Excursions

[NMTraveller]

I was wondering if most of you book excursions through the ship or book tours on your own.

 

Have any of you had luck booking private excursions where you get your own car and tour guide?  I was just wondering how much this can run and where you would book such a private tour?

Edited September 30, 2019 by NMTraveller

[davekathy]

22 minutes ago, NMTraveller said:

I was wondering if most of you book excursions through the ship or book tours on your own.

 

Have any of you had luck booking private excursions where you get your own car and tour guide?  I was just wondering how much this can run and where you would book such a private tour?

A lot depends on the port we would be visiting. Where are you going and what are your interests while in port? 

[dolittle]

Tell us where you are going . In Port Canaveral for e.g. very easy (and cheap) to rent car .We have done it many times. In other places not so much .Your best bet is to study your stops on this site and to hook up with others for private excursions. Tell us where you are going glad to help.

[mchell810]

29 minutes ago, NMTraveller said:

I was wondering if most of you book excursions through the ship or book tours on your own.

 

Have any of you had luck booking private excursions where you get your own car and tour guide?  I was just wondering how much this can run and where you would book such a private tour?

 

As the other posters said, much depends on where you are going; however, I think overall most people do a combination of 3 things: ship tours, private tours and DIY.  If you explore the Ports of Call pages (and trip advisor) you will get good information on private tour operators and even what you can manage on your own. Even thought they are usually more expensive sometimes it's easier to go with the ship because of distance to the sites, ease or some personal need.

[srdancer]

We usually do ship tours at tender ports unless just wandering around on our own with no time constraints. Less hassle.

[NantahalaCruiser]

We have rented cars without a guide and hired guides with their own cars; but never rented a car and also hired a guide to go with us.

 

As others have suggested, we do a mixture of DIYs, independent tours and ship's tours depending on itineraries and availability of shared independent tours via the CC roll call. In some cases our DIYs are in conjunction with ship's tours where the ship's tour only provides the transportation from the port to a destination city.

 

On our most recent cruise we did 2 DIYs (1 in conjunction with a ship's tour,) 4 shared independent tours, and 2 ship's tours.  One of the ship's tours was in lieu of a failed attempt to find 4 people to join us on an independent tour.

[NMTraveller]

Next year is a northern Europe tour.  Copenhagen, Norway, Iceland, ends up in SouthHampton.  

The year after is the British Isles.

 

So TripAdvisor is a good resource to find tours?

 

We like the exclusive and Discovery tours where they rent a full bus and only fill it half full.  However the other cruise tours seem rather crowded when they fill up the full bus.  I was looking for a better plan.

[jelayne]

I would say 95% of our shore excursions are private tours with others from the Roll   Call, So that’s a good place to start.  Trip Advisor  and the  cruise critic  ports of call boards are a good place to check as well.  

In our experience private tours, with groups of 10 or less are less expensive, easily customized and much better than a ships tour.  Years ago someone told me that on a tour you can only go as fast as the slowest person.  Early on we experienced ships tours which clearly said they were strenuous and guests with mobility issues were on the tour. 

[DENIE]

We do a bit of both, but depends on the location and how far away we want to go.  The farther and/or longer time away from port, the more we lean towards ship tours.  A local island tour when you are in port a long time, probably will go with a private excursion.  If traveling with just one or two other people, we prefer "just us 3 or 4" so no one "hijacks" the tour.  Have booked a number of tours based on great TripAdvisor ratings, and our next cruise we have a number of Tours by Locals.  However, on this trip we do have two very extensive trips that we opted for Celebrity-sponsored tours due to the time and distance.

[GastroGnome]

We've done a mix.  We tend to opt for ships tours when we are in port for a short space of time, where we want to go is a distance or if we are somewhere unusual.  If there is a problem the ship will wait for the ship tour - but not for a private one.  There are also some places (for example Flam in Norway and the Blue Lagoon in Iceland) where the cruise ship books all the best tickets and you'll get a better experience with the ship tour.  We've joined in with others from the roll call for tours - and I think had our best tour group experiences that way.  And we go it alone a fair amount.

 

We do use trip advisor - but there are a lot of fake reviews out there.  You can post on the destination boards for recommendations too. Always check your provider has the insurance cover to get you to the next port if necessary.

[upwarduk]

6 hours ago, srdancer said:

We usually do ship tours at tender ports unless just wandering around on our own with no time constraints. Less hassle.

Always book an excursion at Tender ports as you are then first off the ship. 

This is after the experience that we had getting off the ship in Split in 2010.

We were told not to go for our Tender ticket until we were ready to get off the ship. This resulted in us being given ticket #34. It took us 3 hours to get off the ship!

Apparently there had been a problem and the Town tender hadn’t turned up.

Also, there was a photo shoot taking place and all the equipment had to be taken off the ship.

We have also experienced not being allowed into a port. This happened to us in St Petersburg, due to high winds. We had our excursion money refunded to our OBA the same evening. Other passengers were still wondering if they would get their refunds at the end of the cruise, as they had booked via TA’s.

[NantahalaCruiser]

18 hours ago, upwarduk said:

Always book an excursion at Tender ports as you are then first off the ship. 

This is after the experience that we had getting off the ship in Split in 2010.

We were told not to go for our Tender ticket until we were ready to get off the ship. This resulted in us being given ticket #34. It took us 3 hours to get off the ship!

Apparently there had been a problem and the Town tender hadn’t turned up.

Also, there was a photo shoot taking place and all the equipment had to be taken off the ship.

