

In 2008, my wife and I did the cruisetour after our 7-day cruise on Celebrity Millennium. As I remembered, the whole land tour was all planned out for us and there were very few opportunities for optional excursions. It was correctly said that the only extras that we had to pay for were our meals (which were very expensive). In 2013, we went back to Alaska with another couple. We rented a motorhome for 12 days and did our own land tour. It was wonderful, doing it that way, and we saw so much more. We rented the motorhome in Anchorage and drove northbound up to Fairbanks, making stops in Talkeetna and Denali. Going southbound, we made stops in Wasilla, Seward, and Homer, before returning the motorhome in Anchorage. From there, we boarded the Sapphire Princess for the 7-day cruise down to Vancouver. It takes a lot of planning, but we saw so much more, plus if we saw something interesting, we could just pull over and not have to unload/load a 50+ passenger bus. Our whole trip was for 3 weeks, but if you don't have that much time to devote to the vacation, then your only option is to go with the cruisetour.

http://www.royalcaribbeancruisetours.com/resources/

This is a great Royal Caribbean cruisetour link, thanks so much for sharing. It really filled in a few blanks for our planned trip next year.

In 2008, my wife and I did the cruisetour after our 7-day cruise on Celebrity Millennium. As I remembered, the whole land tour was all planned out for us and there were very few opportunities for optional excursions. It was correctly said that the only extras that we had to pay for were our meals (which were very expensive). In 2013, we went back to Alaska with another couple. We rented a motorhome for 12 days and did our own land tour. It was wonderful, doing it that way, and we saw so much more. We rented the motorhome in Anchorage and drove northbound up to Fairbanks, making stops in Talkeetna and Denali. Going southbound, we made stops in Wasilla, Seward, and Homer, before returning the motorhome in Anchorage. From there, we boarded the Sapphire Princess for the 7-day cruise down to Vancouver. It takes a lot of planning, but we saw so much more, plus if we saw something interesting, we could just pull over and not have to unload/load a 50+ passenger bus. Our whole trip was for 3 weeks, but if you don't have that much time to devote to the vacation, then your only option is to go with the cruisetour.

Wow - that sounds like a wonderful trip! I'd love to try a trip like that sometime. This is our first trip to Alaska, so we were a bit concerned about planning so much on our own. Maybe next time!

I am with you on this.... We booked a land tour with RCI.

 

Good News: We really enjoyed our land tour. The guides were great. They provided information the first day of the land tour and helped everyone make decisions on what to book. The guide spent a good deal of time on his cell phone reserving spots for people, inquiring about departure times, changing reservations, etc. He did an excellent job making sure everyone had a nice trip. We were not rushed into making a decision, except for the Denali tour upgrade which they needed to know fairly quickly- first day. Everyone on our coach upgraded, and I would suggest you upgrade if that is an option. I agree that DIY is cheaper with more flexibility, etc. However, people's goals on a vacation are different, and I really don't want to be driving a rental car on my vacation. We also enjoyed getting to know some other folks on our tour. This doesn't happen on a DIY tour.

 

Bad News you already know, the cruise lines don't give you much info ahead of time. Even on the ship (we sailed before land portion) the RCI folks on board knew very little (actually nothing) about the land tour. Providing information would be such an easy thing for the cruise line to do, not sure why it is so difficult.

We are doing the 3-day post cruise land tour with RCI. I have been wondering the same thing. I guess we will just wing it when we get there. I know that we are doing: Coach Transfer from Seward to Anchorage and going to the Alaska Wild Life Center in Anchorage, Coach Transfer from Anchorage to Talkeetna to the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge. Next Day we Coach Transfer from Talkeetna to Denali to the Denali Natural History Tour, Then to Denali Park Village. Next Day we Coach Transfer from Denali to Talkeetna get on the Rail in the PM that will go from Talkeetna to Anchorage to the Marriott there.

How long are the transfers and how much extra time do we have and etc. Where did you eat?

http://www.royalcaribbeancruisetours.com/resources/

This is a great Royal Caribbean cruisetour link, thanks so much for sharing. It really filled in a few blanks for our planned trip next year.

