Alaska - Excursion Availability (for late booking)?

[homeofthehound]

Hi! We are fortunate to be able to take a last minute cruise in August. We were looking at Alaska and comparing between HAL (Nieuw Amsterdam) and another cruise line. Knowing that we are very late for booking, only 7-8 weeks out, I am wondering if there is any way to tell how sold out the excursions are? I can't think of a way to do this without having a confirmed booking number but it has been a few years since I have done this - am I forgetting a method?

 

If it will be a struggle to get excursions then we would likely change our destination (for context we usually aim for mid-l strenuous level activity, mid-priced excursions) as I would hate to book a wonderful trip and then be disappointed with excursion availability. Would appreciate any suggestions 🙂

[mowogo]

While many options with the cruise line may be booked, you are also in a market where you can fairly safely book excursions through third party sites.  

[Midwest Sunseeker]

You tube “ParoDeeJay” has some good videos on things to do in Alaska ports.  They seem to show you options you can do if you don’t book with the cruise line.  

[auntmeg]

Maybe post on the roll call for that cruise and see if someone who has already booked will check the excursions for you.

[OlsSalt]

We are signed up for the 14 day - late September Alaska Noordam cruise and some excursions are already showing limited capacity.  Some of the more popular ports in Alaska were listing up to 31 shore excursion options.  Since this will be close to their last chance for revenue before the Alaska cruise season closes, lots of choices may still exist.

 

Taking others suggestions here, we just signed up for the Crab Boil at the Silverking Lodge thinking it too might get sold out the longer we waited. Plus the 14 day onboard Thermal Spa pass also posted only limited capacity left. 

 

Agree, the roll call for this cruise is your best way to get someone to check this out for you. Do you know what you want to do in each port?

[Mary229]

You could do a courtesy hold on the booking and then have complete access to shore excursion listings. 

[Vandelay Inc]

Or you can call the Holland America Shore Excursions department at 888-425-9376

[homeofthehound]

5 hours ago, auntmeg said:

Maybe post on the roll call for that cruise and see if someone who has already booked will check the excursions for you.

This crossed my mind too, but the roll calls are extremely low participation for some reason.🤔

[homeofthehound]

4 hours ago, Vandelay Inc said:

Or you can call the Holland America Shore Excursions department at 888-425-9376

Excellent, thank you! I was sure they had a contact number but couldn't seem to find it for some reason! 😃

[Haljo1935]

Definitely call Shore Excursions as @Vandelay Inc suggested. I have done that many times. They're also great at answering questions about specific excursions if the little blurbs on the website don't provide enough info.

Alaska is wonderful with a lot of options whether booked independently or through the ship.

Safe travels - enjoy your cruise!

[lyndarra]

On 6/19/2023 at 12:36 PM, homeofthehound said:

This crossed my mind too, but the roll calls are extremely low participation for some reason.🤔

Slightly OT but I have a theory about that. Having done three Alaskan cruises (most recent was Jun 4), I have found that most of the cruisers I have chatted with are first timers and mostly unaware of CC or Roll Calls.

[mowogo]

15 hours ago, lyndarra said:

Slightly OT but I have a theory about that. Having done three Alaskan cruises (most recent was Jun 4), I have found that most of the cruisers I have chatted with are first timers and mostly unaware of CC or Roll Calls.

It is one thing we have to keep in mind is that the average cruise critic member is just an extremely small subset of cruisers. For reference, a group for my September cruise which only has Guarantee verandahs available has 36 people in the group on one of the most popular social sites in the world.  While I am sharing some content from this site in that group, no idea how many will actually join and become posters.  But even then you are talking 36 people out of a signature class ship even making it to the group stage is still a very small percentage of the ship.  Even as they roll out tech, Holland America is still aware that a large portion of their customer base is not technologically savvy and that is shown in the roll calls and groups being much smaller.