Shore excursion pricing (USD vs.EUR)

[Gig103]

From what I can gather, anything prepaid is in USD to Miami with my fare. But on board prices are in Euros. Typically cruise lines have less than favorable rates (seen by Canadians booking out of Miami for example) so I am trying to figure out if I should wait on my excursions since my credit card does not charge exchange fees.

 

Has anyone had experience where they know what the excursions cost ahead of time versus on board?

[AmoMondo]

From what I can gather, anything prepaid is in USD to Miami with my fare. But on board prices are in Euros. Typically cruise lines have less than favorable rates (seen by Canadians booking out of Miami for example) so I am trying to figure out if I should wait on my excursions since my credit card does not charge exchange fees.

 

Has anyone had experience where they know what the excursions cost ahead of time versus on board?

 

You could try looking at the Irish website to compare the prices in euros versus dollars.

[Gig103]

We decided not to book anything ahead of time, because the descriptions were vague and sometimes contradictory - possibly because our cruise was a grand voyage and thus an uncommon itinerary. The result was that we saved a bunch of money paying in Euros by booking on board. My guess is that the excursion prices were set in USD much earlier in the season. For example, we paid €145,90 for an excursion that was listed as $199. The exchange rate when we disembarked from our credit card company was $1.10/€1.

 

It was interesting to us that when we boarded, excursions could only be booked until about the halfway point. I dunno if this was due to logistics for the "Travel Agency" crew, since we had the excursions e-mailed to us when we booked, or if things were in flux. But it didn't matter, there were plenty of spaces on the tours we wanted and I didn't dawdle when the second batch opened up.

 

Edit: Also, we were in Aurea but the Aleggrisimo package was on sale for our cruise, 20% off. I probably wouldn't count on that if sailing but wanted to mention it.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Gig103

[AmoMondo]

We decided not to book anything ahead of time, because the descriptions were vague and sometimes contradictory - possibly because our cruise was a grand voyage and thus an uncommon itinerary. The result was that we saved a bunch of money paying in Euros by booking on board. My guess is that the excursion prices were set in USD much earlier in the season. For example, we paid €145,90 for an excursion that was listed as $199. The exchange rate when we disembarked from our credit card company was $1.10/€1.

 

It was interesting to us that when we boarded, excursions could only be booked until about the halfway point. I dunno if this was due to logistics for the "Travel Agency" crew, since we had the excursions e-mailed to us when we booked, or if things were in flux. But it didn't matter, there were plenty of spaces on the tours we wanted and I didn't dawdle when the second batch opened up.

 

Edit: Also, we were in Aurea but the Aleggrisimo package was on sale for our cruise, 20% off. I probably wouldn't count on that if sailing but wanted to mention it.

 

Only making tours available for the first half of the cruise is the norm for MSC repositioning cruises. I don't know why, but suspect it is most likely that they haven't got all the details sorted for the latter part sorted out. Italians tend to book at the last minute, so that is likely a factor in not making them all available at the start.