Newbies: How does one arrange to non HAL run excursions

[smoothsailor]

We are new to cruising and , after reading all the comments about privately run excursions, would like to take part in some "non-HAL" shore trips. DH thinks he wants to wait until we are on the ship to decide on what to do and where to go! Will the HAL people help make these arrangements or do we have to get online and do it ourselves?

Thanks!

[NoNoNanette]

Hi Smooth :)

 

In my opinion, privately booked excursions are the ONLY way to go! Not only will you save $$$$, but you'll likely avoid the herd-mentality/numbers of a ship sponsored day.

 

I'd suggest that you head over to the PORT OF CALL boards, read some reviews and EMAIL, EMAIL, EMAIL! These guys are very competitive, and you'll probably end up with many options.

 

Where are you headed? I've got some wonderful "contacts" in Cozumel, Dominica and Curacao. (Cultivating new buddies in other ports for my next cruise!)

[newmexicoNita]

nonoNanette has some good ideas. The first place is to head over to Ports a call. You can often get an entire group together this way. No, HAL will not help you with private tours. You can wait until you arrive on the island and perhaps pair up with someone else. We have done this a few times. I really think the best was is to start emailing ahead of time, decide on what seems to meet your needs; be sure to also learn as much as possible about the port before you make any plans. Some of the vendors will let you customize your tour. Good luck, oh, I do want to add one more thing: make certain, if you do a tour via the net or any other way where the cruise line is not involved to make it short enough to allow plenty of time to get back to the ship. I would advise keeping the tour to no more than 5 hours. NMnita

[steviek49]

nonoNanette has some good ideas. The first place is to head over to Ports a call. You can often get an entire group together this way. No, HAL will not help you with private tours. You can wait until you arrive on the island and perhaps pair up with someone else. We have done this a few times. I really think the best was is to start emailing ahead of time, decide on what seems to meet your needs; be sure to also learn as much as possible about the port before you make any plans. Some of the vendors will let you customize your tour. Good luck, oh, I do want to add one more thing: make certain, if you do a tour via the net or any other way where the cruise line is not involved to make it short enough to allow plenty of time to get back to the ship. I would advise keeping the tour to no more than 5 hours. NMnita

 

Hi NMNita,

 

We have chatted B4, several years ago when we were planning for the NCL Dawn. I was wondering with all of your experience- do you know to get from Westerdam in Tortola to the Baths on our own. I put a new thread on here a few hours ago (will give it more time) but so far no replies. We are a family of 4 (2 teenage girls) and heard we can catch a ferry and then a cab. Is this correct? advisable? The Westerdam will be in port from noon till 10pM. tHANK YOU FOR ANY HELP.

[jhannah]

I would chime in with NNN. Do some searching on the Internet and especially on the ports of call area and go from there. We've done ship tours, private tours, and simply headed out on our own. All three work, but not all will work equally well in every port.

 

I would not suggest waiting until you board ship to figure things out. Tours do sell out, and you just may be shut out of what you most want to do.

 

Good luck in your search.

[willowoodf]

I want to confirm going to the Ports of Call section for where you are going and either read up or make a post asking for recommendations. We have gotten a couple of great non-HAL excursions from that section. One is Mazatlan Frank in Mazatlan, Mexico. Can't recommend him highly enough. The other was the Dolphin Swim Experience in Puerto Viallarta. We actually went on the same excurision that the HAL-booked people did. We just took a taxi instead of a big bus. It was MUCH cheaper, and we got to stay around longer to pick up our DVD's. The excursion itself was exactly the same, we were side by side with the HAL booked people.

 

Mary

[lippylulu]

Hi NMNita,

 

We have chatted B4, several years ago when we were planning for the NCL Dawn. I was wondering with all of your experience- do you know to get from Westerdam in Tortola to the Baths on our own. I put a new thread on here a few hours ago (will give it more time) but so far no replies. We are a family of 4 (2 teenage girls) and heard we can catch a ferry and then a cab. Is this correct? advisable? The Westerdam will be in port from noon till 10pM. tHANK YOU FOR ANY HELP.

 

I responded to your other post about getting from Tortola to The Baths which are on Virgin Gorda. Check the HAL website and you will see that you are in port 2 pm- 10 pm---not noon as previously stated on your cruise documents. We were lucky that our travel agent alerted us to this change whic was then confirmed on the HAL website. The last ferry back from Virgin Gorda is somewhere between 4:30-6:30 pm so its not a practical shore excursion to book on your own.

 

That being said, for other excursions, you can often book directly right when you get off the ship at the port. We plan on doing this in Tortola for a sunset cruise. We also booked the dolphin excrusion privately on Tortola from the Dolphin Discovery website. You can also book tours right at the pier in St. Martin.

[Wild Thing ~T]

I want to confirm going to the Ports of Call section for where you are going and either read up or make a post asking for recommendations. We have gotten a couple of great non-HAL excursions from that section. One is Mazatlan Frank in Mazatlan, Mexico. Can't recommend him highly enough. The other was the Dolphin Swim Experience in Puerto Viallarta. We actually went on the same excurision that the HAL-booked people did. We just took a taxi instead of a big bus. It was MUCH cheaper, and we got to stay around longer to pick up our DVD's. The excursion itself was exactly the same, we were side by side with the HAL booked people.