Thank you for the link! This was just what I was looking for!

I am with you on this.... We booked a land tour with RCI.

 

Good News: We really enjoyed our land tour. The guides were great. They provided information the first day of the land tour and helped everyone make decisions on what to book. The guide spent a good deal of time on his cell phone reserving spots for people, inquiring about departure times, changing reservations, etc. He did an excellent job making sure everyone had a nice trip. We were not rushed into making a decision, except for the Denali tour upgrade which they needed to know fairly quickly- first day. Everyone on our coach upgraded, and I would suggest you upgrade if that is an option. I agree that DIY is cheaper with more flexibility, etc. However, people's goals on a vacation are different, and I really don't want to be driving a rental car on my vacation. We also enjoyed getting to know some other folks on our tour. This doesn't happen on a DIY tour.

 

Bad News you already know, the cruise lines don't give you much info ahead of time. Even on the ship (we sailed before land portion) the RCI folks on board knew very little (actually nothing) about the land tour. Providing information would be such an easy thing for the cruise line to do, not sure why it is so difficult.

What was the upgrade?

We are doing the 3-day post cruise land tour with RCI. I have been wondering the same thing. I guess we will just wing it when we get there. I know that we are doing: Coach Transfer from Seward to Anchorage and going to the Alaska Wild Life Center in Anchorage, Coach Transfer from Anchorage to Talkeetna to the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge. Next Day we Coach Transfer from Talkeetna to Denali to the Denali Natural History Tour, Then to Denali Park Village. Next Day we Coach Transfer from Denali to Talkeetna get on the Rail in the PM that will go from Talkeetna to Anchorage to the Marriott there.

 

How long are the transfers and how much extra time do we have and etc. Where did you eat?

We were on the 5 day tour - 3 day is pretty rushed especially at Denali. But I am sure you will have a great trip none the less. in 2016 all of the RCI coaches appeared to be very new to me. Our coach and guide were excellent. The lodge in Talkeetna was nice with a great view out the back of the mountain range. We did very few excursions on the land portion. The town of Talkeetna wasn't my cup of tea, but we did have a good meal there in a local restaurant. There was a free shuttle from the hotel to the town in Talkeetna. At Denali Park Village - I think we ate one meal in the lodge (all meals on your own) if I recall. The village is a bit rustic but clean and comfortable. We took a very nice hike from the village - you need to cross the highway to get to the trailhead - they can give you instructions at the desk I am sure. We upgraded to the wilderness tour in Danali, but you may not be able to depending on your groups departure schedule. The train from Talkeetna to Anchorage was fun. Food was excellent, views were very nice. Marriott in Anchorage is a Marriott and was nice but nothing unique about it. Have fun....

We were on the 5 day tour - 3 day is pretty rushed especially at Denali. But I am sure you will have a great trip none the less. in 2016 all of the RCI coaches appeared to be very new to me. Our coach and guide were excellent. The lodge in Talkeetna was nice with a great view out the back of the mountain range. We did very few excursions on the land portion. The town of Talkeetna wasn't my cup of tea, but we did have a good meal there in a local restaurant. There was a free shuttle from the hotel to the town in Talkeetna. At Denali Park Village - I think we ate one meal in the lodge (all meals on your own) if I recall. The village is a bit rustic but clean and comfortable. We took a very nice hike from the village - you need to cross the highway to get to the trailhead - they can give you instructions at the desk I am sure. We upgraded to the wilderness tour in Danali, but you may not be able to depending on your groups departure schedule. The train from Talkeetna to Anchorage was fun. Food was excellent, views were very nice. Marriott in Anchorage is a Marriott and was nice but nothing unique about it. Have fun....

We are going with 3 other couples, so I know we will have fun no matter what. Thanks for the info. I am a detail oriented person so any and all info helps me :halo:

Do you belong to AAA? The agents there will help you out. Join if you aren't a member That's the only cost. It's worth the bucks to end your frustrations.