Nautica Shore Ex Times for Dates Not Accurate; Ports Are Known rate

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Even though I generally plan my own, or join other, private shore excursions, I do occasionally take a ship-arranged one, and in any event, I was pleased to learn on Ocean's Cruise Critic forum that Oceania had posted the start times for its shore excursions. Alas, my happiness was short-lived. For at least two excursions, in Bangkok, it stated that the excursions were offered at [1:30; 1:45, respectively] each day the ship was in port. I knew that could not be the case because on the second day the ship was in port, it departs at 2pm. I called Oceania, and spoke with one of the reservation agents, who looked the excursions up somewhere and said "no, they are offered at 8:15 and 8am, respectively, on the second day the ship was in port." I suggested she report these errors to someone, and hopefully she will, and whoever is doing this posting is looking carefully at all the postings for accuracy. In any event, you should probably recheck the start times especially if they clearly don't make sense, as these did not.

 

Another issue I have encountered repeatedly is being told that the line does not know what port it is docking in, and that it won't know until as late as 3 days before nor until at least 60 days before. I needed this information in several ports which have more than one port, one of which is quite a distance from downtown (e.g., Hanoi, Saigon, Yangon). This was important for planning shore excursions, both private and otherwise. After several weeks worth of effort, my TA was able to get the answers.