Value/quality of SS shore excursions

[SANDAS]

I would appreciate advice regarding shore excursions. I am taking my first ever SS cruise on Silver Cloud (Barbados to LA) this November and am very excited. I travel with two friends and we are 3 capable 60+ ladies. We have cruised on larger ships and found that we prefer trips we arrange ourselves rather than the cruise lines' as they are better value and more pleasant but....... SS are clearly a better quality company and also the ports are smaller with fewer private companies offering tours from them.

What do all you seasoned SS cruisers recommend? I am particularly concerned about Cartagena where we already plan to join the complimentary trip to the Teatro Heredia but wonder if it is safe to do our own thing in the morning. We also want a good quality experience for the Guatamalan cliff divers and to see Mayan temples etc.

We are not in a financial position to do any private SS tours.

I have not posted before so hope this first off is not asking too many questions for one thread.

[TLCOhio]

I would appreciate advice regarding shore excursions. I am taking my first ever SS cruise on Silver Cloud (Barbados to LA) this November and am very excited. I travel with two friends and we are 3 capable 60+ ladies. We have cruised on larger ships and found that we prefer trips we arrange ourselves rather than the cruise lines' as they are better value and more pleasant but....... SS are clearly a better quality company and also the ports are smaller with fewer private companies offering tours from them. What do all you seasoned SS cruisers recommend? I am particularly concerned about Cartagena where we already plan to join the complimentary trip to the Teatro Heredia but wonder if it is safe to do our own thing in the morning. We also want a good quality experience for the Guatamalan cliff divers and to see Mayan temples etc.

We are not in a financial position to do any private SS tours.

I have not posted before so hope this first off is not asking too many questions for one thread.

 

Welcome to these boards!! You have several good questions outlined. From our below experiences last month on the Silver Cloud, we found the shore excursions offered to be good. We did a mix bothof things we arranged on our own and those from Silversea. There were and are advantages to doing your own things, especially if you have a group of four or more people, etc. BUT, it's also handy to sign up through the ship, let them worry with the details, etc. The ship costs are not always the cheapest. It depends on what type of "adventure" you want and seek, how much time you can put into setting up these independent arrangements, etc.

 

With Silversea, plus previous experiences on Crystal and Seabourn, most cruise lines are using the same local providers for buses, guides, etc. The better cruise lines tend not to pack the buses as full and offer some other extras, maybe. I would agree for Cartagena and some other areas with more "sensitive" security questions, you want to be careful. In some parts of the world, like where we were in Norway, there's not that much to worry about in these areas. In other areas of the world, it's far different or more challenging.

 

You'll love the Silver Cloud. Read from my below postings to see lots of pictures on this nice ship, its offerings, staff, food, facilities, etc.

 

Here are a couple of other suggestions. FIRST, scroll back through all of the earlier postings here on Silversea . . . OR . . . for the area of the world you are visiting. SECOND, do a search on these boards by each city/port and you will see lots of postings on various subjects connected with each port stop. Then, after taking the time to get that background, see other experiences, etc., you can post with specific questions in each port city. Be sure to have a title that is narrow to your question so that other can know what you are seeking. There are lots and lots of great people and information here on these boards. Don't be shy in asking follow-up questions. Folks are happy to share more when they know what you are seeking and background on your timing, cruise ship, travel party, personal interests and travel style, etc.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For more details, great visuals, etc., from our July 1-16 Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle Silver Cloud experiences:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[bellagirl]

Hi-This was exactly the same question I was going to ask!! We are cruising on SS from Dubai-Mumbai in Dec. and I think we would prefer to take the ship's excursions esp. in places like Bandar Abbass, Iran. Good to know that,for the most part, the tours are good. Shelly

[SANDAS]

Hi Terry,

Thanks so much for your full and helpful response. Went to your link and loved your pictures. This evening I will use the posts as you suggest to look at each port and go on from there - I am new to forums and not quick to see how to use them effectively.

[wripro]

Personally, I am partial to private excursions. No matter how well any cruise line handles its shore excursions you are still on a bus with forty or fifty other people and do not control the agenda.

[TLCOhio]

Hi Terry, Thanks so much for your full and helpful response. Went to your link and loved your pictures. This evening I will use the posts as you suggest to look at each port and go on from there - I am new to forums and not quick to see how to use them effectively.