 

Mary

 

We just booked Mazatlan Frank for 4 adults to Stone Island. Anyone ever taken this excursion from him? If so how was it?

Thank you,

Teri

[Royalpair]

We're leaving on the Veendam on the 18th (one week!!!). We booked a tour through the ship for Key West, but for the other ports we booked private tours guided by the people on the ports board. We are seeing ruins in Belize and Costa Maya, and doing the Livingston River tour in Santo Tomas. The guides all have email, but be patient, as sometimes they don't get back to you for a few days (but I did have opne respond within half an hour yesterday). Some very good reviews and advice on those boards, so go check them out.

[MercedMike]

There are many options for excursions. Some people try to say that independent excursions are the only choice, but you have to consider all the advantages and disadvantages, port by port, and according to the makeup and interests of your group. After 30 cruises, we usually do a mix of ship's excursions, pre-booked independent excursions, and walk-off exploring. However first time cruisers definitely need to consider the convenience and safety of the ship's excursions. The stranger and more exotic the port, the more likely we are to take the ship’s excursions. The ship delivers a large number of people to that port, often with great regularity. Usually the shore excursion staff can be relied on to know the best excursion companies, have chartered the best vehicles, reserved the best guides who speak the best English, tied up the admission to the best attractions at the best times, and in general have taken care of seeing that the very best is available to their passengers. In addition, the ship’s shore excursion staff monitors the ship tours, and makes sure that all their passengers are back aboard in plenty of time. More than once I have seen massive traffic jams which delayed lots of buses and vans. The ships passengers on shore excursions were accounted for, accomodated, given special dining times and all taken care of. Others were on their own.

 

The Ports of Call boards will give you lots of ideas. You can go to the Internet and shop around for independent excursion operators. Port Promotions is one, and is sometimes a few bucks less than the ship's excursion, but its choices are severely limited. Shoretrips.com is another. You can just go to Google and put in the name of the port and "tour" and it will turn up a lot of information for you. You can also ask your TA. Many agencies have "destination specialists." We have done all of those with considerable success, in more "civilized" ports where we felt things were well regulated, especially when there were things we wanted to see that were not on the regular ship's excursions. But you have to understand you are on your own if anything befalls. If you take an independent tour and your tour vehicle gets lost or has a flat, be sure you have your camera with you, because you might have an opportunity to take a great picture of the stern of your ship as she sails out of the harbor without you!

 

If you get off at dockside and try to find a tour you are taking the leftovers. Negotiating with a taxi driver is not a good way to find out how much he knows or how good his English is, but it is a good way to let him know that you are carrying what may be, to him, a substantial amount of cash. A lot of people do it and love it, but in general it is too risky for me!

[bluegrass grannie]

Lippylulu--we are booked on Westerdam for 3/4 departure and I am considering sunset tour in Tortola as well. Have you made reservations ahead? With Mclean? Any info appreciated.Thanks.

 

Interesting that there is no cc roll call group for our 3/4 sailing, by the way. Are we missing something we should know about?:confused:

[newmexicoNita]

Hi NMNita,

 

We have chatted B4, several years ago when we were planning for the NCL Dawn. I was wondering with all of your experience- do you know to get from Westerdam in Tortola to the Baths on our own. I put a new thread on here a few hours ago (will give it more time) but so far no replies. We are a family of 4 (2 teenage girls) and heard we can catch a ferry and then a cab. Is this correct? advisable? The Westerdam will be in port from noon till 10pM. tHANK YOU FOR ANY HELP.

Steve, it is really not hard to get the ferry over to Virgin Gorda and do the baths, but please make sure you have plenty of time as this isn't a short little junket. The trip over is about 30 minutes if I remember, then you have to get to the beach area, venture through the baths and back. I think I would stick with the ship on this one. BTW, even if it is pricey I can't imagine doing Tortola without doing the baths. Tortola is nice, but the people don't seem to think we are. NMnita lol

[jokarjen]

We're going on the Veendam trip the week before you. We were originally going to go with the HAL excursions, but in researching those, I found numerous good reports for independent excursions in the ports. Sound like smaller groups, still reliable, and considerably less expensive. There were also a few reports of problems but which were handled adequately by the providers.

 

Notably:

Belize - cave tubing with Yhonny or snorkeling with Coral Breeze

Guatemala - Rio Dulce/Livingston trip with Gus

Costa Maya - Mayan Ruins with David and Ivan

 

(There were also good reports of Mayan ruin trips in Belize and Guatemala, but I didn't focus on those once we decided to do the ruins in Mexico.

 

Hope we all have good vacations!

 

 

Statendam - Alaska 9/06

[smoothsailor]

Thanks everyone for the good advice!

I can see that I should have told you where we are headed. We will be stopping at Key West, Guatemala, Belize and Costa Maya. We don't feel that we need a tour in Key West but are thinking of boating over to Livingston (or going Snorkeling), Cave Tubing in Belize and Snorkeling in Costa Maya.

 

I have been reading the destination boards and plan on using the same cave tubing guys as jokarjen. We heard good things about Olinca water sports for Costa Maya so we will probably go with them. But...I have heard very little about Guatemala and have been unable to get any answer at all about the snorkeling situation there.

The difficulty is that DH wants to wait to see how the cruise goes before booking. If we book ahead are we asked to pay up front? What happens if we get ..horrors... seasick!?

 

Thanks;

Diane