Cruise Ship Tours

[Colo Cruiser]

We have seen them released anywhere from 120-40 days out.

[awhcruiser]

We almost always book private tours...See you on the ship!

 

Interesting thought.

I wonder what % of cruisers pre-book their tours on a computer.A large number of tours are Sold out for an upcoming cruise in April on Princess website..Does that mean for the many tourists that don't pre-book tours this way that they will not be able to book these tours once on the ship?Are there on board ones blocked for on board passengers or are they stuck figuring out their own tours because of this?i just noticed this and I feel bad for anyone boarding and thinking they will be able to book a Princess Tour?

[easy_123]

We have seen them released anywhere from 120-40 days out.

 

I am somewhat confused. I booked our excursions for an Alaska cruise couple of weeks ago about 160 days out. I had no difficulties, no questions, I did it online through the PCL website.

 

Am I missing something?

[AKman2495]

I am somewhat confused. I booked our excursions for an Alaska cruise couple of weeks ago about 160 days out. I had no difficulties, no questions, I did it online through the PCL website.

 

Am I missing something?

 

It just depends on the cruise. I've seen them open at 75 days. and I've seen them open at 120 days. You were able to book at 160 days.

 

The lesson is to keep checking the personalizer.

[Cruisin' Chick]

The problem is that without Internet access, passengers do not know what shore excursions exist and thus do not know what excursions to ask their TA or Princess rep to book.

 

I too remember when you'll get a booklet listing the various excursions, along with your cruise docs. (I seem to remember on Carnival, one couldn't book excursions until onboard the ship, but that was more than ten years ago that we've sailed on that line, so I might not be remembering right.) We usually don't book any excursions, ship's or indy, but before our Alaskan cruise, I was reading a guide book and telling my hubby about some of the gold-mine era history of the Dead Horse area (I think that's what it was) and he was wondering if there was any tours for that area. So as soon as we got the booklet, I found a tour and we sent in our order. We really enjoyed that tour. We also booked a tour on the dock in Ketchikan and hubby thought it wasn't as good. He decided in the future, we'll stick with the ship's excursions or tour on our own.

 

Our 2005 cruise was our first booking online, but the excursions weren't available for about 75 days prior (in fact, when we got the email about the excursions being available, they weren't...many on our roll call ended up calling Princess to complain). We had already pre-selected the ones we were interested by checking out the usual ones for that itinerary that are listed on the Princess website. Yes, you can get an idea way ahead of time the various choices.

 

Even this last cruise, when we were finally able to book the cruise just a few days before final payment, we went on the Princess website and my teen listed a few ones she was interested in and so did I. We narrowed down two and were able to book them. I don't know how long the excursions were up, or how close we came to not getting our first choices. If they were filled up, we probably would have just planned out other things to do.

 

And as others have said, even if someone doesn't have access to computers, they can contact their TA or Princess and book that way. If they are computer savvy, libraries usually have computers for free use (but I would be concerned about buying something using them). And now that we've been using a cable modem at home, the library computers now seem so slow.

[caribill]

It is my belief everyone has access to the internet it is just whether they chose to use it or not. Don't all libraries have internet and computers now?

 

Yes, almost everyone could get to a public computer, but there are many intelligent people that are not computer literate and would not be able to effectively search for what excursions were available and then reserve them.

 

Even experienced computer users can need help negotiating the Princess web site. I wonder how many people give up trying to get the customzed Adobe Acrobat list of shore excursions for their cruise because they do not realize you have to temporarily allow pop-up windows in order for the document to appear.

[tip]

We almost always book private tours...See you on the ship!

 

 

So do we. The ship tours are nothing more than overpriced cattle herds. Check out the ports of call threads on these boards and you will find a higly recommended private tour operator.

[Stevesan]

In the late 1990's everyone got a package mailed with a tours booklet and reservation sheet that could be mailed in to pre-reserve tours. Even with snail mail, we often found that tours of interest to us were fully booked prior to sailing.

 

So it is nothing new, and not restricted to internet technology.

 

What I have seen here on CC are people who book Ship's tours beforehand then start researching private tours, knowing there is no impact to them if they cancel the ship's tours. There is, however, an impact to the other cruisers who don't get an opportunity for zip lining or dolphin swims etc because someone used prebooking of ship's tours as a fall-back position with no real intent of remaining on Princess' Excursions. That, to me, is just plan rude and selfish.

 

HAL has the answer to that problem. Your cc is charged when you book tours precruise. That limits the "Maybe I'll take the tour" when there's no consquence. I'll bet HAL's precruise bookings for Edinburgh's Military Tattoo doesn't "sell" out in a few days as they do with Princess.

[caribill]

However, we just booked a Royal Carribean cruise on one of their giant ships for DD and I....just want to check it out. We have prebooked one shore excursion, and had to pay for it up front on a CC and it has already been charged. This makes people think before reserving everything day one and leaving all tours sold out, when not really planning to take them. It prevented me from speculating on tours we really weren't sure of:o

 

Yes, it is annoying to have to pay for them in advance, but you can still cancel before the cruise with a full refund going back to your credit card. You can also cancel on the ship by a specified time and have the refund put to your onboard account.