HAL excursions: Do you have to prepay before the cruise?

[many cruises]

This is our 1st HAL cruise (Westerdam in November) & we want to select some HAL excursions for this trip. Does HAL require that you prepay for the excursions or do they charge your seapass card when you are on the ship? ;)

[rkacruiser]

Yes, when you order the shore excursions online through their website, you will be asked to put them on a credit card. If one later finds that one wants to cancel one or more tours, it is not difficult to do and you will receive credit on the credit card that you used very quickly.

[jhannah]

If you book the excursions online prior to the cruise (up until 10 days before, I believe) then yes you pay for them at that time. You can wait until you board the ship and purchase the excursions, and the charges are added to your shipboard account. Of course, waiting might mean the tour you want is sold out. We always book in advance. I like having them paid for before we go.

[Copper10-8]

Used to always order them with Shorex on board (and that then became part of your onboard charges) but have gone the other way via the internet since that option became available and like it better. It's totally up to you as to what you want to do! Have a great cruise!

[bruceh4]

I would encourage you to order your shore excursion via the internet prior to sailing, you can do so up to 10 days before. The reason is more and more people are doing this and by the time you board the one you want maybe sold out or you maybe waitlisted and dissappointed. Also by pre ordering, HAL will try to add more capacity to a shore excursion if it is sold out early. On my up coming (July 1st) cruise I have already ordered all of my shore excursion's. A friend who is also going with us waited an extra week and is now waitlisted on 2 of the excursions we are going on.

[kryos]

Yes, when you order the shore excursions online through their website, you will be asked to put them on a credit card. If one later finds that one wants to cancel one or more tours, it is not difficult to do and you will receive credit on the credit card that you used very quickly.

But if you cancel onboard or if HAL cancels your excursion for some reason, you will receive the credit on your shipboard account. The website states that.

 

Doesn't really matter ... a credit is a credit.

 

Personally, I prefer to pay for my excursions ahead of time. Especially if I am planning on doing a lot of excursions and/or pricey ones, I'd rather get them paid for and out of the way in advance. Nothing worse than getting "sticker shock" on that last day of your cruise because there are several hundred dollars (or more) worth of excursions on that shipboard bill. That's exactly what happened to me on Princess last year. Ouch! :(

 

Blue skies ...

 

--rita

[kryos]

I would encourage you to order your shore excursion via the internet prior to sailing, you can do so up to 10 days before. The reason is more and more people are doing this and by the time you board the one you want maybe sold out or you maybe waitlisted and dissappointed.

Amen! On my Hawaii/South Pacific cruise in January there were several very popular excursions that were sold out long before we boarded in San Diego. While the cruise line will try to add capacity, often this is impossible to do because of the availability of vendors to run the excursions. For example, on our snorkling excursion in Maui, the vendor only had one boat set up for snorkling. HAL chartered it out. Once it was filled ... it was filled.

 

On Half Moon Cay it is even more important to reserve excursions in advance. That's a small island with only so much excursion capacity available. If you have two ships in port that day, especially if one or both of them is a Vista class, the excursions sell out very, very quickly. Once they are gone, they are gone.

 

I already reserved three excursions for my upcoming Caribbean cruise on the Amsterdam this October and I'm glad I did.

 

Blue skies ...

 

--rita

[Krazy Kruizers]

We prefer to book our HAL shore excursions ahead of time. So many of them will sell out before the ship even sells.

 

Yes, if HAL has to cancel shore excursions once you are on the ship, it will become shipboard credit. We had that happen on our Hawaiian cruise - BOY - did we have a lot of shipboard credit.

 

And if you have any shipboard credit left at the end of the cruise, depending on the amount, you will either get it in cash or they will give you credit on your charge card.

[CruisinGrams]

We couldn't book our excursions online before leaving for our Alaska cruise but booked as soon as we boarded. We saw so many whales from our balcony that we decided to cancel the whale watching tour in Victoria (Orca's). We were charged 10% cancellation fee. None of the major shore excursions were sold out on our cruise and there were lots available from other operators at each pier, especially Juneau. So I guess it is a personal choice, but I didn't really want to have these charges on my credit card months or weeks ahead of my cruise. There were also problems with the website recently where people we charged twice for the same excursion, so that is something to think about too. Hopefully they have finally fixed the website so it works.

[Copper10-8]

If you do book via the website ahead of time, make sure you bring your printed receipts onboard with you to avoid any duplicate charges!