Can you leave an excursion early?

[mocrimlaw]

We will be on Explorer in Spain and Portugal in September.  There are a few places where I would like to start on the excursion and then go off on our own and return to the ship on our own.  For example, in Bilbao I would like to go with the excursion to the museum & then to the Old Town, and then stay there on our own.  Does Regent let you do that?  Thanks!

[shuguley]

You can leave a tour at any point.  Just be absolutely sure that your tour guide knows you are leaving because they keep a close count.

[GOARMY]

TS:

 

One word answer is YES.   We have done this many times.   You are then on your own to get back to the ship before scheduled departure.  Fair warning--and this is based on observation while on board of "runners" who decided to, for whatever reason, excursion on their own in the first place; or leave a particular tour for shopping, or hiking, to visit local relatives, or whatever. 

 

This is not a small matter.  Explorer will not wait for runners.  No cruise ship will.  Unless, and this has happened to us --that particular tour was organized by the ship; and delay was due for, example, a bus break down.  No worries there.  

 

But, on the other hand--folks either make the gangplank; or take a bus, car, plane, or train to the next-port for re boarding.   

 

Out of common courtesy:  inform the Guide of your intention.   You will then-get another reminder that you are on your own.  That Guide, having been preped' for attendees to leave the excursion early, will again advise of the ship's departure. 

 

Guests are assumed to be adults who can follow simple directions, and understand consequences of not doing so.  

 

GOARMY!

 

[Hambagahle]

We have left several excursions early mostly - almost exclusively I think - because the guide was terrible and we couldn't stand any more of his/her "drivel".  On each occasion bar one we were in a city with easy transport back to the ship.

 

What GOARMY says is really important though --- please tell the Guide you are leaving.   They do a count every time the group gets on a bus and if the guide doesn't know you have left the entire programme will be held up.

[mocrimlaw]

Thank you all for the responses.  Yes we will of course tell the guide we are leaving early. I just wanted to make sure it would not cause a huge issue if we did that as I don't want to bother any other passengers.

[Portolan]

Quite a few of the city tours we've been on included the option to remain on at the end (in the city) rather than returning immediately to the ship so this may be your built-in option.  In those cases, the guide provided detailed instructions on the way to return.

 

You can, of course, leave anytime, but don't count on the guide having the time to give you much guidance for the return.

[DeepFreeze63]

16 hours ago, crimlaw@ecentral.com said:

We will be on Explorer in Spain and Portugal in September.  There are a few places where I would like to start on the excursion and then go off on our own and return to the ship on our own.  For example, in Bilbao I would like to go with the excursion to the museum & then to the Old Town, and then stay there on our own.  Does Regent let you do that?  Thanks!

Yes, Remember the good advice posted above. We will be on that cruise with you; we've done this cruise (and most of the ports) before but DW was ill and couldn’t fully participate. We are now raring to go.

Regent usually deploys a shuttle bus to/from town. They did when we were in Bilboa a few years ago and we used it after our Guggenheim tour.

We plan to stay in Saint Malo, Bordeaux, La Coruna, Oporto, Lisbon, and Gibraltar after our “in-town” tours. Our other excursions are “out-of-town” and we will stick close to our tour group!

See you at the “meet  & greet”; we bring our name tags.

[mocrimlaw]

HI DeepFreeze - we will look forward to meeting you - we are Maureen & Fred from the Denver area.  We have heard from many people on our travels that this itinerary was their favorite cruise, and have never been to any of the places except London. We have been on Oceania and other lines but never Regent.  I am getting very excited for this trip!  We are spending 2 days in London first (where we have tickets to Mamma Mia the Party, a new interactive experience), then have private guides to Mt St Michel and in Bordeaux.  We plan to take part of the Bilbao tour and then go on our own, and do the same in San Sebastian.  Going to Santiago de Compostela.  Then in Porto we will take the tub-tuk tour and hopefully be able to exit it in town and stay there on our own.  I hired a private guide in Lisbon to be able to see more as our time is so short.  Then taking the ship bus to Seville and trying (!) to see the Alcazar & Cathedral on our own in the 4 short hours we have there.  We met people in Gibraltar on a prior cruise so are meeting them there - so fun to see people we know!  I also hired a private guide in Algeria to take us to Cabo de Gata and have lunch there.  In Majorca we are taking the ship tour on the train to Soller.  We are staying 4 days in Barcelona and flying on our own back to London because I figured otherwise Regent would only put us on business class to the East Coast and I wanted to fly straight back to Denver and be able to sleep!  Hopefully I have planned on enough time to not miss our Denver flight, knowing Heathrow can be a nightmare, but it's the same airline. Hope we all including your DW stay healthy for this trip!

[rcandkc]

We have left a tour early..not only do we tell the guide but someone sitting near us on bus so they don’t worry and will know if guide forgets.  We also tip guide before leaving unless we are escaping a bad tour..this was true once and we left very early.  

[ronrick1943]

We've done it and it hasn't been a problem.  Like most be sure to tell the tour guide your are leaving the tour and tip the guide if you enjoyed the tour up to that point.  Another item that is very important - be sure and make sure that it's easy to get transportation back to the ship from where you leave the tour.  You don't want to go off on a longer hike just because you enjoy hiking to later find out you don't have cell service or a cab won't come out that far.  Just be careful when you leave a tour.

[Ceilknits]

On 7/13/2019 at 1:30 PM, Portolan said:

Quite a few of the city tours we've been on included the option to remain on at the end (in the city) rather than returning immediately to the ship so this may be your built-in option.  In those cases, the guide provided detailed instructions on the way to return.

 

You can, of course, leave anytime, but don't count on the guide having the time to give you much guidance for the return.