We have also experienced not being allowed into a port. This happened to us in St Petersburg, due to high winds. We had our excursion money refunded to our OBA the same evening. Other passengers were still wondering if they would get their refunds at the end of the cruise, as they had booked via TA’s.

I've heard of people even booking an inexpensive ship's tour (e.g. a $49pp walking tour) at a Tender port just to get off the ship early for their independent tour!

[Husky61]

We always book our own private tour with a driver and a guide.  We never do ship tours.

[Fouremco]

We almost never take ship's excursions, choosing instead to take DIY outings (often renting a car) or booking excursion with local providers. Many of the latter have been in business for years, provide an excellent product and are completely reliable.

 

One resource that hasn't been mentioned for conducting your research is current and past roll calls for the same or similar cruises. And don't limit yourself to Celebrity roll calls. For example, we spent two weeks cruising Norway this summer with Holland America, and found a lot of information on HAL roll calls that would benefit your research for your Northern Europe cruise.

[2theship]

If you're cruising in Europe, be sure to join your roll call. You'll be more likely to find small group tours with reputable guides.

[snichols23]

Viator, get your guide, SkyMiles cruises are all good. Do web search for tourism in ports of call. You can often get the same “ship” tour by booking directly with vendor much cheaper. 

[Mauidiver]

We book through the ship so we don’t worry about having to get back on time.

[varoo]

On 9/30/2019 at 6:45 PM, NMTraveller said:

I was wondering if most of you book excursions through the ship or book tours on your own.

 

Have any of you had luck booking private excursions where you get your own car and tour guide?  I was just wondering how much this can run and where you would book such a private tour?

 

It  just depends on the location and the circumstances involved each time. 

 

Sometimes we book tours on our own,  or with a group, and sometimes we book the ship's excursions, while other times we rent a car or use public transportation.

 

There are some locations where we prefer to go off exploring on our own without taking any tour.

 

A great "tour guide" does not necessarily have to be a live person who goes with you.

 

If you have several people in your party, often renting a car can save you a lot of money compared to taking a commercial tour, and it gives you a lot more flexibility.

       

An important consideration in deciding is always the location of the next port

and ease of catching up with the ship,  just in case.

It makes a big difference whether our next port is five days later on the other side of the ocean, or only a short ferry ride or train ride away.

 

One of the main reasons why we will sometimes book a ship's tour instead of a private tour is if we have a lot of non-refundable OBC to use up. 

 

Another is if we are in an unfamiliar location where we do not speak the local language and have not had sufficient opportunity to research the various touring options available,  or if it involves going off into a remote wilderness area.

 

But in general, we do prefer to take private tours, or just head off on our own.

 

When we have the time, we find that lots of good information is available from travel books and websites like TripAdvisor, as well as by visiting the various port forums here on Cruise Critic and the websites of the different locations themselves.

    

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by varoo

[4774Papa]

We only do ship's excursions for two reasons

1) The tour that we want to do involves going a long distance from the port increasing the risk of missing the ship.

2) The ship's excursion is close to the same price for private tours.

 

Because neither of these reasons are common, we rarely take ship's excursions.  We probably take 10% of our tours with the ship.

 

Also, in some ports, you can do your own thing, you don't need a tour or guide or bus to get there.

 

Generally, we find private tours have fewer persons and are frequently half the price of a ship's excursion.

[dcbiker97]

We only do ships tours for those that could involve multiple modes of transportation over long distances. For example, for Tulum, Mexico it would involve a taxi to the ferry, a ferry ride, and an hour bus ride.   That’s a lot of chances to have problems. However the ship’s excursion takes you directly to Playa Del Carmen right from the ship’s pier.  

[hcat]

We use ships' excursions unless we can walk back to the ship on our own.

 

Positives: Ship's tours tender first in tender ports  Ship waits for you.  No worries with  close calls with broken down bus,  no taxi  available to pick you up , traffic jams, etc . Ship sometimes sends its own guide to help with language in lg cities. Ship and tour operator assist if there's a med issue..falls, etc.

 

Negatives : Ship excursions are more expensive, less exclusive  and petsonal and  often have larger busses with some pokey guests 

 

Still we think  we think the positives outweigh pvt tours or going too far away from port on your own. Have always enjoyed our tours..good guides  and  vehicles  etc.

Edited October 10, 2019 by hcat

[ghstudio]

We use a combination of tripadvisor and Viator to find guides.....then we usually try to find one other couple using CC's roll call (and we've found some terrific, compatible folks using the roll calls)....or we'll just join someone else's tour found on a roll call.   As others have said, ship tours are good when the tour is long and the port stop is short....some of the ruins in Belize come to mind.  When we book/schedule our own tours, we leave an hour buffer at the end.....ship leaves or last tender at 5, we want to be back by 4.  

 

[mickey89]

If you book private ensure you get back to the ship before it leaves...................

http://www.captaingreybeard.com/2014/02/dream-has-these-guys-on-the-run.html

[DebInAntigua]

12 minutes ago, mickey89 said:

If you book private ensure you get back to the ship before it leaves...................

http://www.captaingreybeard.com/2014/02/dream-has-these-guys-on-the-run.html

 

I find this video completely unbelievable and unrealistic.

I mean, come on.

There's no way they would find 4 empty lounge chairs together that easily.

[NMTraveller]

What happens if you book a private tour and the ship reroutes and does not go there or goes there on a different day.  Are the private cruise tours refundable in these cases?  The reason that I ask is that on our Sept. 9 Edge sailing 4 of the 8 ports were this way.