Beijing Excursions - Voyager March 2011

[room010]

Although we officially disambark in Beijing (20 Mar 2011) Regent is offering its tours to us. Having looked at the options available I have to say I'm pretty unimpressed. Surely the two Must Sees in Beijing are the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, neither of which feature in the tour choice except perhaps the 9.5 hour marathon which is way too long. Even then I'm not sure because the tour descriptions are very confusing and vague - a bad omen?

[rallydave]

Although we officially disambark in Beijing (20 Mar 2011) Regent is offering its tours to us. Having looked at the options available I have to say I'm pretty unimpressed. Surely the two Must Sees in Beijing are the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, neither of which feature in the tour choice except perhaps the 9.5 hour marathon which is way too long. Even then I'm not sure because the tour descriptions are very confusing and vague - a bad omen?

 

Beware of Regent excursions in Beijing. We were on the debacle last month that Regent advertised as a free exckursion to the great wall, tienimen square and forbidden city. Regent acknowledged in a letter that their shore excursion company ran the tour without informing Regent of the National Holiday although Regent should have known of the Holiday as Mariner was in Beijing in 2009 during the same Holiday. In any case, the Destinations Manager as well as some of her staff were not friendly, business like or caring about the passengers as ALL the other crew members were fantastic. We did a private tour the next day thru CTS, China Travel Service who are based in China and we had our own tour guide, driver, etc. and it was much much better than any of the Regent Excursions and probably less than half the price without the large group and bus travel. Just checked and CTS does have offices in OZ so suggest you check them out for a better less expensive, less crowed excursion that will actually get you where you expect to go.

[klauer]

I would do the long tour if you only have a day to see Beijing. Visiting the Great Wall takes

close to half the day because you need to drive out of the city. You can also easily spend a couple or more hours at the Forbidden City and not see everything. Some other places I liked were the Summer Palace, the Ming Tombs, and a hutong tour. I took a three-day tour, and I wished I'd had a week to see more.

[room010]

Thanks for the replies. You've more or less confirmed what I suspected. Unfortunately time will be tight as we fly back to Oz the day after disembarkation so we only have a day to play with! I'm sure it would take several days to "do" Beijing properly but I would at least like to see the Forbidden City and maybe the Great Wall if time permits. Knowing how atrocious the traffic can be I suspect the Wall will have to wait :( Thanks for the tip on a tour company, I will investigate further.

[Travel2Learn]

Having traveled alot in Asia, I strongly agree with RallyDave that a private tour is the way to go.

[Emdee]

If you go to the Asia boards or fodors you will find suggestions for guides who will pick you up from the ship, take you to all the places you can fit in and then take you the next day to the airport. We were there for three days and had a really nice guide who was reasonable and reliable. Its important that the guide knows where the port is as its quite far from Beijing.

[Dreps]

Our fantastic TA did a lot of research on Beijing tours for us as she will be escorting a large group on the Sydney-Beijing segment. She concluded that the company at the link below was by far her first choice. They are tailoring a number of tours for the small groups of us who are staying for varying numbers of days after the cruise in Beijing.

 

http://www.uchinatravel.com/