 

wripro: Personally' date=' I am partial to private excursions. No matter how well any cruise line handles its shore excursions you are still on a bus with forty or fifty other people and do not control the agenda.[/quote']

 

Agree with wripro on liking the smaller, private tours/excursions best. Sometimes it is easy to work out and do, but are other times when it does not always come together in a cost-effective manner. Our experiences with Silversea, Seabourn and Crystal were that most of their buses or groups had about 20-35 people. That's not like having a group of only four or six, but it can work, too. With these better cruise lines, we've never had 40-50 people stuffed on a bus.

 

THANKS for the nice comments on my pictures from our Silver Cloud cruise last month! Let us know any added questions. Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For more details, great visuals, etc., from our July 1-16 Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle Silver Cloud experiences:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[Keith1010]

Hi-This was exactly the same question I was going to ask!! We are cruising on SS from Dubai-Mumbai in Dec. and I think we would prefer to take the ship's excursions esp. in places like Bandar Abbass, Iran. Good to know that,for the most part, the tours are good. Shelly

 

I would highly recommend doing a ships tour in Iran and not doing it on your own. We were there a few months ago on the Crystal Serenity.

 

Keith

[TLCOhio]

I would highly recommend doing a ships tour in Iran and not doing it on your own. We were there a few months ago on the Crystal Serenity. Keith

 

To added to Keith's point, there are some ports, such as St. Petersburg or Istanbul, where there is a well-established range of private tour providers from which to work and make your own, independent arrangements. In other ports, however, that "tourism infrastructure" is new, non-existent and/or very limited. It seems that Iran would in that more limited category as such stops are fairly new. Next summer, Silversea will be going to Murmansk and Archangelsk, Russia. Both sound interesting, but in talking with our Silver Cloud Captain, he noted that many will be surprised that both of these ports are not set-up with all of those land-side options, buses, etc., that most cruisers expect to be right there when they arrive. It is great that Silversea and a few others will offer a wider variety of such port options, but some of these places are more limited in what's there to do and arrange on your own. Therefore, in certain selected areas of the world, you might want to better rely on what the cruise folks have set-up and arranged.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For more details, great visuals, etc., from our July 1-16 Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle Silver Cloud experiences:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[unfathomable]

in most places, you can organize an independent tour with some combination of a smaller group, greater flexibility, extra features and/or lower cost: in short, more value.

 

SS is pretty good a delivering what they promise, in buses that are only around half-full.However, they are in the hands of the local operators: garrulous guides and l-o-n-g pauses for shopping are commonplace -- as with all cruise tours.

 

The penalty of independence is: taking the time to do the research; the (fairly small) risk that the local tour people are duds; the hassle factor of finding them at the port; and the (in practice very small) risk of missing the ship if something goes wrong, such as a broken-down vehicle.

 

If tempted, lots of port-specific information is available on other boards.

[TLCOhio]

in most places, you can organize an independent tour with some combination of a smaller group, greater flexibility, extra features and/or lower cost: in short, more value. SS is pretty good a delivering what they promise, in buses that are only around half-full.However, they are in the hands of the local operators: garrulous guides and l-o-n-g pauses for shopping are commonplace -- as with all cruise tours. The penalty of independence is: taking the time to do the research; the (fairly small) risk that the local tour people are duds; the hassle factor of finding them at the port; and the (in practice very small) risk of missing the ship if something goes wrong, such as a broken-down vehicle. If tempted, lots of port-specific information is available on other boards.

 

Super excellent summary by jgibbs. These are the key pro-con factors to consider, plus the size and flexibility of your wallet. Checking the port/area boards will yield lots of other info. When doing that, be sure to use the "search" function that is available and help on these CC boards.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For more details, great visuals, etc., from our July 1-16 Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle Silver Cloud experiences:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[bellagirl]

Hi-Can you elaborate more on your excursion in Iran? How were the visas handled? Were you given a blanket visa by SS? What were your impressions of Iran? Did you feel threatened at any time? Thanks so much, Shelly:)

[turnip eater]

Hi-Can you elaborate more on your excursion in Iran? How were the visas handled? Were you given a blanket visa by SS? What were your impressions of Iran? Did you feel threatened at any time? Thanks so much, Shelly:)

 

We 'did' Dubai to Dubai on Silver Cloud 2008....Iran was the friendliest port of the cruise.....We were warned not to take photographs, but the locals sailed passed us waving and cheering....The captain told us that they never had any problems as Silversea sailed under an Italian flag....Silversea took care of any visas.

