Booking Shore Excursions - Family w/3 Staterooms

[grsnovi]

I suspect I know the answer to this...

...DW and I have booked 3 cabins and have 3 reservations for our August Alaska cruise.

We are planning to also cover the expense of all shore excursions and want to get them booked.

Can we book all 10 of us in one transaction or will we need to book them as: 2, 4 and 4 against each reservation?

We always book these ourselves on-line and don't use our TA.

Part of this stems from the fact that we have been using the HAL VISA card for virtually every financial transaction for months and have a boatload of points saved that will translate into credit against these excursions.

Advice from any grandparent who has done something similar (or from anyone with any experience with a multi-cabin booking paid by one party).

TIA!

 

[RGBFamily]

If you linked your reservations you should be able to go to the excursions and add the appropriate passengers from each room. 

 

I do do all the booking and usually end up booking my father in law or my kids on tours and we have 2-3 rooms 👍.

[grsnovi]

We did use a TA to book the trip. I'll check to see if the reservations are linked. Thanks RGB!

[oceanmom]

I just booked a second cabin for an excursion. Even though our reservations are linked, I don't think it matters with excursions. Since you get to the excursion page through your booking number, the purchase page comes up with your cabin on it and both occupants and beside those two names, it says something like "add more people", and you enter their booking number and last name, and those names come up. It all ends up in your cart, you pay for it, and it then shows up on each cabin's itinerary as a purchased excursion.

Edited April 29, 2019 by oceanmom

[grsnovi]

Great, thanks! I keep meaning to get to the whole shore ex booking process but August seems so far away. We did confirm that all of the bookings are linked. Maybe I'll book these tonight?

[suzannecruisecritic]

We were also able to add more people on the website when booking as long as we had everyone's confirmation numbers. Or you can call the HAL 800 number for shore excursions (you'll see it on the HAL website) to speak to a rep and they can do it for you; I like to call them sometimes to get a little more detail on some of the excursions and some of the shore excursion reps are very nice and knowledgable.

[grsnovi]

Thanks Suzanne! We certainly have everyone's confirmation #'s... 

[RMLincoln]

On 4/29/2019 at 9:16 AM, grsnovi said:

......Part of this stems from the fact that we have been using the HAL VISA card for virtually every financial transaction for months and have a boatload of points saved that will translate into credit against these excursions.  .....

You mentioned "points" from your HAL VISA card translating into credit against these excursions...  When you pre-purchase excursions, you pay for them when you book them.  If you have or will receive OBC,  that is not going to pay for these pre-paid excursions.  Maybe I"m missing something, but I just want you to understand that you will be pre-paying for the excursions.  The only way to use OBC for pre-paid excursions is, once on board, cancel the excursions and rebook them, then your OBC will pay for them.  m--

[Cruising-along]

19 minutes ago, RMLincoln said:

You mentioned "points" from your HAL VISA card translating into credit against these excursions...  When you pre-purchase excursions, you pay for them when you book them.  If you have or will receive OBC,  that is not going to pay for these pre-paid excursions.  Maybe I"m missing something, but I just want you to understand that you will be pre-paying for the excursions.  The only way to use OBC for pre-paid excursions is, once on board, cancel the excursions and rebook them, then your OBC will pay for them.  m--

The HAL Visa points are completely separate from OBC.  We get points for every purchase (and double points for HAL purchases).  These points add up and can be used for things like credit off our Visa balance.  We've been able to get a few thousand $$ off our balance for the last few years. 

[RMLincoln]

Thx for the clarification. m--

[grsnovi]

We've spent "points" before, so been there/done that. I just booked our excursions (7 adults/3 children) for Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan. Not pre-booking anything for Victoria - we were just there last week and there really didn't seem to be anything that we'd want to do with the kids. The thing is the orca excursion was really great but the resident orca pod is pretty stressed and we just don't feel right contributing to any additional stress.