Excursions

[Fouremco]

2 minutes ago, NMTraveller said:

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.

We almost never take ship excursions, although the Tulum example mentioned by @dcbiker97 is one of very few exceptions. We have found over the years that the good private excursion providers won't charge you if your ship doesn't make it to port, or if there is a valid reason why you miss the excursion. On a two-week Southern Caribbean a 5 years ago, DW had a medical issue and we had to return home half way through the cruise. I emailed the four companies whose excursions we would miss and all of them returned our deposits. We subsequently re-booked with them on later cruises and have become repeat customers with two of them.

[snichols23]

I have always had great luck with Viator. But be aware that guaranteed return to the ship is not available on every tour. I always call and confirm and get an email confirmation. 

 

I was in Costa Maya Dec. 2017 and there was a horrible wreck on the only road entering the city. Multiple cruise ships had passengers sitting beside the highway waiting on it to clear. We sat there for 4-5 hours. My tour guide was already working on getting us to next port. Viator was great. It was unnerving. There were other folks in the van with us who didn't book the same tour through Viator and were up the "creek". As luck would have it, every cruise ship in port (6?) waited on passengers and the cruise went on.