Shore Excursion Availability

[TN Roz]

We have our first NCL cruise booked to Alaska May 2025. I was looking at my reservation and there are only 26 shore excursions available. Does this mean all but 26 are sold out or is it too early for all of the excursions to be showing?

[timf2001]

It is too early since you are still over a year from sailing.  There should be more excursions added as the date gets closer.

[destar]

If you are interested on the White Pass rail excursion (6+hrs), book early, it sells out and then you are stuck with the basic 2.5 hrs scenic train ride.

[TN Roz]

10 minutes ago, destar said:

If you are interested on the White Pass rail excursion (6+hrs), book early, it sells out and then you are stuck with the basic 2.5 hrs scenic train ride.

This is one of the excursions we are interested in. Is the VIP the longer one? 

[destar]

23 minutes ago, TN Roz said:

This is one of the excursions we are interested in. Is the VIP the longer one? 

Don't know if its the VIP, but the White Pass excursion that goes to Bennett its 7.5 hrs, if that's what you want and is available book it. Im going in a few week, that excursion sold out early December.

[destar]

Also deadliest catch tour is another excursion that sells out fast, I booked direct instead of the cruise line excursion.

[dmwnc1959]

1 hour ago, TN Roz said:

We have our first NCL cruise booked to Alaska May 2025. I was looking at my reservation and there are only 26 shore excursions available. Does this mean all but 26 are sold out or is it too early for all of the excursions to be showing?

I’m in a similar boat with a 7-night SB from Whitter on April 28, 2025, and so far 24 have slowly populated into availability.
 

My cruise just before that from April 3 - April 28 is 25-nights and now has 43 available (up from 32 yesterday). Quite a few AK shore excursions have already shown up and I expect a lot more in the coming months. 

[TN Roz]

Thank you all for the valuable information! We are long time CCL and RCCL cruisers, but I think we will really enjoy NCL and are looking froward to comparing the three lines. Having this cruise booked has brought back some of the old excitement of cruising that we had kind of lost after so many on the same ships and same ports.

[Rick&Jeannie]

41 minutes ago, destar said:

Also deadliest catch tour is another excursion that sells out fast, I booked direct instead of the cruise line excursion.

We've done this one...great experience!

[destar]

23 minutes ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

We've done this one...great experience!

Big fan of the show, can't wait!

[Rick&Jeannie]

We have done the White Pass Railroad twice now, both times just the "short" trip.  Don't feel like you'd be missing out by not booking the longer trip; you would be missing some of the most fantastic scenery on the planet!  And...keep in mind that if you do any of the trips that cross over into Canada (other than the short trip which just turns around just across the border) you will need to take your passport.  A lot of people get hung up on that and find that they cannot go.

[European_CruiseGirl]

8 hours ago, TN Roz said:

Thank you all for the valuable information! We are long time CCL and RCCL cruisers, but I think we will really enjoy NCL and are looking froward to comparing the three lines. Having this cruise booked has brought back some of the old excitement of cruising that we had kind of lost after so many on the same ships and same ports.

As you have previously cruised on other lines and not on NCL there is one thing you should know about the NCL shore excursion reservation process/system. Once you book a shore excursion all the other shore excursions for that port disappear from your view if they are overlapping with your booked tour with even 5 minutes. So where on RCCL you can book a shore excursion and then constantly check which new shore excursions come available on NCL you simply cannot see anything else than your chosen shore excursion for that port anymore. So there might become new interesting shore excursions available after you book yours and you have no clue about them. It’s a shame the system works like this but it is what it is. 
 

Also it’s good to understand that NCL never has discounts on their shorex (or wifi or whatever pre-cruise things you can purchase). If you want to book something just book it, they don’t use dynamic pricing or discount these items like RCCL does. 
 

 

Edited April 6 by European_CruiseGirl

[dmwnc1959]

4 hours ago, European_CruiseGirl said:

As you have previously cruised on other lines and not on NCL there is one thing you should know about the NCL shore excursion reservation process/system. Once you book a shore excursion all the other shore excursions for that port disappear from your view if they are overlapping with your booked tour with even 5 minutes. So where on RCCL you can book a shore excursion and then constantly check which new shore excursions come available on NCL you simply cannot see anything else than your chosen shore excursion for that port anymore. So there might become new interesting shore excursions available after you book yours and you have no clue about them. It’s a shame the system works like this but it is what it is. 
 

Also it’s good to understand that NCL never has discounts on their shorex (or wifi or whatever pre-cruise things you can purchase). If you want to book something just book it, they don’t use dynamic pricing or discount these items like RCCL does. 

This is an incredibly important detail I don’t think anyone has ever mentioned. 😳 I usually only pick one per port since I also want some free time to roam even I places I’ve already been. I’ll definitely have to pay more attention when booking excursions in those ports that are new to me.  👍

[destar]

5 hours ago, European_CruiseGirl said:

Also it’s good to understand that NCL never has discounts on their shorex

Depending on your Latitude tier, you get a 10-20% off shore excursions. Also if you booked with the FAS package, you get $50 off every excursion booked with NCL, for one person per cabin. The $50 off will be deducted on your onboard account after completing excursion.

[European_CruiseGirl]

18 minutes ago, destar said:

Depending on your Latitude tier, you get a 10-20% off shore excursions. Also if you booked with the FAS package, you get $50 off every excursion booked with NCL, for one person per cabin. The $50 off will be deducted on your onboard account after completing excursion.

This is 100% true. I was referring to the discounts and dynamic pricing that RCCL has where the price of a shore excursion fluctuates on an almost weekly basis (the discounts being between 5-20% and you never know which week you'll have what discount...or full price).