Regatta Black Sea 7/5/12

[marjoriehelen]

Fairly new cruisers who are not crazy about ship excursions. We understand that some passengers book private tours. Anyone out there know anything about them....are they expensive? Reliable? How to go about joining a group? We are booked on the Regatta for the 7/5/12 Black Sea cruise.

[LHT28]

Go to the ROLL CALL for your cruise

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=420%22

 

look for the ship then the sailing date then ask there for those wishing to share tours

You can also go to the ports of call forums & see what guides others recommend

 

enjoy the cruise

[LittleRedJohn]

We were aboard Nautica for a similar Black Sea cruise several years ago. Had a fabulous time. You will go to most of the ports we went to. The key is do your research now and decide what you want to see and not see in each port. Then figure out a plan for each port and decide if the ship's excursion will take care of you. For example, we didn't take, or need, any excursion in Odessa. We studied up beforehand and just walked around and had a great time. The ship had a free shuttle to downtown. Elsewhere we took the ship's excursions. They were overpriced but usually at least adequate, if not good. Ship excursions have their downside, but they also offer a reliability that is comforting in strange places. We are concerned about traveling in Russia, for example, so in Sochi, we took an all-day ship's excursion. The guide was great and we saw a number of interesting things and received a tour of Stalin's dacha, which was great. In Sevastopol, we wanted to go to the Charge of the Light Brigade battlefield. We took a ship's excursion and it was great. But another passenger might not care about the battlefield. It depends on what YOU want to do. If there's something you REALLY REALLY want to see--for us that was the Yalta meeting hall where FDR, Stalin and Churchill discussed the end of World War II, we signed up for a ship's excursion as soon as we could to avoid being disappointed. In a couple ports on that cruise, fellow passengers sought out and hired a taxi driver for a tour of one or more hours to one or more locations. They were pleased with the results. We used that technique in a couple of places in the Caribbean last year and it worked well. I would recommend getting on the CruiseCritic board site for your particular cruise and compare notes with others on your trip. You will meet some nice people that way, too. Also, seek recommendations for shore excursion operators from others who have visited your ports in the last year or two. That's the technique we used on a recent cruise to the Amazon, and we found several wonderful shore excursions that were as cheap or cheaper than the ship, and far better. While we got good information from the web, we didn't use any operators who did not have a reference from a previous cruise passenger. In a couple of cases, we talked by telephone/email with the previous passengers. All this takes some work, but we found on the Amazon cruise that the work really paid off. At one port, other passengers told us they envied what we had done.