[DebbieH103]

We have done a lot of Silversea tours, and they have all been either very good or outstanding. We've also done self-directed touring, and we enjoy this in areas where we think we just want to do our own thing or to hire someone local. You can't beat SS in areas that you might feel unsafe or when you want an escort. We like the tours where they throw in a little local food as a treat.

 

I've done the mass market tour thing on Royal Caribbean, and I was NOT a fan, but the SS experience is nothing like that. There are less people, for one thing.

[ging466]

I am taking my first ever SS cruise on Silver Cloud (Barbados to LA) this November

 

 

Hi uksu

 

I'm doing the same cruise and I've started a roll call here:

 

http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1196948

 

Perhaps u would like to join it? It would be nice to meet u and yr friends on board.

 

Cheers

Jennifer

[bellagirl]

TurnipEater(love turnips too,BTW!!)-Thanks for your info. Didn't know SS sailed under an Italian flag-good to know! Glad you had a good time. What was the least favourite port on your cruise? Shelly

[SANDAS]

Thanks Debbie, it is helpful to hear personal confirmation that SS trips are good quality compared with other cruise lines. Before we became confident enough to book independently or just go it alone we got so fed up with having stickers on our jackets and having to queue on and off coaches and having tedious shopping sessions. My problem with this particular cruise was that few of the ports offered anything much when I googled them for private trips and those that do have something interesting, such as gowithgus, require a minimum of 4 people - we are three. Having trawled more posts now I feel happy to do Cartagena with SS and am continuing checking out the other stops.

Any specific suggestions of the best way/place to see the cliff divers would be appreciated - I have read that you can book in to a particularly good hotel restaurant to do this but have lost the link.

 

ging - I will go to your rollcall site next.

 

Thanks everyone.

[turnip eater]

TurnipEater(love turnips too,BTW!!)-Thanks for your info. Didn't know SS sailed under an Italian flag-good to know! Glad you had a good time. What was the least favourite port on your cruise? Shelly

 

Fujariah!......Although other guests went on a trip to the fort and thought it was wonderful.....Many of the 'stops' were very similar. We enjoyed watching the small boats sailing backwards and forwards from....sorry, I forget which port, with washing machines and televisions into er well I'd better not say which country they were taking them to.;)

 

Abu Dhabi was our favourite port.

[Keith1010]

Hi-Can you elaborate more on your excursion in Iran? How were the visas handled? Were you given a blanket visa by SS? What were your impressions of Iran? Did you feel threatened at any time? Thanks so much, Shelly:)

 

Shelly, we visit Iran on Crystal Cruises rather than Silversea.

 

Crystal did arrange for the Visas to be obtained on board the ship. They did so for all of the Middle East ports where visas were required.

 

While you could go off on your own I would not recommend because you will get a lot more from the tour and because of other issues including just communications.

 

The area near the port is less historic than say the full day excursions that were being offered but we didn't want to get on an airplane. There was also an overland.

 

But the excursion that we took did give us a lot of good perspectives.

 

It is not often that cruise ships stop there. We were greeted very nicely with women and children at the gangway handing candy out the passengers.There were some film crews there as they were just as much interested in us as we were in them.

 

The tour guide and assistant were great. The lead guide was very honest in his feelings about the government and other issues even though there weret two government men on the bus. We learned a great deal from them. I happened to have the benefit of having some friends who are USA citizens who were born in Iran who moved to the states before the revolution over there.

 

Our tour included a variety of stops to give us a feel of the city.

 

The women were originally told that they had to wear the cover over there heads so that no hair was shown. This was not correct so the could pull it back quite a bit. The only time they had to cover the entire head/hair was at a stop at the mosque and they were given something additional to wear over what they were wearing.

 

The take away for the vast marjoity of the passengers was that the vast majority of the people who live over there are very kind and generous and warm. A small percentage of the population is fanatical and they are still in charge. The other take away was that change is in the air over there and will likely happen. It's just a matter of time.

 

We too had concerns before our arrival but we felt very safe and comfortable there.

 

They do want to increase tourism. We also met a couple early on during our voyage who was not on this particular leg of the cruise who had done a land tour in Iran last Fall and thought it was the most marvelous of the travels they had ever done and also had great things to say about the people.

