Quality of Azamara shore excursions?

[TomTN]

How would you rate them? Compared to Celebrity excursions?

 

Do many people book private excursions?

 

Looking at SE Asia Jan 20, 2010.

 

Thanks

[rdowney]

That must be either Jan 23 or Feb 20. If it's the former, you can join our small roll call, where some private excursions are being organized.

 

Our only cruise on Azamara was in South America, where we did both ship and private excursions. We enjoyed both. The ship excursions were larger groups and more expensive, but they had more comfortable vehicles and the ship would wait for you if you were late. Private excursions were more personal and much cheaper if you organized 8 to 12 people. We had excellent guides on both.

[CarlandAndrea]

We did ship's tours in Florence, Monaco, Tunis, & Tallin.

 

All were excellent with the exception of the tour in Tunis.

 

The tour in Florence was to see David, walk around to see the city and included a 3 course lunch in a lovely hotel and a visit to Pisa. The guide was excellent and we had a wonderful day.

Monaco was a tour of palace, the cathedral and the casino. We enjoyed it very much.

 

The tour of Tallin was the cafe tour and even my non-coffee drinking hubby loved it. You visited 5 cafes and had everything from root beer and fish pie to hot chocolate and fruit, marzapan, cake, etc along with a walking history tour. It was fantastic.

 

THe tour in Tunis included a visit to Carthage and a stop in the market. Unfortunately the market was a little stressful for many of the people on the tour because of the agressive sales pitch at a carpet store that was billed as a musuem-type visit and being left for 40 minutes for fee shopping time on the main market street. The vendors were very agressive with touching and pulling you into their stores and a number of people (both men and women) were ready to leave after a few minutes. The market didn't really bother me but it did bother a number of people to the extent that I heard people still commenting on on their dislike for the tour several days later.

[JennAngel9]

We did a number of tours with Azamara on our recent cruise, as we didn't have too much time to research/organize in advance.

 

I would say that no tour was awful, but for 1/2 of our tour in La Rochelle (specifically, the part that stopped in Rochefort) it was sort of incomprehensible why they had stopped there or choose to show us what they did once there. Perhaps the site was more interesting for Europeans, but I doubt it. On the other hand, the 2nd half to Roche-Courbon was very pleasant. My tour to Honfleur from Normandy was excellent. My husband's tour to the D Day Beaches wasn't bad, but he was upset because they spent a LOT of time at the museum and very little time at the beaches. We did a good tour of Gibraltar with them.

 

I felt that the quality of our Celebrity tours in the Baltic last year was a bit better- BUT I want to caveat that we stopped at exotic (for cruise ships!) ports that Az (or any RCI ship) probably doesn't visit more than 1x or 2x/yr so they probably don't have the same depth of experience. That said, I think if there is any city where you really want to do/see something in specific, for more than just taking a photo or a quick look around, you might prefer to have the greater control of the private tour... but for everything else, I think you'd be fine with AZ.

 

FWIW, I heard that the Azamara Bordeaux excursions got primarily rave reviews and the day in Paris was not great, but these are not our personal experiences.

[uktog]

We were very happy with the excursions we did in Asia this Janaury - it was too tricky to find good local guides and found Azamara had some very good offerings. If you have not been with Azamara before remember the number going on excursions is much smaller, therefore the number of buses setting off is smaller - often only 1 or 2 and sometimes it can be a minibus rather than a coach

Just had very good experiences as well on the Black Sea trip we are just back from

A

[alidor]

Which excursions did you do in Asia with Azamara? We are going in January and, although we will definitely do Bangkok on our own, we are still thinking about the others.

[uktog]

Bangkok - Venice of the East and the Grand Palace

Bangkok Day 2 - Sanctuary of Truth Pattaya amazing)

Ho Chi Minh - Highlights of Ho Chi Minh - a really thorough tour

Da Nang - Hoi An on your own

Halong Bay - Halong Bay by boat

Hanoi - Hanoi Past and Present

 

We did not have any excursions in Cambodia, just had time off and we did Hong Kong ourselves - you do not need any guided trips in Hong Kong as transport is easy and it is well signed

 

Hope this helps

 

A

[Jade13]

Bangkok - Venice of the East and the Grand Palace

Bangkok Day 2 - Sanctuary of Truth Pattaya amazing)

Ho Chi Minh - Highlights of Ho Chi Minh - a really thorough tour

Da Nang - Hoi An on your own

Halong Bay - Halong Bay by boat

Hanoi - Hanoi Past and Present

 

We did not have any excursions in Cambodia, just had time off and we did Hong Kong ourselves - you do not need any guided trips in Hong Kong as transport is easy and it is well signed

 

Hope this helps

 

A

 

Did you have two full days in Bangkok? Next February on our trip we depart at 1:00pm the second day, so Azamara is not offering any excursions the second day. We are just hiring a driver for 1,500 Baht and guide additional 500 Baht (so approx $15.00pp for 4 people total with guide) to take us around Bangkok for a half day.

 

I heard that Azamara was late into a lot of ports this year (or was it last?). Maybe that is why we are departing Bangkok so early and next stop is Singapore. Can you provide any information? Thanks.

[uktog]

We were into Bangkok on time, we just did the one day excursion not the overnight, it was great

A