Excursion times

[hop2it]

We've booked a Western Caribbean cruise for early 2024 and are a little disappointed to see the only excursions (through Princess) are scheduled for very early in the morning, shortly after docking. Just wondering if there's a chance the available times could be expanded later, depending on demand presumably. Probably not, I suppose.

[CruiserN1]

My experience is that in the Caribbean ports they want to get you out and back in plenty of time for sailaway. Most excursion providers have an AM and PM departure and the cruise lines typically book the AM slots. You can always book on your own and see if you can find a tour operator that has a late morning start. The ports of call boards on CC have a lot of recommendations for private or independent group tours. If you check those out you might find something that works better for you than the ship's excursions.

[avonlady6390]

It can be very hot in the Caribbean so early start times are better although when on vacation it is nice to sleep in or get up early do an early excursion and come back to the ship for an early afternoon nap.

[Expat Cruise]

We rarely do cruise ship provide tours. Unless not allowed by the visa for the port, we always book independent tours. Have never missed a cruise ship, no reason to pay so much more for what many times is the same tour. 

 

Case in point Darwin Austriala, The Princess Cruise tour was $140 per person, done using 55 passenger tour buses. We booked a 20 passenger bus from the same tour operator, for 14 of us. Our price was $51 per person. Our guide got in front of his co-workers operating the official tour.  So we showed up at a stop and almost no one there, leaving we watch the Princess Cruises official tour buses pull in and over 100 guests came off them. 

 

Princess will not be adding extra tours, those tour packages are set up years in advance. Private tours are the way to go, you get a much better experience, and a great price.  

[caribill]

My experience may be different than your will be.

 

Back in December all the Princess excursions for a western Caribbean cruise were scheduled pre-cruise for an early start.

 

Once on board, we found most of the early ones we had looked at were now scheduled for a more reasonable starting time that was 1 to 3 hours later than originally scheduled.

[hop2it]

Thanks for the response. We'll probably use at least some independent tours but was concerned about Belize because of having to wait for the tenders to port.

[ED49404]

9 hours ago, caribill said:

My experience may be different than your will be.

 

Back in December all the Princess excursions for a western Caribbean cruise were scheduled pre-cruise for an early start.

 

Once on board, we found most of the early ones we had looked at were now scheduled for a more reasonable starting time that was 1 to 3 hours later than originally scheduled.

On our last Caribbean cruise on embarkation day when we went through our excursion tickets, we noticed that several tours had different times.  We were never notified beforehand.

[caribill]

2 hours ago, hop2it said:

Thanks for the response. We'll probably use at least some independent tours but was concerned about Belize because of having to wait for the tenders to port.

 

Belize usually uses local tenders, not Princess ones. The local tenders have significantly more capacity than the Princess tenders, so the wait to get on one is not as long.

 

On the other hand, with larger capacity they take longer to load up.