I'm a veteran cruiser with over 30, mostly on midrange lines. But I have the resources to go high end so I signed up for the silver cloud explorer cruise from Oman to Athens (its really two cruises 25 days). Its a really different itinerary. Signed up in February, among my documents it said that shore excursions are available 180 days before sailing. I went through them and made a list of those I wanted and went on other travels. Last week my TA emails me and tells me that the shore excursions were open for booking, but most of them were waitlisted. I tried to get on and got an error message for 3 straight days, then got on yesterday afternoon and found all but 8 shore excursions (of the 50 or so that were planned) were waitlisted. None of the ones I want are available. So is this common with Silversea that they open shore excursions randomly and don't tell you? And on an excursion ship they really have ports (most) where they don't have enough spaces for all 240 passengers (and since there are still cabins available , the total is less than that). This is not a cruise you go on to not have guided tours, so if they really are fully booked it would end my dalliance with Silversea for life.