Small ship shore excursion cancellations

[xroadrunnerx]

I will be on the 14 day Alaska cruise - roundtrip from Seattle aboard the Royal Princess. Is it common to have shore excursions cancelled due to lack of participation on these small ships? And if so, do you have enough time to make alternate plans?

[cruznliz]

We will be on the same cruise on August 16-30th. I personally wouldn't worry about lack of participation on the Shore Excursions. Princess has had small ships in Alaska for at least the last 3 summers so I'm sure they know what people commonly book. They wouldn't keep offering something that was not popular.

 

To put your mind at ease I would just go to the Shore Excursion desk when you arrive on board and have a talk with them about the particular tour you want to happen. I'm sure at that point they could tell you exactly how many others are booked on it. Also if you pre-reserve your excursions, your tickets should be in your cabin when you arrive, or by the next day at the latest.

[paul929207]

We have taken several cruise, including Alaska on the small ships. Have never had a shore excursion canceled and don't recall anyone complaining about theirs being cancelled.

[donna5]

We have had shore excursions cancelled and they also put us in a completely different time excursion once and didn't tell us. We found out about the time when checking the tickets that were in our room on embarkation. Returned the tickets. We ended up doing the same thing for a lot less on our own.

[VEGAS-CRUISER]

Yes and yes.

[VEGAS-CRUISER]

We have taken several cruise, including Alaska on the small ships. Have never had a shore excursion canceled and don't recall anyone complaining about theirs being cancelled.

Got to Juneau - All excursions cancelled due to weather.

[Grannycb]

Got to Juneau - All excursions cancelled due to weather.

 

That could probably happen on the larger ships too. It's always good to have a backup plan.

[xroadrunnerx]

I guess I better have backup plans! Thanks all for your comments

[BigGuy25]

That could probably happen on the larger ships too. It's always good to have a backup plan.

 

I totally agree with Granny - shore excursions can occasionally be cancelled on any size of ship. Princess does a great job of "scaling" the small ship experience to fit the number of passengers. For example, a trip to the same location on a large ship may have 4 or 5 busses headed to the location. The small ship might have just one!

[caribill]

And if you look at excursions on the Princess website (not through the personalizer for your cruise), you will see some ports where some of the excursions are not offered for the small ship visits. They must figure in advance there would be enough takers.

 

We have had excursions cancelled on the largest Princess ships due to a lack of participants.

[shellbeachjim]

We were on the Pacific Princess r/t to Alaska last year. Our problem wasn't a cancellation, per se, but having excursions sell out before we could book them. This was mostly our fault because we weren't as diligent as usual and waited a bit before trying to make our reservations. The only port where this happened was Kodiak. As it turned out, it didn't matter because the cruise cancelled Kodiak due to weather and we had an extra day in Seward.