Best to sign up for excursions in advance?

We're on the March 4 Wind Star Costa Rica cruise. We've been trying to decide which excursions to take, and are having a hard time deciding. My question is for those of you who have experience on this line -- do their shore excursions often fill up early? Is it best to sign up for excursions in advance, or do we have the luxury of not having to decide now, and wait until we get onboard to decide? We'd rather do the latter, but if it's not uncommon for their excursions to fill up with passengers who've had the foresight to sign up in advance, then we'll do the same.

Thanks for any insight!

LeeAnne

As best I know, you cannot sign up for excursions on Windstar prior to departure. You can sign up for any or all the excursions you wish to take during the entire voyage at the first opportunity you have to sign up, however.

OH! Well, thanks for that -- I didn't realize you couldn't sign up in advance, but I suppose I would have discovered that had I gone and tried to do so. :o

I'm glad that I don't have to try to figure it all out in advance, as I usually do -- we made the decision to go on this cruise just a week or so ago, and I haven't had much time to do the usual research into the ports that I do prior to most cruises. So I'll just kick back and relax and wait until I'm on board.

Thanks for the response!

LeeAnne

We very rarely sign up with the cruise line for their excursions. Very easy to do it on line directly with the individual cruise operators. Less expensive, and less crowded.

Yes, that's true for us too -- we rarely use ship excursions. And we've had no trouble finding private excursions online for any of the other places we've cruised (Alaska, Europe, etc.) But I'm not that familiar with Costa Rica, and may want to take a couple of their excursions, I just don't know yet. Also, we're expecting the ship excursions on Windstar to be rather different from those on the big ships -- with such a small passenger load, how crowded can they be? Not to mention the fact that we expect we'll get to know a lot of the folks on board, as I understand that's pretty common on their ships. So the ship excursions sound a bit more attractive to me for this cruise than they have for our other cruises on other lines.

Have you cruised to Costa Rica? If so, do you have any tour operators you could recommend for private tours?

Leeann, We had cruised to CR as part of a Panama Canal Cruise on Princess. Found the quick visit so interesting, that this past Feb. we flew there and spent a week just traveling around the country. I had hired a driver who picked us up at each hotel and drove us to the next location.

Glenn

Costa Rica seems to be the hot destination lately -- since I booked my cruise, I've heard of several other people who are either planning trips there, or recently were there! I can hardly wait for my cruise.

We're really fortunate -- we have some friends who relocated down there a few years ago after they retired. They went there on a vacation, fell in love with it, and bought property, and they couldn't be happier! They'll be giving us a nice land tour once our cruise is over. Which is another reason why we may wish to do a couple cruise ship excursions -- things like snorkelling or other water-related activities that we won't be doing with them.

LeeAnne