We had plans to do St Lucia and Imolfoze. Due to late embarkation and face to face immigration we had to choose one as we wouldn’t make our wetlands tour at the time we booked. I’m actually happy with our choice of the game reserve as we did see so many rhinos, elephants, birds, warthogs, giraffes, birds, etc. and lots of baby animals.
I think if you are coming from Cape Town you might not have the immigration issues? Though you might have them elsewhere. Just be prepared for delays and be flexible and you’ll be fine.
While we did see the lions at Addo, we had to use binoculars and it was still difficult to see them.
As Ken said, there were unlucky people on both NCL excursions and privates. They did the immigration and some debarkations by NCL excursion number and also by Cabin level (deck 12 first all the way to Deck 4 last). I know people skipped the queue as they went before their group was called and I think that exacerbated all of the issues.
but maybe NCL also learned more about what to expect at the ports. We expressed our dissatisfaction with the port issues with the concierge and hotel/restaurant powers that be on the ship and their advice was to avoid booking first time itineraries. 🤷🏼♀️