Excursion prices?

[Hoyaheel]

I felt no stress at all. I'm not the tour operator, just a participant. YMMV, variety is the spice of life and all that. If you're happy with the ship excursions, that's great. I prefer doing my own research as I noted -it's part of my vacation planning excitement :-)

[Mauzac]

I never had any stress organizing tours. In fact it was fun and exciting, a challenge!

But I did spend a lot of time on internet research, communication, emails, forum chats etc

 

Yes, so did I ! Hours and hours of research, lots of communiction by emails, but you can never foresee the unforseen! Any time I've organised an excursion, it isn't something I've just thrown together, I covered everything I could think of, I crossed the T's and dotted the I's !

[Isklaar]

 

 

The final list is confirmed at the Meet & Greet, organized by the cruise line.

 

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Does Seabourn host a Meet & Greet? I've never been aware of this although I have read about it on other cruise lines. Is the M&G just specific for those on tours?

[Chairsin]

No Seabourn does not host Meet and Greet per se but you can organize an informal one on your own from your Roll Call. I think this poster, drsel, has not cruised on Seabourn and thus while some of the advice is helpful if you want to organize a large non Seabourn tour keep in mind that some of his/her comments don’t apply to Seabourn.

 

 

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[Isklaar]

No Seabourn does not host Meet and Greet per se but you can organize an informal one on your own from your Roll Call. I think this poster, drsel, has not cruised on Seabourn and thus while some of the advice is helpful if you want to organize a large non Seabourn tour keep in mind that some of his/her comments don’t apply to Seabourn.

 

 

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That makes sense Chairsin, thanks. I thought drsel was talking specifically about Seabourn. I was rather confused when I was reading some of the numbers, as I think it would be rather difficult to find 16-20 people on a Seabourn Roll Call who all wanted to take the same excursion. In fact most of my SB Roll Calls haven't even had 16 different contributors, never mind so many people that were all happy to take the same tour!

I can see how those numbers would work for the much larger ships though.

I'm not the organising type I'm afraid, far too much hard work!

[SLSD]

I have organized tours for my husband and me, but also was thrown by the large numbers of dress's tours. I was thinking more along the line of four to six people taking a tour together.

[Isklaar]

I have organized tours for my husband and me, but also was thrown by the large numbers of dress's tours. I was thinking more along the line of four to six people taking a tour together.

 

Yes, four to six would be the maximum for me.

We often travel with two other couples and the six of us will be on Ovation together in December. One of the ports has us stumped for ideas for what to do and none of us wants to be the one to organise a tour.

I have a feeling I will be the one who eventually gets stuck with the job which is why I was interested in drsel's comments. But I can't imagine trying to organise for more than six. Besides, when the numbers get much bigger than that, for me then a ship's tour makes sense, given that SB usually doesn't have super large tour groups anyway.

[Hoyaheel]

Sharing private tours worked nicely for us on azamara and Pacific Princess, which are only 680 passengers, but we had pretty active roll calls despite the small number of passengers on board.

 

Otherwise, I just find what I want to do on shore and go about it :-)

[drsel]

No Seabourn does not host Meet and Greet per se but you can organize an informal one on your own from your Roll Call. I think this poster, drsel, has not cruised on Seabourn and thus while some of the advice is helpful if you want to organize a large non Seabourn tour keep in mind that some of his/her comments don’t apply to Seabourn.

 

 

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I did mention the lines where it's easy to form large groups from the roll call--Celebrity, Carnival, Norwegian and Royal. Not Costa or MSC.

I haven't sailed Seabourn, cos I can't justify the substantially higher cost compared to those 6 above.

Even if Seabourn includes free excursions, gratuities, specialty dining, shopping gifts, casino credit, unlimited alcoholic beverages, free spa treatment and free massages.

I'd rather do many more cruises on the value cruise lines.

Edited July 24, 2018 by drsel

[SLSD]

drsel, I think we all appreciate hearing about your experience in forming tour groups from the roll calls. I think the cost differential in the lines you have cruised with and Seabourn are mostly intangible. Many might not see a difference warranting a much higher price, but many do.