Excursions and OBC

I am expecting to get my first time cruise OBC on my upcoming cruise. I was looking at a shore excursion, but when I try to reserve it, it wants my credit card. Does it charge me now? I want to use the OBC to pay for it. Do I just wait and book onboard?

That's what I did although I think there is the possibility to book with your credit card then cancel onboard and then rebook with your credit but that was too much faffing :D

Yes, we have booked, paid by credit card, then had that payment reversed once on board and had it taken from our onboard credit. It's not a problem for either you or the staff. They seem quite used to it.

They bill your credit card, refund it when you board and bill you again!

I guess I'll just wait until I'm on board. Thanks.

I like to do a mixture of independent excursions and SB ones depending on my research so I'm hoping I can leave the SB ones until I'm on board

Unless it's a really popular excursion or one with limited numbers (like those overnight ones that fly inland etc) is it OK to leave booking some excursions until we're onboard? Has anyone found they can't get on an excursion they wanted to go on?

I too have OBC for our next cruise and would like to use some of it for excursions and rather than book, unbook, rebook, would prefer to wait. Also I can't seem to book excursions online and last time had to make phone calls to SB UK to book and give credit card details over the phone, so to sort this out onboard would be great! :)

We will have OBC too and since we usually use that for gratuities, drink packages and shore excursions, in this case the first two won't really be necessary and I'd like to pay for shore excursions with the OBC. I think we will try to get our credit card charges reversed on board and pay for some of the excursions with the OBC like you all have suggested. We won't be doing all excursions with SB; some will be private.

I'm worried some excursions won't be available if we wait till on the ship. I especially want to be sure I book the city highlights and airport transfer at the end of our cruise so I won't have that worry hanging over my head.

 

I'm worried some excursions won't be available if we wait till on the ship. I especially want to be sure I book the city highlights and airport transfer at the end of our cruise so I won't have that worry hanging over my head.

Exactly.

What is more important, guaranteeing the excursion 'you' want or allocating one's OBC .

Personally I take OBC as a bonus.

On my upcoming cruise I have booked 3 out of six days and paid with credit card.

This spring I wanted to make sure I would be able to get on the Seabourn excursion to Petra. I called Seabourn to pre-book it and the telephone rep looked at the numbers and told me there would be no problem with waiting until we got on board to book. As soon as we boarded, I went to Seabourn Square and booked Petra and all the other excursions we were interested in [we had a lot of OBC to kill]. You might want to call Seabourn and ask if it looks like the excursions you want are filling up and make your decision accordingly.

Linda