shrkdive1

We walked off the ship last October without reservations and got right Into a taxi. I think it was around $20 to the IC.

Regarding your question about tours in the Marquesas Islands it is true there are limited ship sponsored excursions offered. These islands are very remote and do not get a lot of cruise ship visitors so tourism is not well developed like the other FP islands. We did this itinerary last Sept. My wife and I are scuba divers and the islands were great for diving. Each day after diving we did venture into the ports and walk around a bit. We did hear from others who took the truck tours that they were enjoyable (mostly sight seeing). I don't recall seeing many sandy beaches though as the terrain in the Marquesas islands was pretty rugged.

You may want to wait until you are on board anyway as I don't think they post the daily menu they will be making each day until then. We signed up in the Chef's Kitchen.

150 euros pp. booked onboard

You can bet that Manfredi and Geoffrey Kent are not going to risk their lives and be on that segment with their crew.

Does not look like a good idea to prioritize financial considerations over the safety of the crew; even if they volunteer and with a navy escort. All other cruise lines plus most cargo ships are taking the long way around. Too risky.

Yes. We were on the catamaran snorkel trip in Grenada. That was the excursion where we felt like they overbooked the boat with too many people. I would definitely not book that one again and gave our comments to Explora on the survey.

Forgot to mention that when they refunded us for the 4 canceled excursions they would only refund in cash (USD or Euros). I didn't want that much cash on me and would have preferred they just credit my credit card but they would not. For those that don't use USD or Euro the passenger would then have to convert to their own local currency and incur additional FX charges.

@PaulMCO thanks for your review. We had similar experience on the January 31st - Feb 9th cruise which we just departed. We loved the ship, crew and restaurants but agree the biggest downfall was that the restaurant menus did not change during the entire 9 night cruise! We would have liked to see the menus change at least mid way. Our second issue was that we pre booked our excursions 60 days in advance of sailing. We unfortunately had 4 of our excursions canceled. One was weather related but we learned the other 3 were canceled due to lack of participation. For us that is unfair as each was canceled the night before the excursion with no time to rebook something else. Lastly we booked a catamaran snorkel and they put 60 passengers on a boat that should only have had 30. Not enough room for everyone to sit and took for ever to get everyone into the water.

We were just on the Jan 31st sailing. We booked 1 each reservation at Marble and Sakura in advance by calling Explora. On the ship we were able to get an extra reservation on the last night in Marble but had to take an early 6:30pm time slot which was ok for us. Note that the ship only had ~600 passengers so was not sailing full.

We booked our excursions online through the website plus did our pre board check-in

We took the opportunity to book a Black Friday discounted journey. We had been sitting on the fence at the higher fares but with a 30% discount we could not pass up.

Why isn't Crystal discounting near term cruises to fill the ship? If they already have staff on board it would seem the incremental cost is negligible for food and getting some added revenue is better than no revenue from these empty cabins. Other cruise lines do this.

Both

Sorry if my previous post was not clear. We reserved what they call a Lotus Day Pass on their website. It does not include a room but does include 1) storage of of bags 2) use of both pools, lounge chairs and umbrellas 3) use of outdoor shower and changing area 4) Lunch (main course and dessert) in their gourmet Lotus Restaurant We considered getting a room but they cannot guarantee availability until 3pm