Are all RCCL excursions this bad???

[steveru621]

In most cases, I would suggest that you run, don't walk right by the excursion desk. After twenty-five cruises and multiple excursions booked both through the ship and privately, we have found the ship excursions to be nothing more than overpriced cattle herds.

 

If you take a little time to explore the ports of call threads on these boards, you will find many private excursions that are almost always much cheaper than the ship excursions. Trip Adviser is another valuable source of information. In most cases, you will be on a van or even a taxi with fewer people rather than on the ship excursion buses that are usually quite crowded. And it never seems to fail, the entire bus is often kept waiting because at least one passenger can not tell time.

 

There have been a few instances where we have taken ship excursions. Martinique comes to mind. It is just not a tourist island and there were no private excursions unless you wanted to pay for a taxi tour in a Mercedes Benz!

We shall take a ship excursion on the Serenade of the Seas next winter in St. Kitts because the open air bus/railway tour is only offered by the ship.

 

Do some research, plan ahead, leave a comfortable cushion of time to get back to the ship before all aboard and not only will you save some money, but you won't be disappointed.

 

I partially disagree. It's hard to make an argument that all RCI excursions are cattle calls when you are using them in Martinique and St. Kitts. In fact, Martinique is a great place to do your own. Take the ferry across the bay, and a taxi to Anse DuFour beach.

 

There are lots of excursions in the Med that are twice as expensive as ship excursions.

 

With a few exceptions RCI's excursions are exactly as advertised. Sure you can spend time on booking your own excursions, but there is no guarantee a good bunch of reviews will mean that day you will have a good excursion. I often feel my time spent doing my own excursions is valuable and is equal to the extra cost of an RCI excursion. The cost of the ship leaving without you cannot be calculated.

 

My bottom line, try both, and do what you feel comfortable with.

[George C]

I had sent e-mail to RCCL on excursion, and they just called and will give us on board credit for the cost of excursion.

[Mnamom1105]

I have heard some say their excursions were great, others say it was so-so, and others are like you and disappointed or even downright angry. They are 3rd party contracts with cruise companies, and, I have noticed in some ports, company A contracts with ALL cruise lines and takes passengers from all of them on the excursion - so switching to a different cruise line might not make any difference.

 

That being said, I am sorry to hear you had a bad experience. We rarely do excursions and if we do, we do slow, basic, "historical" or "factual" tours - we are boring ppl I guess. I would suggest sending an email to RC to let them know of your disappointment. Ppl need to let them know when there are problems so if they get enough complaints, they can evaluate the contract with the company in port they do business with.

[EMED2010]

We booked tour GCC7 Catamaran Sail and Stingray city . this was one of the worst tours we have taken in my 58 cruises, 1st we were stuffed into a very uncomfortable bus with no leg room ( I am 6' 4") then Catamaran was way over crowded for the amount of people ( approx. 40) and staff on boat was just 3, and one of those was the photographer , when we got to stingray city there was no one supervising getting on and off the boat, I cut/scraped my head getting back on and was bleeding quite a bit, crew had me fill out a report for RCCL about the injury. I was very surprised that no one from RCCL inquired on what happened or how my health was after getting back on board.

 

This was my 1st excursion in many years with RCCL ( did not do any last couple of cruises) , if this is typical might need to rethink my 12 day Europe cruise that we just booked, send e-mail to RCCL and waiting for a reply

 

Please don't book ships tours for Europe. You can get so much better tours on your own. I never cruised prior to my Med cruise but I found this site, got info on tours and decided to book my own and then found people here on this board to share the tours with. Just an example for Rome: we paid half the ships tour cost and had only 8 people on our tour. Your experience sounded awful. I can't imagine being crammed on a boat with that many people. Good luck and happy sailing!

[melisarn]

I have always felt like most ship based excursions are like cattle call....load the masses on and off.. And being younger and patience not being one of my better traits, I feel private excursions can move at a faster pace and get more sight seeing in as I am not dodging those with mobility issues. just my opinion.....

[George C]

We have had many nice RCCL and other lines excursions in the past this one was just a bummer, but RCCL did make it right, We have also done private excursion including when we did our only Med cruise, we will look at both for that cruise.

[Lionesss]

We really have only one port where we dread the idea of booking any excursion.

 

That is Jamaica

 

It goes so slow...............

Check in, go to line to wait

Re-check in go to another line to wait.

Name called go to line up outside bus to wait.

Get on bus, air better be on

Fill out waiver

Wait till whole bus signs.

 

Finally off we go.

 

Excursions were great, but waiting is painful.

Oh and we were booked with RCI, and independent were by us too, waiting their turn.

 

Later