 

Again, I do want to stress that the local town is very simple and sort of has a 1950's/1960's look to it. The full day tours has lots more to see along with the overland. One of our friends from Iran told us that we would enjoy the other places much better but he said that he would not take an airplane. His logic was with the embargos that with less new parts available for the aircraft he questioned the safety and he happens to fly small airplanes himself so it's not like he is scared to fly. Agreeing with that advice we just stayed with the tour of the local city.

 

Personally, we enjoyed this visit so much more than our stop in Saudi Arabia where we picked up on a lot of issues over there.

 

I think the greater value of this stop was seeing the people first hand, and all of the information that our tour guide and his assistant shared with us.

 

Keith

[Observer]

Before we became confident enough to book independently or just go it alone we got so fed up with having stickers on our jackets and having to queue on and off coaches and having tedious shopping sessions.

 

I cannot recall a single Silversea excursion where one had to wear stickers on jackets. Because Silversea tends to limit the size of any tour group (using two half-full busses rather than one full bus) there is also minimal queuing. My recollection is that there are few if any "shopping sessions"*with Silversea tours, where one is deposited in a (rip-off) store far from anything. Instead, free time is provided in town to shop or have a coffee or whatever. I hope this is reassuring.

[SANDAS]

Very much so. Thanks Observer

[Keith1010]

ukso, I just wanted to add the importance of doing the research on the excursions. We always look at each port before making a decision. There are many that we can just do on our own without any type of excursion and others that we do take an excursion (ship or private) based on a variety of item including the distances from the ship to the places we want to see, the safety of the area, or the ability of the tour to get us into places that we could not do on our own. Sometimes the additional factor is seeing a port that we already have seen before as familiarity can be a factor. However, there are some places that we have visited before that I would only do on an excursion because of safety or proximity.

 

I have not been to Cartagena either and will be there in November on a different cruise line. I am doing that research as we speak. In fact, on the thread for the cruise that I am taking there has been a good deal of comment about that port; more unfavorable than favorable but we'll see what we come up with.

 

Keith

[TLCOhio]

I cannot recall a single Silversea excursion where one had to wear stickers on jackets. Because Silversea tends to limit the size of any tour group (using two half-full busses rather than one full bus) there is also minimal queuing. My recollection is that there are few if any "shopping sessions"*with Silversea tours, where one is deposited in a (rip-off) store far from anything. Instead, free time is provided in town to shop or have a coffee or whatever. I hope this is reassuring.

 

Agree with this above posting. On our SS tours last month along the Norway coast, we had no forced shopping stops, stickers or any of that "other stuff" that can frustrating.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For more details, great visuals, etc., from our July 1-16 Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle Silver Cloud experiences:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[Keith1010]

As Terr and Observer have said the norm is not to wear stickers on SS tours or on tours from the other cruise lines. The only exception would be if the venue you were touring inisisted that those visiting wore something that they (not the cruise line nor the tour) handed out. That is an exception and not because one is on a SS tour.

 

Some of the mass market lines might still use stickers but not these types of lines.

 

Keith

[kpercy]

I would appreciate advice regarding shore excursions. I am taking my first ever SS cruise on Silver Cloud (Barbados to LA) this November and am very excited. I travel with two friends and we are 3 capable 60+ ladies. We have cruised on larger ships and found that we prefer trips we arrange ourselves rather than the cruise lines' as they are better value and more pleasant but....... SS are clearly a better quality company and also the ports are smaller with fewer private companies offering tours from them.

What do all you seasoned SS cruisers recommend? I am particularly concerned about Cartagena where we already plan to join the complimentary trip to the Teatro Heredia but wonder if it is safe to do our own thing in the morning. We also want a good quality experience for the Guatamalan cliff divers and to see Mayan temples etc.

We are not in a financial position to do any private SS tours.

I have not posted before so hope this first off is not asking too many questions for one thread.

 

Well what isnt value for money is the $79 per person for a group transfer from the port of Venice to the airport 3hrs prior to the flight. A journey time of just over 15 minutes.!

[Keith1010]

Well what isnt value for money is the $79 per person for a group transfer from the port of Venice to the airport 3hrs prior to the flight. A journey time of just over 15 minutes.!

 

As they say, value is in the eyes of the beholder. If one has shipboard credit they want to use up or just wants the comfort of knowing they don't have to worry about arrangements for the transfer then there is quite a bit of value spending the $79.00 for the transfer.

 

Keith